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Should you
ask me,
whence these stories?
Whence these
legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the
curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great
rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their
wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests
and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the
Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the
land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and
fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I
heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The
musician, the sweet singer."
Should you ask where
Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer,
I should tell you,
"In the bird's-nests of the
forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the
hoofprint of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle!
"All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands
and the fen-lands,
In the melancholy marshes;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
Mahng, the loon,
the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the
Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
If
still further you should ask me,
Saying, "Who was
Nawadaha?
Tell us of this Nawadaha,"
I should
answer your inquiries
Straightway in such words as
follow.
"In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green
and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
Round about the Indian
village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of
singing pine-trees,
Green in Summer, white in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.
"And the pleasant
water-courses,
You could trace them through the
valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the
alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter;
And beside them
dwelt the singer,
In the vale of Tawasentha,
In
the green and silent valley.
"There he sang of
Hiawatha,
Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
Sang his
wondrous birth and being,
How he prayed and how be
fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might
advance his people!"
Ye who love the haunts of
Nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the
shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the
branches,
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great rivers
Through their
palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the
mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like
eagles in their eyries;-
Listen to these wild
traditions,
To this Song of Hiawatha!
Ye who love
a nation's legends,
Love the ballads of a people,
That like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause
and listen,
Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear distinguish
Whether they are
sung or spoken;-
Listen to this Indian Legend,
To
this Song of Hiawatha!
Ye whose hearts are fresh and
simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who
believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings,
yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend
not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping
blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in
that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened;-
Listen to this simple story,
To this Song of
Hiawatha!
Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
Through the green lanes of the country,
Where the
tangled barberry-bushes
Hang their tufts of crimson
berries
Over stone walls gray with mosses,
Pause
by some neglected graveyard,
For a while to muse, and
ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Written with
little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, but each
letter
Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full
of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the
Hereafter;
Stay and read this rude inscription,
Read this Song of Hiawatha!
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