Download The Song Of Hiawatha AudioBook Free
In the summer of 1854, Longfellow wrote in his diary "I've at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians, which appears to me the right one and the only real. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions as whole." What emerged another year was "The Song of Hiawatha," a composite of legends, folklore, myth, and characters that presents, in short, lilting lines (that can forget "With the shore of Gitche-Gumme / With the shining Big-Sea Water"?) the life-story of a genuine Indian, who provides the focus for the narrative thread of this epic drama of high adventure, tragedy and conflict. Desire to was not in order to a particular or specific story but to unite the strands of various Indian legends, to provide a sympathetic portrait of many Native American tribes, and especially to disclose their profound relationship with the natural world. This when both government policies and an expanding, land-hungry population were just beginning their inexorable campaign of displacement and annihilation.
The poem received a decidedly mixed reception. Our very own Boston Traveler revealed its biases: "We can not help but express our regret our own pet national poet shouldn't have selected as a style of his muse something better and greater than the silly legends of the savage aborigines." Not surprisingly, the poem entered into our canon of great narratives, and was revived again in 1891 when Remington, surely the most renowned artist of the West, provided with new pen and ink drawings.
This handsome new, and freshly reset, edition (the only real unabridged version on the net) presents the full text, includes the original Remington illustrations, and provides an index of the Indian names and their meanings.
