5803 lines
194 KiB
Plaintext
5803 lines
194 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
|
|
The Song of Hiawatha
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Henry W. Longfellow
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CONTENTS
|
|
|
|
Introductory Note 1
|
|
Introduction 2
|
|
I The Peace-Pipe 5
|
|
II The Four Winds 9
|
|
III Hiawatha's Childhood 15
|
|
IV Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis 20
|
|
V Hiawatha's Fasting 26
|
|
VI Hiawatha's Friends 32
|
|
VII Hiawatha's Sailing 36
|
|
VIII Hiawatha's Fishing 39
|
|
IX Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather 44
|
|
X Hiawatha's Wooing 50
|
|
XI Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast 55
|
|
XII The Son of the Evening Star 60
|
|
XIII Blessing the Corn-Fields 67
|
|
XIV Picture-Writing 71
|
|
XV Hiawatha's Lamentation 76
|
|
XVI Pau-Puk-Keewis 81
|
|
XVII The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis 86
|
|
XVIII The Death of Kwasind 93
|
|
XIX The Ghosts 96
|
|
XX The Famine 101
|
|
XXI The White Man's Foot 105
|
|
XXII Hiawatha's Departure 110
|
|
Vocabulary 115
|
|
|
|
|
|
Introductory Note
|
|
|
|
The Song of Hiawatha is based on the legends and stories of
|
|
many North American Indian tribes, but especially those of the
|
|
Ojibway Indians of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
|
|
They were collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the reknowned
|
|
historian, pioneer explorer, and geologist. He was
|
|
superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841.
|
|
|
|
Schoolcraft married Jane, O-bah-bahm-wawa-ge-zhe-go-qua (The
|
|
Woman of the Sound Which the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky),
|
|
Johnston. Jane was a daughter of John Johnston, an early Irish
|
|
fur trader, and O-shau-gus-coday-way-qua (The Woman of the Green
|
|
Prairie), who was a daughter of Waub-o-jeeg (The White Fisher),
|
|
who was Chief of the Ojibway tribe at La Pointe, Wisconsin.
|
|
|
|
Jane and her mother are credited with having researched,
|
|
authenticated, and compiled much of the material Schoolcraft
|
|
included in his Algic Researches (1839) and a revision published
|
|
in 1856 as The Myth of Hiawatha. It was this latter revision
|
|
that Longfellow used as the basis for The Song of Hiawatha.
|
|
|
|
Longfellow began Hiawatha on June 25, 1854, he completed it
|
|
on March 29, 1855, and it was published November 10, 1855. As
|
|
soon as the poem was published its popularity was assured.
|
|
However, it also was severely criticized as a plagiary of the
|
|
Finnish epic poem Kalevala. Longfellow made no secret of the
|
|
fact that he had used the meter of the Kalevala; but as for the
|
|
legends, he openly gave credit to Schoolcraft in his notes to the
|
|
poem.
|
|
|
|
I would add a personal note here. My father's roots include
|
|
Ojibway Indians: his mother, Margaret Caroline Davenport, was a
|
|
daughter of Susan des Carreaux, O-gee-em-a-qua (The Chief Woman),
|
|
Davenport whose mother was a daughter of Chief Waub-o-jeeg.
|
|
Finally, my mother used to rock me to sleep reading portions of
|
|
Hiawatha to me, especially:
|
|
|
|
"Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
|
|
Little, flitting, white-fire insect
|
|
Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
|
|
Light me with your little candle,
|
|
Ere upon my bed I lay me,
|
|
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"
|
|
|
|
Woodrow W. Morris
|
|
April 1, 1991
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Song of Hiawatha
|
|
Introduction
|
|
|
|
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!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I
|
|
|
|
The Peace-Pipe
|
|
|
|
On the Mountains of the Prairie,
|
|
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
|
|
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
|
|
He the Master of Life, descending,
|
|
On the red crags of the quarry
|
|
Stood erect, and called the nations,
|
|
Called the tribes of men together.
|
|
From his footprints flowed a river,
|
|
Leaped into the light of morning,
|
|
O'er the precipice plunging downward
|
|
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
|
|
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
|
|
With his finger on the meadow
|
|
Traced a winding pathway for it,
|
|
Saying to it, "Run in this way!"
|
|
From the red stone of the quarry
|
|
With his hand he broke a fragment,
|
|
Moulded it into a pipe-head,
|
|
Shaped and fashioned it with figures;
|
|
From the margin of the river
|
|
Took a long reed for a pipe-stem,
|
|
With its dark green leaves upon it;
|
|
Filled the pipe with bark of willow,
|
|
With the bark of the red willow;
|
|
Breathed upon the neighboring forest,
|
|
Made its great boughs chafe together,
|
|
Till in flame they burst and kindled;
|
|
And erect upon the mountains,
|
|
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
|
|
Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe,
|
|
As a signal to the nations.
|
|
And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,
|
|
Through the tranquil air of morning,
|
|
First a single line of darkness,
|
|
Then a denser, bluer vapor,
|
|
Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,
|
|
Like the tree-tops of the forest,
|
|
Ever rising, rising, rising,
|
|
Till it touched the top of heaven,
|
|
Till it broke against the heaven,
|
|
And rolled outward all around it.
|
|
From the Vale of Tawasentha,
|
|
From the Valley of Wyoming,
|
|
From the groves of Tuscaloosa,
|
|
From the far-off Rocky Mountains,
|
|
From the Northern lakes and rivers
|
|
All the tribes beheld the signal,
|
|
Saw the distant smoke ascending,
|
|
The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe.
|
|
And the Prophets of the nations
|
|
Said: "Behold it, the Pukwana!
|
|
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,
|
|
Bending like a wand of willow,
|
|
Waving like a hand that beckons,
|
|
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
|
|
Calls the tribes of men together,
|
|
Calls the warriors to his council!"
|
|
Down the rivers, o'er the prairies,
|
|
Came the warriors of the nations,
|
|
Came the Delawares and Mohawks,
|
|
Came the Choctaws and Camanches,
|
|
Came the Shoshonies and Blackfeet,
|
|
Came the Pawnees and Omahas,
|
|
Came the Mandans and Dacotahs,
|
|
Came the Hurons and Ojibways,
|
|
All the warriors drawn together
|
|
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,
|
|
To the Mountains of the Prairie,
|
|
To the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
|
|
And they stood there on the meadow,
|
|
With their weapons and their war-gear,
|
|
Painted like the leaves of Autumn,
|
|
Painted like the sky of morning,
|
|
Wildly glaring at each other;
|
|
In their faces stem defiance,
|
|
In their hearts the feuds of ages,
|
|
The hereditary hatred,
|
|
The ancestral thirst of vengeance.
|
|
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
|
|
The creator of the nations,
|
|
Looked upon them with compassion,
|
|
With paternal love and pity;
|
|
Looked upon their wrath and wrangling
|
|
But as quarrels among children,
|
|
But as feuds and fights of children!
|
|
Over them he stretched his right hand,
|
|
To subdue their stubborn natures,
|
|
To allay their thirst and fever,
|
|
By the shadow of his right hand;
|
|
Spake to them with voice majestic
|
|
As the sound of far-off waters,
|
|
Falling into deep abysses,
|
|
Warning, chiding, spake in this wise :
|
|
"O my children! my poor children!
|
|
Listen to the words of wisdom,
|
|
Listen to the words of warning,
|
|
From the lips of the Great Spirit,
|
|
From the Master of Life, who made you!
|
|
"I have given you lands to hunt in,
|
|
I have given you streams to fish in,
|
|
I have given you bear and bison,
|
|
I have given you roe and reindeer,
|
|
I have given you brant and beaver,
|
|
Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl,
|
|
Filled the rivers full of fishes:
|
|
Why then are you not contented?
|
|
Why then will you hunt each other?
|
|
"I am weary of your quarrels,
|
|
Weary of your wars and bloodshed,
|
|
Weary of your prayers for vengeance,
|
|
Of your wranglings and dissensions;
|
|
All your strength is in your union,
|
|
All your danger is in discord;
|
|
Therefore be at peace henceforward,
|
|
And as brothers live together.
|
|
"I will send a Prophet to you,
|
|
A Deliverer of the nations,
|
|
Who shall guide you and shall teach you,
|
|
Who shall toil and suffer with you.
|
|
If you listen to his counsels,
|
|
You will multiply and prosper;
|
|
If his warnings pass unheeded,
|
|
You will fade away and perish!
|
|
"Bathe now in the stream before you,
|
|
Wash the war-paint from your faces,
|
|
Wash the blood-stains from your fingers,
|
|
Bury your war-clubs and your weapons,
|
|
Break the red stone from this quarry,
|
|
Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes,
|
|
Take the reeds that grow beside you,
|
|
Deck them with your brightest feathers,
|
|
Smoke the calumet together,
|
|
And as brothers live henceforward!"
|
|
Then upon the ground the warriors
|
|
Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin,
|
|
Threw their weapons and their war-gear,
|
|
Leaped into the rushing river,
|
|
Washed the war-paint from their faces.
|
|
Clear above them flowed the water,
|
|
Clear and limpid from the footprints
|
|
Of the Master of Life descending;
|
|
Dark below them flowed the water,
|
|
Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson,
|
|
As if blood were mingled with it!
|
|
From the river came the warriors,
|
|
Clean and washed from all their war-paint;
|
|
On the banks their clubs they buried,
|
|
Buried all their warlike weapons.
|
|
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
|
|
The Great Spirit, the creator,
|
|
Smiled upon his helpless children!
|
|
And in silence all the warriors
|
|
Broke the red stone of the quarry,
|
|
Smoothed and formed it into Peace-Pipes,
|
|
Broke the long reeds by the river,
|
|
Decked them with their brightest feathers,
|
|
And departed each one homeward,
|
|
While the Master of Life, ascending,
|
|
Through the opening of cloud-curtains,
|
|
Through the doorways of the heaven,
|
|
Vanished from before their faces,
|
|
In the smoke that rolled around him,
|
|
The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
II
|
|
|
|
The Four Winds
|
|
|
|
"Honor be to Mudjekeewis!"
|
|
Cried the warriors, cried the old men,
|
|
When he came in triumph homeward
|
|
With the sacred Belt of Wampum,
|
|
From the regions of the North-Wind,
|
|
From the kingdom of Wabasso,
|
|
From the land of the White Rabbit.
|
|
He had stolen the Belt of Wampum
|
|
From the neck of Mishe-Mokwa,
|
|
From the Great Bear of the mountains,
|
|
From the terror of the nations,
|
|
As he lay asleep and cumbrous
|
|
On the summit of the mountains,
|
|
Like a rock with mosses on it,
|
|
Spotted brown and gray with mosses.
|
|
Silently he stole upon him
|
|
Till the red nails of the monster
|
|
Almost touched him, almost scared him,
|
|
Till the hot breath of his nostrils
|
|
Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis,
|
|
As he drew the Belt of Wampum
|
|
Over the round ears, that heard not,
|
|
Over the small eyes, that saw not,
|
|
Over the long nose and nostrils,
|
|
The black muffle of the nostrils,
|
|
Out of which the heavy breathing
|
|
Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis.
|
|
Then he swung aloft his war-club,
|
|
Shouted loud and long his war-cry,
|
|
Smote the mighty Mishe-Mokwa
|
|
In the middle of the forehead,
|
|
Right between the eyes he smote him.
|
|
With the heavy blow bewildered,
|
|
Rose the Great Bear of the mountains;
|
|
But his knees beneath him trembled,
|
|
And he whimpered like a woman,
|
|
As he reeled and staggered forward,
|
|
As he sat upon his haunches;
|
|
And the mighty Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Standing fearlessly before him,
|
|
Taunted him in loud derision,
|
|
Spake disdainfully in this wise:
|
|
"Hark you, Bear! you are a coward;
|
|
And no Brave, as you pretended;
|
|
Else you would not cry and whimper
|
|
Like a miserable woman!
|
|
Bear! you know our tribes are hostile,
|
|
Long have been at war together;
|
|
Now you find that we are strongest,
|
|
You go sneaking in the forest,
|
|
You go hiding in the mountains!
|
|
Had you conquered me in battle
|
|
Not a groan would I have uttered;
|
|
But you, Bear! sit here and whimper,
|
|
And disgrace your tribe by crying,
|
|
Like a wretched Shaugodaya,
|
|
Like a cowardly old woman!"
|
|
Then again he raised his war-club,
|
|
Smote again the Mishe-Mokwa
|
|
In the middle of his forehead,
|
|
Broke his skull, as ice is broken
|
|
When one goes to fish in Winter.
|
|
Thus was slain the Mishe-Mokwa,
|
|
He the Great Bear of the mountains,
|
|
He the terror of the nations.
|
|
"Honor be to Mudjekeewis!"
|
|
With a shout exclaimed the people,
|
|
"Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
|
|
Henceforth he shall be the West-Wind,
|
|
And hereafter and forever
|
|
Shall he hold supreme dominion
|
|
Over all the winds of heaven.
|
|
Call him no more Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Call him Kabeyun, the West-Wind!"
|
|
Thus was Mudjekeewis chosen
|
|
Father of the Winds of Heaven.
|
|
For himself he kept the West-Wind,
|
|
Gave the others to his children;
|
|
Unto Wabun gave the East-Wind,
|
|
Gave the South to Shawondasee,
|
|
And the North-Wind, wild and cruel,
|
|
To the fierce Kabibonokka.
|
|
Young and beautiful was Wabun;
|
|
He it was who brought the morning,
|
|
He it was whose silver arrows
|
|
Chased the dark o'er hill and valley;
|
|
He it was whose cheeks were painted
|
|
With the brightest streaks of crimson,
|
|
And whose voice awoke the village,
|
|
Called the deer, and called the hunter.
|
|
Lonely in the sky was Wabun;
|
|
Though the birds sang gayly to him,
|
|
Though the wild-flowers of the meadow
|
|
Filled the air with odors for him;
|
|
Though the forests and the rivers
|
|
Sang and shouted at his coming,
|
|
Still his heart was sad within him,
|
|
For he was alone in heaven.
|
|
But one morning, gazing earthward,
|
|
While the village still was sleeping,
|
|
And the fog lay on the river,
|
|
Like a ghost, that goes at sunrise,
|
|
He beheld a maiden walking
|
|
All alone upon a meadow,
|
|
Gathering water-flags and rushes
|
|
By a river in the meadow.
|
|
Every morning, gazing earthward,
|
|
Still the first thing he beheld there
|
|
Was her blue eyes looking at him,
|
|
Two blue lakes among the rushes.
|
|
And he loved the lonely maiden,
|
|
Who thus waited for his coming;
|
|
For they both were solitary,
|
|
She on earth and he in heaven.
|
|
And he wooed her with caresses,
|
|
Wooed her with his smile of sunshine,
|
|
With his flattering words he wooed her,
|
|
With his sighing and his singing,
|
|
Gentlest whispers in the branches,
|
|
Softest music, sweetest odors,
|
|
Till he drew her to his bosom,
|
|
Folded in his robes of crimson,
|
|
Till into a star he changed her,
|
|
Trembling still upon his bosom;
|
|
And forever in the heavens
|
|
They are seen together walking,
|
|
Wabun and the Wabun-Annung,
|
|
Wabun and the Star of Morning.
|
|
But the fierce Kabibonokka
|
|
Had his dwelling among icebergs,
|
|
In the everlasting snow-drifts,
|
|
In the kingdom of Wabasso,
|
|
In the land of the White Rabbit.
|
|
He it was whose hand in Autumn
|
|
Painted all the trees with scarlet,
|
|
Stained the leaves with red and yellow;
|
|
He it was who sent the snow-flake,
|
|
Sifting, hissing through the forest,
|
|
Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers,
|
|
Drove the loon and sea-gull southward,
|
|
Drove the cormorant and curlew
|
|
To their nests of sedge and sea-tang
|
|
In the realms of Shawondasee.
|
|
Once the fierce Kabibonokka
|
|
Issued from his lodge of snow-drifts
|
|
From his home among the icebergs,
|
|
And his hair, with snow besprinkled,
|
|
Streamed behind him like a river,
|
|
Like a black and wintry river,
|
|
As he howled and hurried southward,
|
|
Over frozen lakes and moorlands.
|
|
There among the reeds and rushes
|
|
Found he Shingebis, the diver,
|
|
Trailing strings of fish behind him,
|
|
O'er the frozen fens and moorlands,
|
|
Lingering still among the moorlands,
|
|
Though his tribe had long departed
|
|
To the land of Shawondasee.
|
|
Cried the fierce Kabibonokka,
|
|
"Who is this that dares to brave me?
|
|
Dares to stay in my dominions,
|
|
When the Wawa has departed,
|
|
When the wild-goose has gone southward,
|
|
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
Long ago departed southward?
|
|
I will go into his wigwam,
|
|
I will put his smouldering fire out!"
|
|
And at night Kabibonokka,
|
|
To the lodge came wild and wailing,
|
|
Heaped the snow in drifts about it,
|
|
Shouted down into the smoke-flue,
|
|
Shook the lodge-poles in his fury,
|
|
Flapped the curtain of the door-way.
|
|
Shingebis, the diver, feared not,
|
|
Shingebis, the diver, cared not;
|
|
Four great logs had he for firewood,
|
|
One for each moon of the winter,
|
|
And for food the fishes served him.
|
|
By his blazing fire he sat there,
|
|
Warm and merry, eating, laughing,
|
|
Singing, "O Kabibonokka,
|
|
You are but my fellow-mortal!"
|
|
Then Kabibonokka entered,
|
|
And though Shingebis, the diver,
|
|
Felt his presence by the coldness,
|
|
Felt his icy breath upon him,
|
|
Still he did not cease his singing,
|
|
Still he did not leave his laughing,
|
|
Only turned the log a little,
|
|
Only made the fire burn brighter,
|
|
Made the sparks fly up the smoke-flue.
|
|
From Kabibonokka's forehead,
|
|
From his snow-besprinkled tresses,
|
|
Drops of sweat fell fast and heavy,
|
|
Making dints upon the ashes,
|
|
As along the eaves of lodges,
|
|
As from drooping boughs of hemlock,
|
|
Drips the melting snow in spring-time,
|
|
Making hollows in the snow-drifts.
|
|
Till at last he rose defeated,
|
|
Could not bear the heat and laughter,
|
|
Could not bear the merry singing,
|
|
But rushed headlong through the door-way,
|
|
Stamped upon the crusted snow-drifts,
|
|
Stamped upon the lakes and rivers,
|
|
Made the snow upon them harder,
|
|
Made the ice upon them thicker,
|
|
Challenged Shingebis, the diver,
|
|
To come forth and wrestle with him,
|
|
To come forth and wrestle naked
|
|
On the frozen fens and moorlands.
|
|
Forth went Shingebis, the diver,
|
|
Wrestled all night with the North-Wind,
|
|
Wrestled naked on the moorlands
|
|
With the fierce Kabibonokka,
|
|
Till his panting breath grew fainter,
|
|
Till his frozen grasp grew feebler,
|
|
Till he reeled and staggered backward,
|
|
And retreated, baffled, beaten,
|
|
To the kingdom of Wabasso,
|
|
To the land of the White Rabbit,
|
|
Hearing still the gusty laughter,
|
|
Hearing Shingebis, the diver,
|
|
Singing, "O Kabibonokka,
|
|
You are but my fellow-mortal!"
|
|
Shawondasee, fat and lazy,
|
|
Had his dwelling far to southward,
|
|
In the drowsy, dreamy sunshine,
|
|
In the never-ending Summer.
|
|
He it was who sent the wood-birds,
|
|
Sent the robin, the Opechee,
|
|
Sent the bluebird, the Owaissa,
|
|
Sent the Shawshaw, sent the swallow,
|
|
Sent the wild-goose, Wawa, northward,
|
|
Sent the melons and tobacco,
|
|
And the grapes in purple clusters.
|
|
From his pipe the smoke ascending
|
|
Filled the sky with haze and vapor,
|
|
Filled the air with dreamy softness,
|
|
Gave a twinkle to the water,
|
|
Touched the rugged hills with smoothness,
|
|
Brought the tender Indian Summer
|
|
To the melancholy north-land,
|
|
In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes.
|
|
Listless, careless Shawondasee!
|
|
In his life he had one shadow,
|
|
In his heart one sorrow had he.
|
|
Once, as he was gazing northward,
|
|
Far away upon a prairie
|
|
He beheld a maiden standing,
|
|
Saw a tall and slender maiden
|
|
All alone upon a prairie;
|
|
Brightest green were all her garments,
|
|
And her hair was like the sunshine.
|
|
Day by day he gazed upon her,
|
|
Day by day he sighed with passion,
|
|
Day by day his heart within him
|
|
Grew more hot with love and longing
|
|
For the maid with yellow tresses.
|
|
But he was too fat and lazy
|
|
To bestir himself and woo her.
|
|
Yes, too indolent and easy
|
|
To pursue her and persuade her;
|
|
So he only gazed upon her,
|
|
Only sat and sighed with passion
|
|
For the maiden of the prairie.
|
|
Till one morning, looking northward,
|
|
He beheld her yellow tresses
|
|
Changed and covered o'er with whiteness,
|
|
Covered as with whitest snow-flakes.
|
|
"Ah! my brother from the North-land,
|
|
From the kingdom of Wabasso,
|
|
From the land of the White Rabbit!
|
|
You have stolen the maiden from me,
|
|
You have laid your hand upon her,
|
|
You have wooed and won my maiden,
|
|
With your stories of the North-land!"
|
|
Thus the wretched Shawondasee
|
|
Breathed into the air his sorrow;
|
|
And the South-Wind o'er the prairie
|
|
Wandered warm with sighs of passion,
|
|
With the sighs of Shawondasee,
|
|
Till the air seemed full of snow-flakes,
|
|
Full of thistle-down the prairie,
|
|
And the maid with hair like sunshine
|
|
Vanished from his sight forever;
|
|
Never more did Shawondasee
|
|
See the maid with yellow tresses!
|
|
Poor, deluded Shawondasee!
|
|
'T was no woman that you gazed at,
|
|
'T was no maiden that you sighed for,
|
|
'T was the prairie dandelion
|
|
That through all the dreamy Summer
|
|
You had gazed at with such longing,
|
|
You had sighed for with such passion,
|
|
And had puffed away forever,
|
|
Blown into the air with sighing.
|
|
Ah! deluded Shawondasee!
|
|
Thus the Four Winds were divided
|
|
Thus the sons of Mudjekeewis
|
|
Had their stations in the heavens,
|
|
At the corners of the heavens;
|
|
For himself the West-Wind only
|
|
Kept the mighty Mudjekeewis.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
III
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Childhood
|
|
|
|
Downward through the evening twilight,
|
|
In the days that are forgotten,
|
|
In the unremembered ages,
|
|
From the full moon fell Nokomis,
|
|
Fell the beautiful Nokomis,
|
|
She a wife, but not a mother.
|
|
She was sporting with her women,
|
|
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines,
|
|
When her rival the rejected,
|
|
Full of jealousy and hatred,
|
|
Cut the leafy swing asunder,
|
|
Cut in twain the twisted grape-vines,
|
|
And Nokomis fell affrighted
|
|
Downward through the evening twilight,
|
|
On the Muskoday, the meadow,
|
|
On the prairie full of blossoms.
|
|
"See! a star falls!" said the people;
|
|
"From the sky a star is falling!"
|
|
There among the ferns and mosses,
|
|
There among the prairie lilies,
|
|
On the Muskoday, the meadow,
|
|
In the moonlight and the starlight,
|
|
Fair Nokomis bore a daughter.
|
|
And she called her name Wenonah,
|
|
As the first-born of her daughters.
|
|
And the daughter of Nokomis
|
|
Grew up like the prairie lilies,
|
|
Grew a tall and slender maiden,
|
|
With the beauty of the moonlight,
|
|
With the beauty of the starlight.
|
|
And Nokomis warned her often,
|
|
Saying oft, and oft repeating,
|
|
"Oh, beware of Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Of the West-Wind, Mudjekeewis;
|
|
Listen not to what he tells you;
|
|
Lie not down upon the meadow,
|
|
Stoop not down among the lilies,
|
|
Lest the West-Wind come and harm you!"
|
|
But she heeded not the warning,
|
|
Heeded not those words of wisdom,
|
|
And the West-Wind came at evening,
|
|
Walking lightly o'er the prairie,
|
|
Whispering to the leaves and blossoms,
|
|
Bending low the flowers and grasses,
|
|
Found the beautiful Wenonah,
|
|
Lying there among the lilies,
|
|
Wooed her with his words of sweetness,
|
|
Wooed her with his soft caresses,
|
|
Till she bore a son in sorrow,
|
|
Bore a son of love and sorrow.
|
|
Thus was born my Hiawatha,
|
|
Thus was born the child of wonder;
|
|
But the daughter of Nokomis,
|
|
Hiawatha's gentle mother,
|
|
In her anguish died deserted
|
|
By the West-Wind, false and faithless,
|
|
By the heartless Mudjekeewis.
|
|
For her daughter long and loudly
|
|
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis;
|
|
"Oh that I were dead!" she murmured,
|
|
"Oh that I were dead, as thou art!
|
|
No more work, and no more weeping,
|
|
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!"
|
|
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
|
|
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
|
|
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
|
|
Dark behind it rose the forest,
|
|
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
|
|
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
|
|
Bright before it beat the water,
|
|
Beat the clear and sunny water,
|
|
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
|
|
There the wrinkled old Nokomis
|
|
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
|
|
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
|
|
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
|
|
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
|
|
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
|
|
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
|
|
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
|
|
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
|
|
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
|
|
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
|
|
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
|
|
Many things Nokomis taught him
|
|
Of the stars that shine in heaven;
|
|
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
|
|
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
|
|
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
|
|
Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
|
|
Flaring far away to northward
|
|
In the frosty nights of Winter;
|
|
Showed the broad white road in heaven,
|
|
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
|
|
Running straight across the heavens,
|
|
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
|
|
At the door on summer evenings
|
|
Sat the little Hiawatha;
|
|
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
|
|
Heard the lapping of the waters,
|
|
Sounds of music, words of wonder;
|
|
'Minne-wawa!" said the Pine-trees,
|
|
Mudway-aushka!" said the water.
|
|
Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee,
|
|
Flitting through the dusk of evening,
|
|
With the twinkle of its candle
|
|
Lighting up the brakes and bushes,
|
|
And he sang the song of children,
|
|
Sang the song Nokomis taught him:
|
|
"Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
|
|
Little, flitting, white-fire insect,
|
|
Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
|
|
Light me with your little candle,
|
|
Ere upon my bed I lay me,
|
|
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"
|
|
Saw the moon rise from the water
|
|
Rippling, rounding from the water,
|
|
Saw the flecks and shadows on it,
|
|
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
|
|
And the good Nokomis answered:
|
|
"Once a warrior, very angry,
|
|
Seized his grandmother, and threw her
|
|
Up into the sky at midnight;
|
|
Right against the moon he threw her;
|
|
'T is her body that you see there."
|
|
Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
|
|
In the eastern sky, the rainbow,
|
|
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
|
|
And the good Nokomis answered:
|
|
"'T is the heaven of flowers you see there;
|
|
All the wild-flowers of the forest,
|
|
All the lilies of the prairie,
|
|
When on earth they fade and perish,
|
|
Blossom in that heaven above us."
|
|
When he heard the owls at midnight,
|
|
Hooting, laughing in the forest,
|
|
'What is that?" he cried in terror,
|
|
"What is that," he said, "Nokomis?"
|
|
And the good Nokomis answered:
|
|
"That is but the owl and owlet,
|
|
Talking in their native language,
|
|
Talking, scolding at each other."
|
|
Then the little Hiawatha
|
|
Learned of every bird its language,
|
|
Learned their names and all their secrets,
|
|
How they built their nests in Summer,
|
|
Where they hid themselves in Winter,
|
|
Talked with them whene'er he met them,
|
|
Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens."
|
|
Of all beasts he learned the language,
|
|
Learned their names and all their secrets,
|
|
How the beavers built their lodges,
|
|
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
|
|
How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
|
|
Why the rabbit was so timid,
|
|
Talked with them whene'er he met them,
|
|
Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers."
|
|
Then Iagoo, the great boaster,
|
|
He the marvellous story-teller,
|
|
He the traveller and the talker,
|
|
He the friend of old Nokomis,
|
|
Made a bow for Hiawatha;
|
|
From a branch of ash he made it,
|
|
From an oak-bough made the arrows,
|
|
Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers,
|
|
And the cord he made of deer-skin.
|
|
Then he said to Hiawatha:
|
|
"Go, my son, into the forest,
|
|
Where the red deer herd together,
|
|
Kill for us a famous roebuck,
|
|
Kill for us a deer with antlers!"
|
|
Forth into the forest straightway
|
|
All alone walked Hiawatha
|
|
Proudly, with his bow and arrows;
|
|
And the birds sang round him, o'er him,
|
|
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
|
|
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
|
|
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
|
|
"Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!"
|
|
Up the oak-tree, close beside him,
|
|
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
|
|
In and out among the branches,
|
|
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,
|
|
Laughed, and said between his laughing,
|
|
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"
|
|
And the rabbit from his pathway
|
|
Leaped aside, and at a distance
|
|
Sat erect upon his haunches,
|
|
Half in fear and half in frolic,
|
|
Saying to the little hunter,
|
|
"Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!"
|
|
But he heeded not, nor heard them,
|
|
For his thoughts were with the red deer;
|
|
On their tracks his eyes were fastened,
|
|
Leading downward to the river,
|
|
To the ford across the river,
|
|
And as one in slumber walked he.
|
|
Hidden in the alder-bushes,
|
|
There he waited till the deer came,
|
|
Till he saw two antlers lifted,
|
|
Saw two eyes look from the thicket,
|
|
Saw two nostrils point to windward,
|
|
And a deer came down the pathway,
|
|
Flecked with leafy light and shadow.
|
|
And his heart within him fluttered,
|
|
Trembled like the leaves above him,
|
|
Like the birch-leaf palpitated,
|
|
As the deer came down the pathway.
|
|
Then, upon one knee uprising,
|
|
Hiawatha aimed an arrow;
|
|
Scarce a twig moved with his motion,
|
|
Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled,
|
|
But the wary roebuck started,
|
|
Stamped with all his hoofs together,
|
|
Listened with one foot uplifted,
|
|
Leaped as if to meet the arrow;
|
|
Ah! the singing, fatal arrow,
|
|
Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him!
|
|
Dead he lay there in the forest,
|
|
By the ford across the river;
|
|
Beat his timid heart no longer,
|
|
But the heart of Hiawatha
|
|
Throbbed and shouted and exulted,
|
|
As he bore the red deer homeward,
|
|
And Iagoo and Nokomis
|
|
Hailed his coming with applauses.
|
|
From the red deer's hide Nokomis
|
|
Made a cloak for Hiawatha,
|
|
From the red deer's flesh Nokomis
|
|
Made a banquet to his honor.
|
|
All the village came and feasted,
|
|
All the guests praised Hiawatha,
|
|
Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha!
|
|
Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IV
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis
|
|
|
|
Out of childhood into manhood
|
|
Now had grown my Hiawatha,
|
|
Skilled in all the craft of hunters,
|
|
Learned in all the lore of old men,
|
|
In all youthful sports and pastimes,
|
|
In all manly arts and labors.
|
|
Swift of foot was Hiawatha;
|
|
He could shoot an arrow from him,
|
|
And run forward with such fleetness,
|
|
That the arrow fell behind him!
|
|
Strong of arm was Hiawatha;
|
|
He could shoot ten arrows upward,
|
|
Shoot them with such strength and swiftness,
|
|
That the tenth had left the bow-string
|
|
Ere the first to earth had fallen!
|
|
He had mittens, Minjekahwun,
|
|
Magic mittens made of deer-skin;
|
|
When upon his hands he wore them,
|
|
He could smite the rocks asunder,
|
|
He could grind them into powder.
|
|
He had moccasins enchanted,
|
|
Magic moccasins of deer-skin;
|
|
When he bound them round his ankles,
|
|
When upon his feet he tied them,
|
|
At each stride a mile he measured!
|
|
Much he questioned old Nokomis
|
|
Of his father Mudjekeewis;
|
|
Learned from her the fatal secret
|
|
Of the beauty of his mother,
|
|
Of the falsehood of his father;
|
|
And his heart was hot within him,
|
|
Like a living coal his heart was.
|
|
Then he said to old Nokomis,
|
|
"I will go to Mudjekeewis,
|
|
See how fares it with my father,
|
|
At the doorways of the West-Wind,
|
|
At the portals of the Sunset!"
|
|
From his lodge went Hiawatha,
|
|
Dressed for travel, armed for hunting;
|
|
Dressed in deer-skin shirt and leggings,
|
|
Richly wrought with quills and wampum;
|
|
On his head his eagle-feathers,
|
|
Round his waist his belt of wampum,
|
|
In his hand his bow of ash-wood,
|
|
Strung with sinews of the reindeer;
|
|
In his quiver oaken arrows,
|
|
Tipped with jasper, winged with feathers;
|
|
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
|
|
With his moccasins enchanted.
|
|
Warning said the old Nokomis,
|
|
"Go not forth, O Hiawatha!
|
|
To the kingdom of the West-Wind,
|
|
To the realms of Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Lest he harm you with his magic,
|
|
Lest he kill you with his cunning!"
|
|
But the fearless Hiawatha
|
|
Heeded not her woman's warning;
|
|
Forth he strode into the forest,
|
|
At each stride a mile he measured;
|
|
Lurid seemed the sky above him,
|
|
Lurid seemed the earth beneath him,
|
|
Hot and close the air around him,
|
|
Filled with smoke and fiery vapors,
|
|
As of burning woods and prairies,
|
|
For his heart was hot within him,
|
|
Like a living coal his heart was.
|
|
So he journeyed westward, westward,
|
|
Left the fleetest deer behind him,
|
|
Left the antelope and bison;
|
|
Crossed the rushing Esconaba,
|
|
Crossed the mighty Mississippi,
|
|
Passed the Mountains of the Prairie,
|
|
Passed the land of Crows and Foxes,
|
|
Passed the dwellings of the Blackfeet,
|
|
Came unto the Rocky Mountains,
|
|
To the kingdom of the West-Wind,
|
|
Where upon the gusty summits
|
|
Sat the ancient Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Ruler of the winds of heaven.
|
|
Filled with awe was Hiawatha
|
|
At the aspect of his father.
|
|
On the air about him wildly
|
|
Tossed and streamed his cloudy tresses,
|
|
Gleamed like drifting snow his tresses,
|
|
Glared like Ishkoodah, the comet,
|
|
Like the star with fiery tresses.
|
|
Filled with joy was Mudjekeewis
|
|
When he looked on Hiawatha,
|
|
Saw his youth rise up before him
|
|
In the face of Hiawatha,
|
|
Saw the beauty of Wenonah
|
|
From the grave rise up before him.
|
|
"Welcome!" said he, "Hiawatha,
|
|
To the kingdom of the West-Wind
|
|
Long have I been waiting for you
|
|
Youth is lovely, age is lonely,
|
|
Youth is fiery, age is frosty;
|
|
You bring back the days departed,
|
|
You bring back my youth of passion,
|
|
And the beautiful Wenonah!"
|
|
Many days they talked together,
|
|
Questioned, listened, waited, answered;
|
|
Much the mighty Mudjekeewis
|
|
Boasted of his ancient prowess,
|
|
Of his perilous adventures,
|
|
His indomitable courage,
|
|
His invulnerable body.
|
|
Patiently sat Hiawatha,
|
|
Listening to his father's boasting;
|
|
With a smile he sat and listened,
|
|
Uttered neither threat nor menace,
|
|
Neither word nor look betrayed him,
|
|
But his heart was hot within him,
|
|
Like a living coal his heart was.
|
|
Then he said, "O Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Is there nothing that can harm you?
|
|
Nothing that you are afraid of?"
|
|
And the mighty Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Grand and gracious in his boasting,
|
|
Answered, saying, "There is nothing,
|
|
Nothing but the black rock yonder,
|
|
Nothing but the fatal Wawbeek!"
|
|
And he looked at Hiawatha
|
|
With a wise look and benignant,
|
|
With a countenance paternal,
|
|
Looked with pride upon the beauty
|
|
Of his tall and graceful figure,
|
|
Saying, "O my Hiawatha!
|
|
Is there anything can harm you?
|
|
Anything you are afraid of?"
|
|
But the wary Hiawatha
|
|
Paused awhile, as if uncertain,
|
|
Held his peace, as if resolving,
|
|
And then answered, "There is nothing,
|
|
Nothing but the bulrush yonder,
|
|
Nothing but the great Apukwa!"
|
|
And as Mudjekeewis, rising,
|
|
Stretched his hand to pluck the bulrush,
|
|
Hiawatha cried in terror,
|
|
Cried in well-dissembled terror,
|
|
"Kago! kago! do not touch it!"
|
|
"Ah, kaween!" said Mudjekeewis,
|
|
"No indeed, I will not touch it!"
|
|
Then they talked of other matters;
|
|
First of Hiawatha's brothers,
|
|
First of Wabun, of the East-Wind,
|
|
Of the South-Wind, Shawondasee,
|
|
Of the North, Kabibonokka;
|
|
Then of Hiawatha's mother,
|
|
Of the beautiful Wenonah,
|
|
Of her birth upon the meadow,
|
|
Of her death, as old Nokomis
|
|
Had remembered and related.
|
|
And he cried, "O Mudjekeewis,
|
|
It was you who killed Wenonah,
|
|
Took her young life and her beauty,
|
|
Broke the Lily of the Prairie,
|
|
Trampled it beneath your footsteps;
|
|
You confess it! you confess it!"
|
|
And the mighty Mudjekeewis
|
|
Tossed upon the wind his tresses,
|
|
Bowed his hoary head in anguish,
|
|
With a silent nod assented.
|
|
Then up started Hiawatha,
|
|
And with threatening look and gesture
|
|
Laid his hand upon the black rock,
|
|
On the fatal Wawbeek laid it,
|
|
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
|
|
Rent the jutting crag asunder,
|
|
Smote and crushed it into fragments,
|
|
Hurled them madly at his father,
|
|
The remorseful Mudjekeewis,
|
|
For his heart was hot within him,
|
|
Like a living coal his heart was.
|
|
But the ruler of the West-Wind
|
|
Blew the fragments backward from him,
|
|
With the breathing of his nostrils,
|
|
With the tempest of his anger,
|
|
Blew them back at his assailant;
|
|
Seized the bulrush, the Apukwa,
|
|
Dragged it with its roots and fibres
|
|
From the margin of the meadow,
|
|
From its ooze the giant bulrush;
|
|
Long and loud laughed Hiawatha!
|
|
Then began the deadly conflict,
|
|
Hand to hand among the mountains;
|
|
From his eyry screamed the eagle,
|
|
The Keneu, the great war-eagle,
|
|
Sat upon the crags around them,
|
|
Wheeling flapped his wings above them.
|
|
Like a tall tree in the tempest
|
|
Bent and lashed the giant bulrush;
|
|
And in masses huge and heavy
|
|
Crashing fell the fatal Wawbeek;
|
|
Till the earth shook with the tumult
|
|
And confusion of the battle,
|
|
And the air was full of shoutings,
|
|
And the thunder of the mountains,
|
|
Starting, answered, "Baim-wawa!"
|
|
Back retreated Mudjekeewis,
|
|
Rushing westward o'er the mountains,
|
|
Stumbling westward down the mountains,
|
|
Three whole days retreated fighting,
|
|
Still pursued by Hiawatha
|
|
To the doorways of the West-Wind,
|
|
To the portals of the Sunset,
|
|
To the earth's remotest border,
|
|
Where into the empty spaces
|
|
Sinks the sun, as a flamingo
|
|
Drops into her nest at nightfall
|
|
In the melancholy marshes.
|
|
"Hold!" at length cried Mudjekeewis,
|
|
"Hold, my son, my Hiawatha!
|
|
'T is impossible to kill me,
|
|
For you cannot kill the immortal
|
|
I have put you to this trial,
|
|
But to know and prove your courage;
|
|
Now receive the prize of valor!
|
|
"Go back to your home and people,
|
|
Live among them, toil among them,
|
|
Cleanse the earth from all that harms it,
|
|
Clear the fishing-grounds and rivers,
|
|
Slay all monsters and magicians,
|
|
All the Wendigoes, the giants,
|
|
All the serpents, the Kenabeeks,
|
|
As I slew the Mishe-Mokwa,
|
|
Slew the Great Bear of the mountains.
|
|
"And at last when Death draws near you,
|
|
When the awful eyes of Pauguk
|
|
Glare upon you in the darkness,
|
|
I will share my kingdom with you,
|
|
Ruler shall you be thenceforward
|
|
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
|
|
Of the home-wind, the Keewaydin."
|
|
Thus was fought that famous battle
|
|
In the dreadful days of Shah-shah,
|
|
In the days long since departed,
|
|
In the kingdom of the West-Wind.
|
|
Still the hunter sees its traces
|
|
Scattered far o'er hill and valley;
|
|
Sees the giant bulrush growing
|
|
By the ponds and water-courses,
|
|
Sees the masses of the Wawbeek
|
|
Lying still in every valley.
|
|
Homeward now went Hiawatha;
|
|
Pleasant was the landscape round him,
|
|
Pleasant was the air above him,
|
|
For the bitterness of anger
|
|
Had departed wholly from him,
|
|
From his brain the thought of vengeance,
|
|
From his heart the burning fever.
|
|
Only once his pace he slackened,
|
|
Only once he paused or halted,
|
|
Paused to purchase heads of arrows
|
|
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
|
|
In the land of the Dacotahs,
|
|
Where the Falls of Minnehaha
|
|
Flash and gleam among the oak-trees,
|
|
Laugh and leap into the valley.
|
|
There the ancient Arrow-maker
|
|
Made his arrow-heads of sandstone,
|
|
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
|
|
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
|
|
Smoothed and sharpened at the edges,
|
|
Hard and polished, keen and costly.
|
|
With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,
|
|
Wayward as the Minnehaha,
|
|
With her moods of shade and sunshine,
|
|
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,
|
|
Feet as rapid as the river,
|
|
Tresses flowing like the water,
|
|
And as musical a laughter:
|
|
And he named her from the river,
|
|
From the water-fall he named her,
|
|
Minnehaha, Laughing Water.
|
|
Was it then for heads of arrows,
|
|
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
|
|
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
|
|
That my Hiawatha halted
|
|
In the land of the Dacotahs?
|
|
Was it not to see the maiden,
|
|
See the face of Laughing Water
|
|
Peeping from behind the curtain,
|
|
Hear the rustling of her garments
|
|
From behind the waving curtain,
|
|
As one sees the Minnehaha
|
|
Gleaming, glancing through the branches,
|
|
As one hears the Laughing Water
|
|
From behind its screen of branches?
|
|
Who shall say what thoughts and visions
|
|
Fill the fiery brains of young men?
|
|
Who shall say what dreams of beauty
|
|
Filled the heart of Hiawatha?
|
|
All he told to old Nokomis,
|
|
When he reached the lodge at sunset,
|
|
Was the meeting with his father,
|
|
Was his fight with Mudjekeewis;
|
|
Not a word he said of arrows,
|
|
Not a word of Laughing Water.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
V
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Fasting
|
|
|
|
You shall hear how Hiawatha
|
|
Prayed and fasted in the forest,
|
|
Not for greater skill in hunting,
|
|
Not for greater craft in fishing,
|
|
Not for triumphs in the battle,
|
|
And renown among the warriors,
|
|
But for profit of the people,
|
|
For advantage of the nations.
|
|
First he built a lodge for fasting,
|
|
Built a wigwam in the forest,
|
|
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
In the blithe and pleasant Spring-time,
|
|
In the Moon of Leaves he built it,
|
|
And, with dreams and visions many,
|
|
Seven whole days and nights he fasted.
|
|
On the first day of his fasting
|
|
Through the leafy woods he wandered;
|
|
Saw the deer start from the thicket,
|
|
Saw the rabbit in his burrow,
|
|
Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming,
|
|
Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
|
|
Rattling in his hoard of acorns,
|
|
Saw the pigeon, the Omeme,
|
|
Building nests among the pinetrees,
|
|
And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa,
|
|
Flying to the fen-lands northward,
|
|
Whirring, wailing far above him.
|
|
"Master of Life!" he cried, desponding,
|
|
"Must our lives depend on these things?"
|
|
On the next day of his fasting
|
|
By the river's brink he wandered,
|
|
Through the Muskoday, the meadow,
|
|
Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee,
|
|
Saw the blueberry, Meenahga,
|
|
And the strawberry, Odahmin,
|
|
And the gooseberry, Shahbomin,
|
|
And the grape.vine, the Bemahgut,
|
|
Trailing o'er the alder-branches,
|
|
Filling all the air with fragrance!
|
|
"Master of Life!" he cried, desponding,
|
|
"Must our lives depend on these things?"
|
|
On the third day of his fasting
|
|
By the lake he sat and pondered,
|
|
By the still, transparent water;
|
|
Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping,
|
|
Scattering drops like beads of wampum,
|
|
Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa,
|
|
Like a sunbeam in the water,
|
|
Saw the pike, the Maskenozha,
|
|
And the herring, Okahahwis,
|
|
And the Shawgashee, the crawfish!
|
|
"Master of Life!" he cried, desponding,
|
|
"Must our lives depend on these things?"
|
|
On the fourth day of his fasting
|
|
In his lodge he lay exhausted;
|
|
From his couch of leaves and branches
|
|
Gazing with half-open eyelids,
|
|
Full of shadowy dreams and visions,
|
|
On the dizzy, swimming landscape,
|
|
On the gleaming of the water,
|
|
On the splendor of the sunset.
|
|
And he saw a youth approaching,
|
|
Dressed in garments green and yellow,
|
|
Coming through the purple twilight,
|
|
Through the splendor of the sunset;
|
|
Plumes of green bent o'er his forehead,
|
|
And his hair was soft and golden.
|
|
Standing at the open doorway,
|
|
Long he looked at Hiawatha,
|
|
Looked with pity and compassion
|
|
On his wasted form and features,
|
|
And, in accents like the sighing
|
|
Of the South-Wind in the tree-tops,
|
|
Said he, "O my Hiawatha!
|
|
All your prayers are heard in heaven,
|
|
For you pray not like the others;
|
|
Not for greater skill in hunting,
|
|
Not for greater craft in fishing,
|
|
Not for triumph in the battle,
|
|
Nor renown among the warriors,
|
|
But for profit of the people,
|
|
For advantage of the nations.
|
|
"From the Master of Life descending,
|
|
I, the friend of man, Mondamin,
|
|
Come to warn you and instruct you,
|
|
How by struggle and by labor
|
|
You shall gain what you have prayed for.
|
|
Rise up from your bed of branches,
|
|
Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me!"
|
|
Faint with famine, Hiawatha
|
|
Started from his bed of branches,
|
|
From the twilight of his wigwam
|
|
Forth into the flush of sunset
|
|
Came, and wrestled with Mondamin;
|
|
At his touch he felt new courage
|
|
Throbbing in his brain and bosom,
|
|
Felt new life and hope and vigor
|
|
Run through every nerve and fibre.
|
|
So they wrestled there together
|
|
In the glory of the sunset,
|
|
And the more they strove and struggled,
|
|
Stronger still grew Hiawatha;
|
|
Till the darkness fell around them,
|
|
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
From her nest among the pine-trees,
|
|
Gave a cry of lamentation,
|
|
Gave a scream of pain and famine.
|
|
"'T Is enough!" then said Mondamin,
|
|
Smiling upon Hiawatha,
|
|
"But tomorrow, when the sun sets,
|
|
I will come again to try you."
|
|
And he vanished, and was seen not;
|
|
Whether sinking as the rain sinks,
|
|
Whether rising as the mists rise,
|
|
Hiawatha saw not, knew not,
|
|
Only saw that he had vanished,
|
|
Leaving him alone and fainting,
|
|
With the misty lake below him,
|
|
And the reeling stars above him.
|
|
On the morrow and the next day,
|
|
When the sun through heaven descending,
|
|
Like a red and burning cinder
|
|
From the hearth of the Great Spirit,
|
|
Fell into the western waters,
|
|
Came Mondamin for the trial,
|
|
For the strife with Hiawatha;
|
|
Came as silent as the dew comes,
|
|
From the empty air appearing,
|
|
Into empty air returning,
|
|
Taking shape when earth it touches,
|
|
But invisible to all men
|
|
In its coming and its going.
|
|
Thrice they wrestled there together
|
|
In the glory of the sunset,
|
|
Till the darkness fell around them,
|
|
Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
From her nest among the pine-trees,
|
|
Uttered her loud cry of famine,
|
|
And Mondamin paused to listen.
|
|
Tall and beautiful he stood there,
|
|
In his garments green and yellow;
|
|
To and fro his plumes above him,
|
|
Waved and nodded with his breathing,
|
|
And the sweat of the encounter
|
|
Stood like drops of dew upon him.
|
|
And he cried, "O Hiawatha!
|
|
Bravely have you wrestled with me,
|
|
Thrice have wrestled stoutly with me,
|
|
And the Master of Life, who sees us,
|
|
He will give to you the triumph!"
|
|
Then he smiled, and said: "To-morrow
|
|
Is the last day of your conflict,
|
|
Is the last day of your fasting.
|
|
You will conquer and o'ercome me;
|
|
Make a bed for me to lie in,
|
|
Where the rain may fall upon me,
|
|
Where the sun may come and warm me;
|
|
Strip these garments, green and yellow,
|
|
Strip this nodding plumage from me,
|
|
Lay me in the earth, and make it
|
|
Soft and loose and light above me.
|
|
"Let no hand disturb my slumber,
|
|
Let no weed nor worm molest me,
|
|
Let not Kahgahgee, the raven,
|
|
Come to haunt me and molest me,
|
|
Only come yourself to watch me,
|
|
Till I wake, and start, and quicken,
|
|
Till I leap into the sunshine"
|
|
And thus saying, he departed;
|
|
Peacefully slept Hiawatha,
|
|
But he heard the Wawonaissa,
|
|
Heard the whippoorwill complaining,
|
|
Perched upon his lonely wigwam;
|
|
Heard the rushing Sebowisha,
|
|
Heard the rivulet rippling near him,
|
|
Talking to the darksome forest;
|
|
Heard the sighing of the branches,
|
|
As they lifted and subsided
|
|
At the passing of the night-wind,
|
|
Heard them, as one hears in slumber
|
|
Far-off murmurs, dreamy whispers:
|
|
Peacefully slept Hiawatha.
|
|
On the morrow came Nokomis,
|
|
On the seventh day of his fasting,
|
|
Came with food for Hiawatha,
|
|
Came imploring and bewailing,
|
|
Lest his hunger should o'ercome him,
|
|
Lest his fasting should be fatal.
|
|
But he tasted not, and touched not,
|
|
Only said to her, "Nokomis,
|
|
Wait until the sun is setting,
|
|
Till the darkness falls around us,
|
|
Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
Crying from the desolate marshes,
|
|
Tells us that the day is ended."
|
|
Homeward weeping went Nokomis,
|
|
Sorrowing for her Hiawatha,
|
|
Fearing lest his strength should fail him,
|
|
Lest his fasting should be fatal.
|
|
He meanwhile sat weary waiting
|
|
For the coming of Mondamin,
|
|
Till the shadows, pointing eastward,
|
|
Lengthened over field and forest,
|
|
Till the sun dropped from the heaven,
|
|
Floating on the waters westward,
|
|
As a red leaf in the Autumn
|
|
Falls and floats upon the water,
|
|
Falls and sinks into its bosom.
|
|
And behold! the young Mondamin,
|
|
With his soft and shining tresses,
|
|
With his garments green and yellow,
|
|
With his long and glossy plumage,
|
|
Stood and beckoned at the doorway.
|
|
And as one in slumber walking,
|
|
Pale and haggard, but undaunted,
|
|
From the wigwam Hiawatha
|
|
Came and wrestled with Mondamin.
|
|
Round about him spun the landscape,
|
|
Sky and forest reeled together,
|
|
And his strong heart leaped within him,
|
|
As the sturgeon leaps and struggles
|
|
In a net to break its meshes.
|
|
Like a ring of fire around him
|
|
Blazed and flared the red horizon,
|
|
And a hundred suns seemed looking
|
|
At the combat of the wrestlers.
|
|
Suddenly upon the greensward
|
|
All alone stood Hiawatha,
|
|
Panting with his wild exertion,
|
|
Palpitating with the struggle;
|
|
And before him breathless, lifeless,
|
|
Lay the youth, with hair dishevelled,
|
|
Plumage torn, and garments tattered,
|
|
Dead he lay there in the sunset.
|
|
And victorious Hiawatha
|
|
Made the grave as he commanded,
|
|
Stripped the garments from Mondamin,
|
|
Stripped his tattered plumage from him,
|
|
Laid him in the earth, and made it
|
|
Soft and loose and light above him;
|
|
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
From the melancholy moorlands,
|
|
Gave a cry of lamentation,
|
|
Gave a cry of pain and anguish!
|
|
Homeward then went Hiawatha
|
|
To the lodge of old Nokomis,
|
|
And the seven days of his fasting
|
|
Were accomplished and completed.
|
|
But the place was not forgotten
|
|
Where he wrestled with Mondamin;
|
|
Nor forgotten nor neglected
|
|
Was the grave where lay Mondamin,
|
|
Sleeping in the rain and sunshine,
|
|
Where his scattered plumes and garments
|
|
Faded in the rain and sunshine.
|
|
Day by day did Hiawatha
|
|
Go to wait and watch beside it;
|
|
Kept the dark mould soft above it,
|
|
Kept it clean from weeds and insects,
|
|
Drove away, with scoffs and shoutings,
|
|
Kahgahgee, the king of ravens.
|
|
Till at length a small green feather
|
|
From the earth shot slowly upward,
|
|
Then another and another,
|
|
And before the Summer ended
|
|
Stood the maize in all its beauty,
|
|
With its shining robes about it,
|
|
And its long, soft, yellow tresses;
|
|
And in rapture Hiawatha
|
|
Cried aloud, "It is Mondamin!
|
|
Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin!"
|
|
Then he called to old Nokomis
|
|
And Iagoo, the great boaster,
|
|
Showed them where the maize was growing,
|
|
Told them of his wondrous vision,
|
|
Of his wrestling and his triumph,
|
|
Of this new gift to the nations,
|
|
Which should be their food forever.
|
|
And still later, when the Autumn
|
|
Changed the long, green leaves to yellow,
|
|
And the soft and juicy kernels
|
|
Grew like wampum hard and yellow,
|
|
Then the ripened ears he gathered,
|
|
Stripped the withered husks from off them,
|
|
As he once had stripped the wrestler,
|
|
Gave the first Feast of Mondamin,
|
|
And made known unto the people
|
|
This new gift of the Great Spirit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VI
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Friends
|
|
|
|
Two good friends had Hiawatha,
|
|
Singled out from all the others,
|
|
Bound to him in closest union,
|
|
And to whom he gave the right hand
|
|
Of his heart, in joy and sorrow;
|
|
Chibiabos, the musician,
|
|
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
|
|
Straight between them ran the pathway,
|
|
Never grew the grass upon it;
|
|
Singing birds, that utter falsehoods,
|
|
Story-tellers, mischief-makers,
|
|
Found no eager ear to listen,
|
|
Could not breed ill-will between them,
|
|
For they kept each other's counsel,
|
|
Spake with naked hearts together,
|
|
Pondering much and much contriving
|
|
How the tribes of men might prosper.
|
|
Most beloved by Hiawatha
|
|
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
|
|
He the best of all musicians,
|
|
He the sweetest of all singers.
|
|
Beautiful and childlike was he,
|
|
Brave as man is, soft as woman,
|
|
Pliant as a wand of willow,
|
|
Stately as a deer with antlers.
|
|
When he sang, the village listened;
|
|
All the warriors gathered round him,
|
|
All the women came to hear him;
|
|
Now he stirred their souls to passion,
|
|
Now he melted them to pity.
|
|
From the hollow reeds he fashioned
|
|
Flutes so musical and mellow,
|
|
That the brook, the Sebowisha,
|
|
Ceased to murmur in the woodland,
|
|
That the wood-birds ceased from singing,
|
|
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
|
|
Ceased his chatter in the oak-tree,
|
|
And the rabbit, the Wabasso,
|
|
Sat upright to look and listen.
|
|
Yes, the brook, the Sebowisha,
|
|
Pausing, said, "O Chibiabos,
|
|
Teach my waves to flow in music,
|
|
Softly as your words in singing!"
|
|
Yes, the bluebird, the Owaissa,
|
|
Envious, said, "O Chibiabos,
|
|
Teach me tones as wild and wayward,
|
|
Teach me songs as full of frenzy!"
|
|
Yes, the robin, the Opechee,
|
|
Joyous, said, "O Chibiabos,
|
|
Teach me tones as sweet and tender,
|
|
Teach me songs as full of gladness!"
|
|
And the whippoorwill, Wawonaissa,
|
|
Sobbing, said, "O Chibiabos,
|
|
Teach me tones as melancholy,
|
|
Teach me songs as full of sadness!"
|
|
All the many sounds of nature
|
|
Borrowed sweetness from his singing;
|
|
All the hearts of men were softened
|
|
By the pathos of his music;
|
|
For he sang of peace and freedom,
|
|
Sang of beauty, love, and longing;
|
|
Sang of death, and life undying
|
|
In the Islands of the Blessed,
|
|
In the kingdom of Ponemah,
|
|
In the land of the Hereafter.
|
|
Very dear to Hiawatha
|
|
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
|
|
He the best of all musicians,
|
|
He the sweetest of all singers;
|
|
For his gentleness he loved him,
|
|
And the magic of his singing.
|
|
Dear, too, unto Hiawatha
|
|
Was the very strong man, Kwasind,
|
|
He the strongest of all mortals,
|
|
He the mightiest among many;
|
|
For his very strength he loved him,
|
|
For his strength allied to goodness.
|
|
Idle in his youth was Kwasind,
|
|
Very listless, dull, and dreamy,
|
|
Never played with other children,
|
|
Never fished and never hunted,
|
|
Not like other children was he;
|
|
But they saw that much he fasted,
|
|
Much his Manito entreated,
|
|
Much besought his Guardian Spirit.
|
|
"Lazy Kwasind!" said his mother,
|
|
"In my work you never help me!
|
|
In the Summer you are roaming
|
|
Idly in the fields and forests;
|
|
In the Winter you are cowering
|
|
O'er the firebrands in the wigwam!
|
|
In the coldest days of Winter
|
|
I must break the ice for fishing;
|
|
With my nets you never help me!
|
|
At the door my nets are hanging,
|
|
Dripping, freezing with the water;
|
|
Go and wring them, Yenadizze!
|
|
Go and dry them in the sunshine!"
|
|
Slowly, from the ashes, Kwasind
|
|
Rose, but made no angry answer;
|
|
From the lodge went forth in silence,
|
|
Took the nets, that hung together,
|
|
Dripping, freezing at the doorway;
|
|
Like a wisp of straw he wrung them,
|
|
Like a wisp of straw he broke them,
|
|
Could not wring them without breaking,
|
|
Such the strength was in his fingers.
|
|
"Lazy Kwasind!" said his father,
|
|
"In the hunt you never help me;
|
|
Every bow you touch is broken,
|
|
Snapped asunder every arrow;
|
|
Yet come with me to the forest,
|
|
You shall bring the hunting homeward."
|
|
Down a narrow pass they wandered,
|
|
Where a brooklet led them onward,
|
|
Where the trail of deer and bison
|
|
Marked the soft mud on the margin,
|
|
Till they found all further passage
|
|
Shut against them, barred securely
|
|
By the trunks of trees uprooted,
|
|
Lying lengthwise, lying crosswise,
|
|
And forbidding further passage.
|
|
"We must go back," said the old man,
|
|
"O'er these logs we cannot clamber;
|
|
Not a woodchuck could get through them,
|
|
Not a squirrel clamber o'er them!"
|
|
And straightway his pipe he lighted,
|
|
And sat down to smoke and ponder.
|
|
But before his pipe was finished,
|
|
Lo! the path was cleared before him;
|
|
All the trunks had Kwasind lifted,
|
|
To the right hand, to the left hand,
|
|
Shot the pine-trees swift as arrows,
|
|
Hurled the cedars light as lances.
|
|
"Lazy Kwasind!" said the young men,
|
|
As they sported in the meadow:
|
|
"Why stand idly looking at us,
|
|
Leaning on the rock behind you?
|
|
Come and wrestle with the others,
|
|
Let us pitch the quoit together!"
|
|
Lazy Kwasind made no answer,
|
|
To their challenge made no answer,
|
|
Only rose, and slowly turning,
|
|
Seized the huge rock in his fingers,
|
|
Tore it from its deep foundation,
|
|
Poised it in the air a moment,
|
|
Pitched it sheer into the river,
|
|
Sheer into the swift Pauwating,
|
|
Where it still is seen in Summer.
|
|
Once as down that foaming river,
|
|
Down the rapids of Pauwating,
|
|
Kwasind sailed with his companions,
|
|
In the stream he saw a beaver,
|
|
Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers,
|
|
Struggling with the rushing currents,
|
|
Rising, sinking in the water.
|
|
Without speaking, without pausing,
|
|
Kwasind leaped into the river,
|
|
Plunged beneath the bubbling surface,
|
|
Through the whirlpools chased the beaver,
|
|
Followed him among the islands,
|
|
Stayed so long beneath the water,
|
|
That his terrified companions
|
|
Cried, "Alas! good-by to Kwasind!
|
|
We shall never more see Kwasind!"
|
|
But he reappeared triumphant,
|
|
And upon his shining shoulders
|
|
Brought the beaver, dead and dripping,
|
|
Brought the King of all the Beavers.
|
|
And these two, as I have told you,
|
|
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
|
|
Chibiabos, the musician,
|
|
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
|
|
Long they lived in peace together,
|
|
Spake with naked hearts together,
|
|
Pondering much and much contriving
|
|
How the tribes of men might prosper.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VII
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Sailing
|
|
|
|
"Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree!
|
|
Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree!
|
|
Growing by the rushing river,
|
|
Tall and stately in the valley!
|
|
I a light canoe will build me,
|
|
Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing,
|
|
That shall float on the river,
|
|
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
|
|
Like a yellow water-lily!
|
|
"Lay aside your cloak, O Birch-tree!
|
|
Lay aside your white-skin wrapper,
|
|
For the Summer-time is coming,
|
|
And the sun is warm in heaven,
|
|
And you need no white-skin wrapper!"
|
|
Thus aloud cried Hiawatha
|
|
In the solitary forest,
|
|
By the rushing Taquamenaw,
|
|
When the birds were singing gayly,
|
|
In the Moon of Leaves were singing,
|
|
And the sun, from sleep awaking,
|
|
Started up and said, "Behold me!
|
|
Gheezis, the great Sun, behold me!"
|
|
And the tree with all its branches
|
|
Rustled in the breeze of morning,
|
|
Saying, with a sigh of patience,
|
|
"Take my cloak, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
With his knife the tree he girdled;
|
|
Just beneath its lowest branches,
|
|
Just above the roots, he cut it,
|
|
Till the sap came oozing outward;
|
|
Down the trunk, from top to bottom,
|
|
Sheer he cleft the bark asunder,
|
|
With a wooden wedge he raised it,
|
|
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken.
|
|
"Give me of your boughs, O Cedar!
|
|
Of your strong and pliant branches,
|
|
My canoe to make more steady,
|
|
Make more strong and firm beneath me!"
|
|
Through the summit of the Cedar
|
|
Went a sound, a cry of horror,
|
|
Went a murmur of resistance;
|
|
But it whispered, bending downward,
|
|
'Take my boughs, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
Down he hewed the boughs of cedar,
|
|
Shaped them straightway to a frame-work,
|
|
Like two bows he formed and shaped them,
|
|
Like two bended bows together.
|
|
"Give me of your roots, O Tamarack!
|
|
Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-tree!
|
|
My canoe to bind together,
|
|
So to bind the ends together
|
|
That the water may not enter,
|
|
That the river may not wet me!"
|
|
And the Larch, with all its fibres,
|
|
Shivered in the air of morning,
|
|
Touched his forehead with its tassels,
|
|
Slid, with one long sigh of sorrow.
|
|
"Take them all, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
From the earth he tore the fibres,
|
|
Tore the tough roots of the Larch-tree,
|
|
Closely sewed the hark together,
|
|
Bound it closely to the frame-work.
|
|
"Give me of your balm, O Fir-tree!
|
|
Of your balsam and your resin,
|
|
So to close the seams together
|
|
That the water may not enter,
|
|
That the river may not wet me!"
|
|
And the Fir-tree, tall and sombre,
|
|
Sobbed through all its robes of darkness,
|
|
Rattled like a shore with pebbles,
|
|
Answered wailing, answered weeping,
|
|
"Take my balm, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
And he took the tears of balsam,
|
|
Took the resin of the Fir-tree,
|
|
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure,
|
|
Made each crevice safe from water.
|
|
"Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog!
|
|
All your quills, O Kagh, the Hedgehog!
|
|
I will make a necklace of them,
|
|
Make a girdle for my beauty,
|
|
And two stars to deck her bosom!"
|
|
From a hollow tree the Hedgehog
|
|
With his sleepy eyes looked at him,
|
|
Shot his shining quills, like arrows,
|
|
Saying with a drowsy murmur,
|
|
Through the tangle of his whiskers,
|
|
"Take my quills, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
From the ground the quills he gathered,
|
|
All the little shining arrows,
|
|
Stained them red and blue and yellow,
|
|
With the juice of roots and berries;
|
|
Into his canoe he wrought them,
|
|
Round its waist a shining girdle,
|
|
Round its bows a gleaming necklace,
|
|
On its breast two stars resplendent.
|
|
Thus the Birch Canoe was builded
|
|
In the valley, by the river,
|
|
In the bosom of the forest;
|
|
And the forest's life was in it,
|
|
All its mystery and its magic,
|
|
All the lightness of the birch-tree,
|
|
All the toughness of the cedar,
|
|
All the larch's supple sinews;
|
|
And it floated on the river
|
|
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
|
|
Like a yellow water-lily.
|
|
Paddles none had Hiawatha,
|
|
Paddles none he had or needed,
|
|
For his thoughts as paddles served him,
|
|
And his wishes served to guide him;
|
|
Swift or slow at will he glided,
|
|
Veered to right or left at pleasure.
|
|
Then he called aloud to Kwasind,
|
|
To his friend, the strong man, Kwasind,
|
|
Saying, "Help me clear this river
|
|
Of its sunken logs and sand-bars."
|
|
Straight into the river Kwasind
|
|
Plunged as if he were an otter,
|
|
Dived as if he were a beaver,
|
|
Stood up to his waist in water,
|
|
To his arm-pits in the river,
|
|
Swam and scouted in the river,
|
|
Tugged at sunken logs and branches,
|
|
With his hands he scooped the sand-bars,
|
|
With his feet the ooze and tangle.
|
|
And thus sailed my Hiawatha
|
|
Down the rushing Taquamenaw,
|
|
Sailed through all its bends and windings,
|
|
Sailed through all its deeps and shallows,
|
|
While his friend, the strong man, Kwasind,
|
|
Swam the deeps, the shallows waded.
|
|
Up and down the river went they,
|
|
In and out among its islands,
|
|
Cleared its bed of root and sand-bar,
|
|
Dragged the dead trees from its channel,
|
|
Made its passage safe and certain,
|
|
Made a pathway for the people,
|
|
From its springs among the mountains,
|
|
To the waters of Pauwating,
|
|
To the bay of Taquamenaw.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VIII
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Fishing
|
|
|
|
Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
|
|
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
With his fishing-line of cedar,
|
|
Of the twisted bark of cedar,
|
|
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma,
|
|
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes,
|
|
In his birch canoe exulting
|
|
All alone went Hiawatha.
|
|
Through the clear, transparent water
|
|
He could see the fishes swimming
|
|
Far down in the depths below him;
|
|
See the yellow perch, the Sahwa,
|
|
Like a sunbeam in the water,
|
|
See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish,
|
|
Like a spider on the bottom,
|
|
On the white and sandy bottom.
|
|
At the stern sat Hiawatha,
|
|
With his fishing-line of cedar;
|
|
In his plumes the breeze of morning
|
|
Played as in the hemlock branches;
|
|
On the bows, with tail erected,
|
|
Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo;
|
|
In his fur the breeze of morning
|
|
Played as in the prairie grasses.
|
|
On the white sand of the bottom
|
|
Lay the monster Mishe-Nahma,
|
|
Lay the sturgeon, King of Fishes;
|
|
Through his gills he breathed the water,
|
|
With his fins he fanned and winnowed,
|
|
With his tail he swept the sand-floor.
|
|
There he lay in all his armor;
|
|
On each side a shield to guard him,
|
|
Plates of bone upon his forehead,
|
|
Down his sides and back and shoulders
|
|
Plates of bone with spines projecting
|
|
Painted was he with his war-paints,
|
|
Stripes of yellow, red, and azure,
|
|
Spots of brown and spots of sable;
|
|
And he lay there on the bottom,
|
|
Fanning with his fins of purple,
|
|
As above him Hiawatha
|
|
In his birch canoe came sailing,
|
|
With his fishing-line of cedar.
|
|
"Take my bait," cried Hiawatha,
|
|
Dawn into the depths beneath him,
|
|
"Take my bait, O Sturgeon, Nahma!
|
|
Come up from below the water,
|
|
Let us see which is the stronger!"
|
|
And he dropped his line of cedar
|
|
Through the clear, transparent water,
|
|
Waited vainly for an answer,
|
|
Long sat waiting for an answer,
|
|
And repeating loud and louder,
|
|
"Take my bait, O King of Fishes!"
|
|
Quiet lay the sturgeon, Nahma,
|
|
Fanning slowly in the water,
|
|
Looking up at Hiawatha,
|
|
Listening to his call and clamor,
|
|
His unnecessary tumult,
|
|
Till he wearied of the shouting;
|
|
And he said to the Kenozha,
|
|
To the pike, the Maskenozha,
|
|
"Take the bait of this rude fellow,
|
|
Break the line of Hiawatha!"
|
|
In his fingers Hiawatha
|
|
Felt the loose line jerk and tighten,
|
|
As he drew it in, it tugged so
|
|
That the birch canoe stood endwise,
|
|
Like a birch log in the water,
|
|
With the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
|
|
Perched and frisking on the summit.
|
|
Full of scorn was Hiawatha
|
|
When he saw the fish rise upward,
|
|
Saw the pike, the Maskenozha,
|
|
Coming nearer, nearer to him,
|
|
And he shouted through the water,
|
|
"Esa! esa! shame upon you!
|
|
You are but the pike, Kenozha,
|
|
You are not the fish I wanted,
|
|
You are not the King of Fishes!"
|
|
Reeling downward to the bottom
|
|
Sank the pike in great confusion,
|
|
And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma,
|
|
Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
|
|
To the bream, with scales of crimson,
|
|
"Take the bait of this great boaster,
|
|
Break the line of Hiawatha!"
|
|
Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming,
|
|
Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
|
|
Seized the line of Hiawatha,
|
|
Swung with all his weight upon it,
|
|
Made a whirlpool in the water,
|
|
Whirled the birch canoe in circles,
|
|
Round and round in gurgling eddies,
|
|
Till the circles in the water
|
|
Reached the far-off sandy beaches,
|
|
Till the water-flags and rushes
|
|
Nodded on the distant margins.
|
|
But when Hiawatha saw him
|
|
Slowly rising through the water,
|
|
Lifting up his disk refulgent,
|
|
Loud he shouted in derision,
|
|
"Esa! esa! shame upon you!
|
|
You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
|
|
You are not the fish I wanted,
|
|
You are not the King of Fishes!"
|
|
Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming,
|
|
Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
|
|
And again the sturgeon, Nahma,
|
|
Heard the shout of Hiawatha,
|
|
Heard his challenge of defiance,
|
|
The unnecessary tumult,
|
|
Ringing far across the water.
|
|
From the white sand of the bottom
|
|
Up he rose with angry gesture,
|
|
Quivering in each nerve and fibre,
|
|
Clashing all his plates of armor,
|
|
Gleaming bright with all his war-paint;
|
|
In his wrath he darted upward,
|
|
Flashing leaped into the sunshine,
|
|
Opened his great jaws, and swallowed
|
|
Both canoe and Hiawatha.
|
|
Down into that darksome cavern
|
|
Plunged the headlong Hiawatha,
|
|
As a log on some black river
|
|
Shoots and plunges down the rapids,
|
|
Found himself in utter darkness,
|
|
Groped about in helpless wonder,
|
|
Till he felt a great heart beating,
|
|
Throbbing in that utter darkness.
|
|
And he smote it in his anger,
|
|
With his fist, the heart of Nahma,
|
|
Felt the mighty King of Fishes
|
|
Shudder through each nerve and fibre,
|
|
Heard the water gurgle round him
|
|
As he leaped and staggered through it,
|
|
Sick at heart, and faint and weary.
|
|
Crosswise then did Hiawatha
|
|
Drag his birch-canoe for safety,
|
|
Lest from out the jaws of Nahma,
|
|
In the turmoil and confusion,
|
|
Forth he might be hurled and perish.
|
|
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
|
|
Frisked and chatted very gayly,
|
|
Toiled and tugged with Hiawatha
|
|
Till the labor was completed.
|
|
Then said Hiawatha to him,
|
|
"O my little friend, the squirrel,
|
|
Bravely have you toiled to help me;
|
|
Take the thanks of Hiawatha,
|
|
And the name which now he gives you;
|
|
For hereafter and forever
|
|
Boys shall call you Adjidaumo,
|
|
Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!"
|
|
And again the sturgeon, Nahma,
|
|
Gasped and quivered in the water,
|
|
Then was still, and drifted landward
|
|
Till he grated on the pebbles,
|
|
Till the listening Hiawatha
|
|
Heard him grate upon the margin,
|
|
Felt him strand upon the pebbles,
|
|
Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes,
|
|
Lay there dead upon the margin.
|
|
Then he heard a clang and flapping,
|
|
As of many wings assembling,
|
|
Heard a screaming and confusion,
|
|
As of birds of prey contending,
|
|
Saw a gleam of light above him,
|
|
Shining through the ribs of Nahma,
|
|
Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls,
|
|
Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering,
|
|
Gazing at him through the opening,
|
|
Heard them saying to each other,
|
|
"'T is our brother, Hiawatha!"
|
|
And he shouted from below them,
|
|
Cried exulting from the caverns:
|
|
"O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers!
|
|
I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma;
|
|
Make the rifts a little larger,
|
|
With your claws the openings widen,
|
|
Set me free from this dark prison,
|
|
And henceforward and forever
|
|
Men shall speak of your achievements,
|
|
Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls,
|
|
Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers!"
|
|
And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls
|
|
Toiled with beak and claws together,
|
|
Made the rifts and openings wider
|
|
In the mighty ribs of Nahma,
|
|
And from peril and from prison,
|
|
From the body of the sturgeon,
|
|
From the peril of the water,
|
|
They released my Hiawatha.
|
|
He was standing near his wigwam,
|
|
On the margin of the water,
|
|
And he called to old Nokomis,
|
|
Called and beckoned to Nokomis,
|
|
Pointed to the sturgeon, Nahma,
|
|
Lying lifeless on the pebbles,
|
|
With the sea-gulls feeding on him.
|
|
"I have slain the Mishe-Nahma,
|
|
Slain the King of Fishes!" said he'
|
|
"Look! the sea-gulls feed upon him,
|
|
Yes, my friends Kayoshk, the sea-gulls;
|
|
Drive them not away, Nokomis,
|
|
They have saved me from great peril
|
|
In the body of the sturgeon,
|
|
Wait until their meal is ended,
|
|
Till their craws are full with feasting,
|
|
Till they homeward fly, at sunset,
|
|
To their nests among the marshes;
|
|
Then bring all your pots and kettles,
|
|
And make oil for us in Winter."
|
|
And she waited till the sun set,
|
|
Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun,
|
|
Rose above the tranquil water,
|
|
Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls,
|
|
From their banquet rose with clamor,
|
|
And across the fiery sunset
|
|
Winged their way to far-off islands,
|
|
To their nests among the rushes.
|
|
To his sleep went Hiawatha,
|
|
And Nokomis to her labor,
|
|
Toiling patient in the moonlight,
|
|
Till the sun and moon changed places,
|
|
Till the sky was red with sunrise,
|
|
And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls,
|
|
Came back from the reedy islands,
|
|
Clamorous for their morning banquet.
|
|
Three whole days and nights alternate
|
|
Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls
|
|
Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma,
|
|
Till the waves washed through the rib-bones,
|
|
Till the sea-gulls came no longer,
|
|
And upon the sands lay nothing
|
|
But the skeleton of Nahma.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IX
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather
|
|
|
|
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
|
|
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
|
|
Pointing with her finger westward,
|
|
O'er the water pointing westward,
|
|
To the purple clouds of sunset.
|
|
Fiercely the red sun descending
|
|
Burned his way along the heavens,
|
|
Set the sky on fire behind him,
|
|
As war-parties, when retreating,
|
|
Burn the prairies on their war-trail;
|
|
And the moon, the Night-sun, eastward,
|
|
Suddenly starting from his ambush,
|
|
Followed fast those bloody footprints,
|
|
Followed in that fiery war-trail,
|
|
With its glare upon his features.
|
|
And Nokomis, the old woman,
|
|
Pointing with her finger westward,
|
|
Spake these words to Hiawatha:
|
|
"Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather,
|
|
Megissogwon, the Magician,
|
|
Manito of Wealth and Wampum,
|
|
Guarded by his fiery serpents,
|
|
Guarded by the black pitch-water.
|
|
You can see his fiery serpents,
|
|
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
|
|
Coiling, playing in the water;
|
|
You can see the black pitch-water
|
|
Stretching far away beyond them,
|
|
To the purple clouds of sunset!
|
|
"He it was who slew my father,
|
|
By his wicked wiles and cunning,
|
|
When he from the moon descended,
|
|
When he came on earth to seek me.
|
|
He, the mightiest of Magicians,
|
|
Sends the fever from the marshes,
|
|
Sends the pestilential vapors,
|
|
Sends the poisonous exhalations,
|
|
Sends the white fog from the fen-lands,
|
|
Sends disease and death among us!
|
|
"Take your bow, O Hiawatha,
|
|
Take your arrows, jasper-headed,
|
|
Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,
|
|
And your mittens, Minjekahwun,
|
|
And your birch-canoe for sailing,
|
|
And the oil of Mishe-Nahma,
|
|
So to smear its sides, that swiftly
|
|
You may pass the black pitch-water;
|
|
Slay this merciless magician,
|
|
Save the people from the fever
|
|
That he breathes across the fen-lands,
|
|
And avenge my father's murder!"
|
|
Straightway then my Hiawatha
|
|
Armed himself with all his war-gear,
|
|
Launched his birch-canoe for sailing;
|
|
With his palm its sides he patted,
|
|
Said with glee, "Cheemaun, my darling,
|
|
O my Birch-canoe! leap forward,
|
|
Where you see the fiery serpents,
|
|
Where you see the black pitch-water!"
|
|
Forward leaped Cheemaun exulting,
|
|
And the noble Hiawatha
|
|
Sang his war-song wild and woful,
|
|
And above him the war-eagle,
|
|
The Keneu, the great war-eagle,
|
|
Master of all fowls with feathers,
|
|
Screamed and hurtled through the heavens.
|
|
Soon he reached the fiery serpents,
|
|
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
|
|
Lying huge upon the water,
|
|
Sparkling, rippling in the water,
|
|
Lying coiled across the passage,
|
|
With their blazing crests uplifted,
|
|
Breathing fiery fogs and vapors,
|
|
So that none could pass beyond them.
|
|
But the fearless Hiawatha
|
|
Cried aloud, and spake in this wise,
|
|
"Let me pass my way, Kenabeek,
|
|
Let me go upon my journey!"
|
|
And they answered, hissing fiercely,
|
|
With their fiery breath made answer:
|
|
"Back, go back! O Shaugodaya!
|
|
Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart!"
|
|
Then the angry Hiawatha
|
|
Raised his mighty bow of ash-tree,
|
|
Seized his arrows, jasper-headed,
|
|
Shot them fast among the serpents;
|
|
Every twanging of the bow-string
|
|
Was a war-cry and a death-cry,
|
|
Every whizzing of an arrow
|
|
Was a death-song of Kenabeek.
|
|
Weltering in the bloody water,
|
|
Dead lay all the fiery serpents,
|
|
And among them Hiawatha
|
|
Harmless sailed, and cried exulting:
|
|
"Onward, O Cheemaun, my darling!
|
|
Onward to the black pitch-water!"
|
|
Then he took the oil of Nahma,
|
|
And the bows and sides anointed,
|
|
Smeared them well with oil, that swiftly
|
|
He might pass the black pitch-water.
|
|
All night long he sailed upon it,
|
|
Sailed upon that sluggish water,
|
|
Covered with its mould of ages,
|
|
Black with rotting water-rushes,
|
|
Rank with flags and leaves of lilies,
|
|
Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal,
|
|
Lighted by the shimmering moonlight,
|
|
And by will-o'-the-wisps illumined,
|
|
Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled,
|
|
In their weary night-encampments.
|
|
All the air was white with moonlight,
|
|
All the water black with shadow,
|
|
And around him the Suggema,
|
|
The mosquito, sang his war-song,
|
|
And the fire-flies, Wah-wah-taysee,
|
|
Waved their torches to mislead him;
|
|
And the bull-frog, the Dahinda,
|
|
Thrust his head into the moonlight,
|
|
Fixed his yellow eyes upon him,
|
|
Sobbed and sank beneath the surface;
|
|
And anon a thousand whistles,
|
|
Answered over all the fen-lands,
|
|
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
Far off on the reedy margin,
|
|
Heralded the hero's coming.
|
|
Westward thus fared Hiawatha,
|
|
Toward the realm of Megissogwon,
|
|
Toward the land of the Pearl-Feather,
|
|
Till the level moon stared at him
|
|
In his face stared pale and haggard,
|
|
Till the sun was hot behind him,
|
|
Till it burned upon his shoulders,
|
|
And before him on the upland
|
|
He could see the Shining Wigwam
|
|
Of the Manito of Wampum,
|
|
Of the mightiest of Magicians.
|
|
Then once more Cheemaun he patted,
|
|
To his birch-canoe said, "Onward!"
|
|
And it stirred in all its fibres,
|
|
And with one great bound of triumph
|
|
Leaped across the water-lilies,
|
|
Leaped through tangled flags and rushes,
|
|
And upon the beach beyond them
|
|
Dry-shod landed Hiawatha.
|
|
Straight he took his bow of ash-tree,
|
|
On the sand one end he rested,
|
|
With his knee he pressed the middle,
|
|
Stretched the faithful bow-string tighter,
|
|
Took an arrow, jasperheaded,
|
|
Shot it at the Shining Wigwam,
|
|
Sent it singing as a herald,
|
|
As a bearer of his message,
|
|
Of his challenge loud and lofty:
|
|
"Come forth from your lodge, Pearl-Feather!
|
|
Hiawatha waits your coming!"
|
|
Straightway from the Shining Wigwam
|
|
Came the mighty Megissogwon,
|
|
Tall of stature, broad of shoulder,
|
|
Dark and terrible in aspect,
|
|
Clad from head to foot in wampum,
|
|
Armed with all his warlike weapons,
|
|
Painted like the sky of morning,
|
|
Streaked with crimson, blue, and yellow,
|
|
Crested with great eagle-feathers,
|
|
Streaming upward, streaming outward.
|
|
"Well I know you, Hiawatha!"
|
|
Cried he in a voice of thunder,
|
|
In a tone of loud derision.
|
|
"Hasten back, O Shaugodaya!
|
|
Hasten back among the women,
|
|
Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart!
|
|
I will slay you as you stand there,
|
|
As of old I slew her father!"
|
|
But my Hiawatha answered,
|
|
Nothing daunted, fearing nothing:
|
|
"Big words do not smite like war-clubs,
|
|
Boastful breath is not a bow-string,
|
|
Taunts are not so sharp as arrows,
|
|
Deeds are better things than words are,
|
|
Actions mightier than boastings!"
|
|
Then began the greatest battle
|
|
That the sun had ever looked on,
|
|
That the war-birds ever witnessed.
|
|
All a Summer's day it lasted,
|
|
From the sunrise to the sunset;
|
|
For the shafts of Hiawatha
|
|
Harmless hit the shirt of wampum,
|
|
Harmless fell the blows he dealt it
|
|
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
|
|
Harmless fell the heavy war-club;
|
|
It could dash the rocks asunder,
|
|
But it could not break the meshes
|
|
Of that magic shirt of wampum.
|
|
Till at sunset Hiawatha,
|
|
Leaning on his bow of ash-tree,
|
|
Wounded, weary, and desponding,
|
|
With his mighty war-club broken,
|
|
With his mittens torn and tattered,
|
|
And three useless arrows only,
|
|
Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree,
|
|
From whose branches trailed the mosses,
|
|
And whose trunk was coated over
|
|
With the Dead-man's Moccasin-leather,
|
|
With the fungus white and yellow.
|
|
Suddenly from the boughs above him
|
|
Sang the Mama, the woodpecker:
|
|
"Aim your arrows, Hiawatha,
|
|
At the head of Megissogwon,
|
|
Strike the tuft of hair upon it,
|
|
At their roots the long black tresses;
|
|
There alone can he be wounded!"
|
|
Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper,
|
|
Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow,
|
|
Just as Megissogwon, stooping,
|
|
Raised a heavy stone to throw it.
|
|
Full upon the crown it struck him,
|
|
At the roots of his long tresses,
|
|
And he reeled and staggered forward,
|
|
Plunging like a wounded bison,
|
|
Yes, like Pezhekee, the bison,
|
|
When the snow is on the prairie.
|
|
Swifter flew the second arrow,
|
|
In the pathway of the other,
|
|
Piercing deeper than the other,
|
|
Wounding sorer than the other;
|
|
And the knees of Megissogwon
|
|
Shook like windy reeds beneath him,
|
|
Bent and trembled like the rushes.
|
|
But the third and latest arrow
|
|
Swiftest flew, and wounded sorest,
|
|
And the mighty Megissogwon
|
|
Saw the fiery eyes of Pauguk,
|
|
Saw the eyes of Death glare at him,
|
|
Heard his voice call in the darkness;
|
|
At the feet of Hiawatha
|
|
Lifeless lay the great Pearl-Feather,
|
|
Lay the mightiest of Magicians.
|
|
Then the grateful Hiawatha
|
|
Called the Mama, the woodpecker,
|
|
From his perch among the branches
|
|
Of the melancholy pine-tree,
|
|
And, in honor of his service,
|
|
Stained with blood the tuft of feathers
|
|
On the little head of Mama;
|
|
Even to this day he wears it,
|
|
Wears the tuft of crimson feathers,
|
|
As a symbol of his service.
|
|
Then he stripped the shirt of wampum
|
|
From the back of Megissogwon,
|
|
As a trophy of the battle,
|
|
As a signal of his conquest.
|
|
On the shore he left the body,
|
|
Half on land and half in water,
|
|
In the sand his feet were buried,
|
|
And his face was in the water.
|
|
And above him, wheeled and clamored
|
|
The Keneu, the great war-eagle,
|
|
Sailing round in narrower circles,
|
|
Hovering nearer, nearer, nearer.
|
|
From the wigwam Hiawatha
|
|
Bore the wealth of Megissogwon,
|
|
All his wealth of skins and wampum,
|
|
Furs of bison and of beaver,
|
|
Furs of sable and of ermine,
|
|
Wampum belts and strings and pouches,
|
|
Quivers wrought with beads of wampum,
|
|
Filled with arrows, silver-headed.
|
|
Homeward then he sailed exulting,
|
|
Homeward through the black pitch-water,
|
|
Homeward through the weltering serpents,
|
|
With the trophies of the battle,
|
|
With a shout and song of triumph.
|
|
On the shore stood old Nokomis,
|
|
On the shore stood Chibiabos,
|
|
And the very strong man, Kwasind,
|
|
Waiting for the hero's coming,
|
|
Listening to his songs of triumph.
|
|
And the people of the village
|
|
Welcomed him with songs and dances,
|
|
Made a joyous feast, and shouted:
|
|
'Honor be to Hiawatha!
|
|
He has slain the great Pearl-Feather,
|
|
Slain the mightiest of Magicians,
|
|
Him, who sent the fiery fever,
|
|
Sent the white fog from the fen-lands,
|
|
Sent disease and death among us!"
|
|
Ever dear to Hiawatha
|
|
Was the memory of Mama!
|
|
And in token of his friendship,
|
|
As a mark of his remembrance,
|
|
He adorned and decked his pipe-stem
|
|
With the crimson tuft of feathers,
|
|
With the blood-red crest of Mama.
|
|
But the wealth of Megissogwon,
|
|
All the trophies of the battle,
|
|
He divided with his people,
|
|
Shared it equally among them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
X
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Wooing
|
|
|
|
"As unto the bow the cord is,
|
|
So unto the man is woman;
|
|
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
|
|
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
|
|
Useless each without the other!"
|
|
Thus the youthful Hiawatha
|
|
Said within himself and pondered,
|
|
Much perplexed by various feelings,
|
|
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing,
|
|
Dreaming still of Minnehaha,
|
|
Of the lovely Laughing Water,
|
|
In the land of the Dacotahs.
|
|
"Wed a maiden of your people,"
|
|
Warning said the old Nokomis;
|
|
"Go not eastward, go not westward,
|
|
For a stranger, whom we know not!
|
|
Like a fire upon the hearth-stone
|
|
Is a neighbor's homely daughter,
|
|
Like the starlight or the moonlight
|
|
Is the handsomest of strangers!"
|
|
Thus dissuading spake Nokomis,
|
|
And my Hiawatha answered
|
|
Only this: "Dear old Nokomis,
|
|
Very pleasant is the firelight,
|
|
But I like the starlight better,
|
|
Better do I like the moonlight!"
|
|
Gravely then said old Nokomis:
|
|
"Bring not here an idle maiden,
|
|
Bring not here a useless woman,
|
|
Hands unskilful, feet unwilling;
|
|
Bring a wife with nimble fingers,
|
|
Heart and hand that move together,
|
|
Feet that run on willing errands!"
|
|
Smiling answered Hiawatha:
|
|
'In the land of the Dacotahs
|
|
Lives the Arrow-maker's daughter,
|
|
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
|
|
Handsomest of all the women.
|
|
I will bring her to your wigwam,
|
|
She shall run upon your errands,
|
|
Be your starlight, moonlight, firelight,
|
|
Be the sunlight of my people!"
|
|
Still dissuading said Nokomis:
|
|
"Bring not to my lodge a stranger
|
|
From the land of the Dacotahs!
|
|
Very fierce are the Dacotahs,
|
|
Often is there war between us,
|
|
There are feuds yet unforgotten,
|
|
Wounds that ache and still may open!"
|
|
Laughing answered Hiawatha:
|
|
"For that reason, if no other,
|
|
Would I wed the fair Dacotah,
|
|
That our tribes might be united,
|
|
That old feuds might be forgotten,
|
|
And old wounds be healed forever!"
|
|
Thus departed Hiawatha
|
|
To the land of the Dacotahs,
|
|
To the land of handsome women;
|
|
Striding over moor and meadow,
|
|
Through interminable forests,
|
|
Through uninterrupted silence.
|
|
With his moccasins of magic,
|
|
At each stride a mile he measured;
|
|
Yet the way seemed long before him,
|
|
And his heart outran his footsteps;
|
|
And he journeyed without resting,
|
|
Till he heard the cataract's laughter,
|
|
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha
|
|
Calling to him through the silence.
|
|
"Pleasant is the sound!" he murmured,
|
|
"Pleasant is the voice that calls me!"
|
|
On the outskirts of the forests,
|
|
'Twixt the shadow and the sunshine,
|
|
Herds of fallow deer were feeding,
|
|
But they saw not Hiawatha;
|
|
To his bow he whispered, "Fail not!"
|
|
To his arrow whispered, "Swerve not!"
|
|
Sent it singing on its errand,
|
|
To the red heart of the roebuck;
|
|
Threw the deer across his shoulder,
|
|
And sped forward without pausing.
|
|
At the doorway of his wigwam
|
|
Sat the ancient Arrow-maker,
|
|
In the land of the Dacotahs,
|
|
Making arrow-heads of jasper,
|
|
Arrow-heads of chalcedony.
|
|
At his side, in all her beauty,
|
|
Sat the lovely Minnehaha,
|
|
Sat his daughter, Laughing Water,
|
|
Plaiting mats of flags and rushes
|
|
Of the past the old man's thoughts were,
|
|
And the maiden's of the future.
|
|
He was thinking, as he sat there,
|
|
Of the days when with such arrows
|
|
He had struck the deer and bison,
|
|
On the Muskoday, the meadow;
|
|
Shot the wild goose, flying southward
|
|
On the wing, the clamorous Wawa;
|
|
Thinking of the great war-parties,
|
|
How they came to buy his arrows,
|
|
Could not fight without his arrows.
|
|
Ah, no more such noble warriors
|
|
Could be found on earth as they were!
|
|
Now the men were all like women,
|
|
Only used their tongues for weapons!
|
|
She was thinking of a hunter,
|
|
From another tribe and country,
|
|
Young and tall and very handsome,
|
|
Who one morning, in the Spring-time,
|
|
Came to buy her father's arrows,
|
|
Sat and rested in the wigwam,
|
|
Lingered long about the doorway,
|
|
Looking back as he departed.
|
|
She had heard her father praise him,
|
|
Praise his courage and his wisdom;
|
|
Would he come again for arrows
|
|
To the Falls of Minnehaha?
|
|
On the mat her hands lay idle,
|
|
And her eyes were very dreamy.
|
|
Through their thoughts they heard a footstep,
|
|
Heard a rustling in the branches,
|
|
And with glowing cheek and forehead,
|
|
With the deer upon his shoulders,
|
|
Suddenly from out the woodlands
|
|
Hiawatha stood before them.
|
|
Straight the ancient Arrow-maker
|
|
Looked up gravely from his labor,
|
|
Laid aside the unfinished arrow,
|
|
Bade him enter at the doorway,
|
|
Saying, as he rose to meet him,
|
|
'Hiawatha, you are welcome!"
|
|
At the feet of Laughing Water
|
|
Hiawatha laid his burden,
|
|
Threw the red deer from his shoulders;
|
|
And the maiden looked up at him,
|
|
Looked up from her mat of rushes,
|
|
Said with gentle look and accent,
|
|
"You are welcome, Hiawatha!"
|
|
Very spacious was the wigwam,
|
|
Made of deer-skins dressed and whitened,
|
|
With the Gods of the Dacotahs
|
|
Drawn and painted on its curtains,
|
|
And so tall the doorway, hardly
|
|
Hiawatha stooped to enter,
|
|
Hardly touched his eagle-feathers
|
|
As he entered at the doorway.
|
|
Then uprose the Laughing Water,
|
|
From the ground fair Minnehaha,
|
|
Laid aside her mat unfinished,
|
|
Brought forth food and set before them,
|
|
Water brought them from the brooklet,
|
|
Gave them food in earthen vessels,
|
|
Gave them drink in bowls of bass-wood,
|
|
Listened while the guest was speaking,
|
|
Listened while her father answered,
|
|
But not once her lips she opened,
|
|
Not a single word she uttered.
|
|
Yes, as in a dream she listened
|
|
To the words of Hiawatha,
|
|
As he talked of old Nokomis,
|
|
Who had nursed him in his childhood,
|
|
As he told of his companions,
|
|
Chibiabos, the musician,
|
|
And the very strong man, Kwasind,
|
|
And of happiness and plenty
|
|
In the land of the Ojibways,
|
|
In the pleasant land and peaceful.
|
|
"After many years of warfare,
|
|
Many years of strife and bloodshed,
|
|
There is peace between the Ojibways
|
|
And the tribe of the Dacotahs."
|
|
Thus continued Hiawatha,
|
|
And then added, speaking slowly,
|
|
"That this peace may last forever,
|
|
And our hands be clasped more closely,
|
|
And our hearts be more united,
|
|
Give me as my wife this maiden,
|
|
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
|
|
Loveliest of Dacotah women!"
|
|
And the ancient Arrow-maker
|
|
Paused a moment ere he answered,
|
|
Smoked a little while in silence,
|
|
Looked at Hiawatha proudly,
|
|
Fondly looked at Laughing Water,
|
|
And made answer very gravely:
|
|
"Yes, if Minnehaha wishes;
|
|
Let your heart speak, Minnehaha!"
|
|
And the lovely Laughing Water
|
|
Seemed more lovely as she stood there,
|
|
Neither willing nor reluctant,
|
|
As she went to Hiawatha,
|
|
Softly took the seat beside him,
|
|
While she said, and blushed to say it,
|
|
"I will follow you, my husband!"
|
|
This was Hiawatha's wooing!
|
|
Thus it was he won the daughter
|
|
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
|
|
In the land of the Dacotahs!
|
|
From the wigwam he departed,
|
|
Leading with him Laughing Water;
|
|
Hand in hand they went together,
|
|
Through the woodland and the meadow,
|
|
Left the old man standing lonely
|
|
At the doorway of his wigwam,
|
|
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha
|
|
Calling to them from the distance,
|
|
Crying to them from afar off,
|
|
"Fare thee well, O Minnehaha!"
|
|
And the ancient Arrow-maker
|
|
Turned again unto his labor,
|
|
Sat down by his sunny doorway,
|
|
Murmuring to himself, and saying:
|
|
"Thus it is our daughters leave us,
|
|
Those we love, and those who love us!
|
|
Just when they have learned to help us,
|
|
When we are old and lean upon them,
|
|
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
|
|
With his flute of reeds, a stranger
|
|
Wanders piping through the village,
|
|
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
|
|
And she follows where he leads her,
|
|
Leaving all things for the stranger!"
|
|
Pleasant was the journey homeward,
|
|
Through interminable forests,
|
|
Over meadow, over mountain,
|
|
Over river, hill, and hollow.
|
|
Short it seemed to Hiawatha,
|
|
Though they journeyed very slowly,
|
|
Though his pace he checked and slackened
|
|
To the steps of Laughing Water.
|
|
Over wide and rushing rivers
|
|
In his arms he bore the maiden;
|
|
Light he thought her as a feather,
|
|
As the plume upon his head-gear;
|
|
Cleared the tangled pathway for her,
|
|
Bent aside the swaying branches,
|
|
Made at night a lodge of branches,
|
|
And a bed with boughs of hemlock,
|
|
And a fire before the doorway
|
|
With the dry cones of the pine-tree.
|
|
All the travelling winds went with them,
|
|
O'er the meadows, through the forest;
|
|
All the stars of night looked at them,
|
|
Watched with sleepless eyes their slumber;
|
|
From his ambush in the oak-tree
|
|
Peeped the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
|
|
Watched with eager eyes the lovers;
|
|
And the rabbit, the Wabasso,
|
|
Scampered from the path before them,
|
|
Peering, peeping from his burrow,
|
|
Sat erect upon his haunches,
|
|
Watched with curious eyes the lovers.
|
|
Pleasant was the journey homeward!
|
|
All the birds sang loud and sweetly
|
|
Songs of happiness and heart's-ease;
|
|
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
|
|
"Happy are you, Hiawatha,
|
|
Having such a wife to love you!"
|
|
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
|
|
"Happy are you, Laughing Water,
|
|
Having such a noble husband!"
|
|
From the sky the sun benignant
|
|
Looked upon them through the branches,
|
|
Saying to them, "O my children,
|
|
Love is sunshine, hate is shadow,
|
|
Life is checkered shade and sunshine,
|
|
Rule by love, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
From the sky the moon looked at them,
|
|
Filled the lodge with mystic splendors,
|
|
Whispered to them, "O my children,
|
|
Day is restless, night is quiet,
|
|
Man imperious, woman feeble;
|
|
Half is mine, although I follow;
|
|
Rule by patience, Laughing Water!"
|
|
Thus it was they journeyed homeward;
|
|
Thus it was that Hiawatha
|
|
To the lodge of old Nokomis
|
|
Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
|
|
Brought the sunshine of his people,
|
|
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
|
|
Handsomest of all the women
|
|
In the land of the Dacotahs,
|
|
In the land of handsome women.
|
|
|
|
XI
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast
|
|
|
|
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
How the handsome Yenadizze
|
|
Danced at Hiawatha's wedding;
|
|
How the gentle Chibiabos,
|
|
He the sweetest of musicians,
|
|
Sang his songs of love and longing;
|
|
How Iagoo, the great boaster,
|
|
He the marvellous story-teller,
|
|
Told his tales of strange adventure,
|
|
That the feast might be more joyous,
|
|
That the time might pass more gayly,
|
|
And the guests be more contented.
|
|
Sumptuous was the feast Nokomis
|
|
Made at Hiawatha's wedding;
|
|
All the bowls were made of bass-wood,
|
|
White and polished very smoothly,
|
|
All the spoons of horn of bison,
|
|
Black and polished very smoothly.
|
|
She had sent through all the village
|
|
Messengers with wands of willow,
|
|
As a sign of invitation,
|
|
As a token of the feasting;
|
|
And the wedding guests assembled,
|
|
Clad in all their richest raiment,
|
|
Robes of fur and belts of wampum,
|
|
Splendid with their paint and plumage,
|
|
Beautiful with beads and tassels.
|
|
First they ate the sturgeon, Nahma,
|
|
And the pike, the Maskenozha,
|
|
Caught and cooked by old Nokomis;
|
|
Then on pemican they feasted,
|
|
Pemican and buffalo marrow,
|
|
Haunch of deer and hump of bison,
|
|
Yellow cakes of the Mondamin,
|
|
And the wild rice of the river.
|
|
But the gracious Hiawatha,
|
|
And the lovely Laughing Water,
|
|
And the careful old Nokomis,
|
|
Tasted not the food before them,
|
|
Only waited on the others
|
|
Only served their guests in silence.
|
|
And when all the guests had finished,
|
|
Old Nokomis, brisk and busy,
|
|
From an ample pouch of otter,
|
|
Filled the red-stone pipes for smoking
|
|
With tobacco from the South-land,
|
|
Mixed with bark of the red willow,
|
|
And with herbs and leaves of fragrance.
|
|
Then she said, "O Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Dance for us your merry dances,
|
|
Dance the Beggar's Dance to please us,
|
|
That the feast may be more joyous,
|
|
That the time may pass more gayly,
|
|
And our guests be more contented!"
|
|
Then the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
He the idle Yenadizze,
|
|
He the merry mischief-maker,
|
|
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
|
|
Rose among the guests assembled.
|
|
Skilled was he in sports and pastimes,
|
|
In the merry dance of snow-shoes,
|
|
In the play of quoits and ball-play;
|
|
Skilled was he in games of hazard,
|
|
In all games of skill and hazard,
|
|
Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters,
|
|
Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones.
|
|
Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart,
|
|
Called him coward, Shaugodaya,
|
|
Idler, gambler, Yenadizze,
|
|
Little heeded he their jesting,
|
|
Little cared he for their insults,
|
|
For the women and the maidens
|
|
Loved the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis.
|
|
He was dressed in shirt of doeskin,
|
|
White and soft, and fringed with ermine,
|
|
All inwrought with beads of wampum;
|
|
He was dressed in deer-skin leggings,
|
|
Fringed with hedgehog quills and ermine,
|
|
And in moccasins of buck-skin,
|
|
Thick with quills and beads embroidered.
|
|
On his head were plumes of swan's down,
|
|
On his heels were tails of foxes,
|
|
In one hand a fan of feathers,
|
|
And a pipe was in the other.
|
|
Barred with streaks of red and yellow,
|
|
Streaks of blue and bright vermilion,
|
|
Shone the face of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
|
|
From his forehead fell his tresses,
|
|
Smooth, and parted like a woman's,
|
|
Shining bright with oil, and plaited,
|
|
Hung with braids of scented grasses,
|
|
As among the guests assembled,
|
|
To the sound of flutes and singing,
|
|
To the sound of drums and voices,
|
|
Rose the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
And began his mystic dances.
|
|
First he danced a solemn measure,
|
|
Very slow in step and gesture,
|
|
In and out among the pine-trees,
|
|
Through the shadows and the sunshine,
|
|
Treading softly like a panther.
|
|
Then more swiftly and still swifter,
|
|
Whirling, spinning round in circles,
|
|
Leaping o'er the guests assembled,
|
|
Eddying round and round the wigwam,
|
|
Till the leaves went whirling with him,
|
|
Till the dust and wind together
|
|
Swept in eddies round about him.
|
|
Then along the sandy margin
|
|
Of the lake, the Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
On he sped with frenzied gestures,
|
|
Stamped upon the sand, and tossed it
|
|
Wildly in the air around him;
|
|
Till the wind became a whirlwind,
|
|
Till the sand was blown and sifted
|
|
Like great snowdrifts o'er the landscape,
|
|
Heaping all the shores with Sand Dunes,
|
|
Sand Hills of the Nagow Wudjoo!
|
|
Thus the merry Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Danced his Beggar's Dance to please them,
|
|
And, returning, sat down laughing
|
|
There among the guests assembled,
|
|
Sat and fanned himself serenely
|
|
With his fan of turkey-feathers.
|
|
Then they said to Chibiabos,
|
|
To the friend of Hiawatha,
|
|
To the sweetest of all singers,
|
|
To the best of all musicians,
|
|
"Sing to us, O Chibiabos!
|
|
Songs of love and songs of longing,
|
|
That the feast may be more joyous,
|
|
That the time may pass more gayly,
|
|
And our guests be more contented!"
|
|
And the gentle Chibiabos
|
|
Sang in accents sweet and tender,
|
|
Sang in tones of deep emotion,
|
|
Songs of love and songs of longing;
|
|
Looking still at Hiawatha,
|
|
Looking at fair Laughing Water,
|
|
Sang he softly, sang in this wise:
|
|
"Onaway! Awake, beloved!
|
|
Thou the wild-flower of the forest!
|
|
Thou the wild-bird of the prairie!
|
|
Thou with eyes so soft and fawn-like!
|
|
"If thou only lookest at me,
|
|
I am happy, I am happy,
|
|
As the lilies of the prairie,
|
|
When they feel the dew upon them!
|
|
"Sweet thy breath is as the fragrance
|
|
Of the wild-flowers in the morning,
|
|
As their fragrance is at evening,
|
|
In the Moon when leaves are falling.
|
|
"Does not all the blood within me
|
|
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
|
|
As the springs to meet the sunshine,
|
|
In the Moon when nights are brightest?
|
|
"Onaway! my heart sings to thee,
|
|
Sings with joy when thou art near me,
|
|
As the sighing, singing branches
|
|
In the pleasant Moon of Strawberries!
|
|
"When thou art not pleased, beloved,
|
|
Then my heart is sad and darkened,
|
|
As the shining river darkens
|
|
When the clouds drop shadows on it!
|
|
"When thou smilest, my beloved,
|
|
Then my troubled heart is brightened,
|
|
As in sunshine gleam the ripples
|
|
That the cold wind makes in rivers.
|
|
"Smiles the earth, and smile the waters,
|
|
Smile the cloudless skies above us,
|
|
But I lose the way of smiling
|
|
When thou art no longer near me!
|
|
"I myself, myself! behold me!
|
|
Blood of my beating heart, behold me!
|
|
Oh awake, awake, beloved!
|
|
Onaway! awake, beloved!"
|
|
Thus the gentle Chibiabos
|
|
Sang his song of love and longing;
|
|
And Iagoo, the great boaster,
|
|
He the marvellous story-teller,
|
|
He the friend of old Nokomis,
|
|
Jealous of the sweet musician,
|
|
Jealous of the applause they gave him,
|
|
Saw in all the eyes around him,
|
|
Saw in all their looks and gestures,
|
|
That the wedding guests assembled
|
|
Longed to hear his pleasant stories,
|
|
His immeasurable falsehoods.
|
|
Very boastful was Iagoo;
|
|
Never heard he an adventure
|
|
But himself had met a greater;
|
|
Never any deed of daring
|
|
But himself had done a bolder;
|
|
Never any marvellous story
|
|
But himself could tell a stranger.
|
|
Would you listen to his boasting,
|
|
Would you only give him credence,
|
|
No one ever shot an arrow
|
|
Half so far and high as he had;
|
|
Ever caught so many fishes,
|
|
Ever killed so many reindeer,
|
|
Ever trapped so many beaver!
|
|
None could run so fast as he could,
|
|
None could dive so deep as he could,
|
|
None could swim so far as he could;
|
|
None had made so many journeys,
|
|
None had seen so many wonders,
|
|
As this wonderful Iagoo,
|
|
As this marvellous story-teller!
|
|
Thus his name became a by-word
|
|
And a jest among the people;
|
|
And whene'er a boastful hunter
|
|
Praised his own address too highly,
|
|
Or a warrior, home returning,
|
|
Talked too much of his achievements,
|
|
All his hearers cried, "Iagoo!
|
|
Here's Iagoo come among us!"
|
|
He it was who carved the cradle
|
|
Of the little Hiawatha,
|
|
Carved its framework out of linden,
|
|
Bound it strong with reindeer sinews;
|
|
He it was who taught him later
|
|
How to make his bows and arrows,
|
|
How to make the bows of ash-tree,
|
|
And the arrows of the oak-tree.
|
|
So among the guests assembled
|
|
At my Hiawatha's wedding
|
|
Sat Iagoo, old and ugly,
|
|
Sat the marvellous story-teller.
|
|
And they said, "O good Iagoo,
|
|
Tell us now a tale of wonder,
|
|
Tell us of some strange adventure,
|
|
That the feast may be more joyous,
|
|
That the time may pass more gayly,
|
|
And our guests be more contented!"
|
|
And Iagoo answered straightway,
|
|
"You shall hear a tale of wonder,
|
|
You shall hear the strange adventures
|
|
Of Osseo, the Magician,
|
|
From the Evening Star descending."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XII
|
|
|
|
The Son of the Evening Star
|
|
|
|
Can it be the sun descending
|
|
O'er the level plain of water?
|
|
Or the Red Swan floating, flying,
|
|
Wounded by the magic arrow,
|
|
Staining all the waves with crimson,
|
|
With the crimson of its life-blood,
|
|
Filling all the air with splendor,
|
|
With the splendor of its plumage?
|
|
Yes; it is the sun descending,
|
|
Sinking down into the water;
|
|
All the sky is stained with purple,
|
|
All the water flushed with crimson!
|
|
No; it is the Red Swan floating,
|
|
Diving down beneath the water;
|
|
To the sky its wings are lifted,
|
|
With its blood the waves are reddened!
|
|
Over it the Star of Evening
|
|
Melts and trembles through the purple,
|
|
Hangs suspended in the twilight.
|
|
No; it is a bead of wampum
|
|
On the robes of the Great Spirit
|
|
As he passes through the twilight,
|
|
Walks in silence through the heavens.
|
|
This with joy beheld Iagoo
|
|
And he said in haste: "Behold it!
|
|
See the sacred Star of Evening!
|
|
You shall hear a tale of wonder,
|
|
Hear the story of Osseo,
|
|
Son of the Evening Star, Osseo!
|
|
"Once, in days no more remembered,
|
|
Ages nearer the beginning,
|
|
When the heavens were closer to us,
|
|
And the Gods were more familiar,
|
|
In the North-land lived a hunter,
|
|
With ten young and comely daughters,
|
|
Tall and lithe as wands of willow;
|
|
Only Oweenee, the youngest,
|
|
She the wilful and the wayward,
|
|
She the silent, dreamy maiden,
|
|
Was the fairest of the sisters.
|
|
"All these women married warriors,
|
|
Married brave and haughty husbands;
|
|
Only Oweenee, the youngest,
|
|
Laughed and flouted all her lovers,
|
|
All her young and handsome suitors,
|
|
And then married old Osseo,
|
|
Old Osseo, poor and ugly,
|
|
Broken with age and weak with coughing,
|
|
Always coughing like a squirrel.
|
|
"Ah, but beautiful within him
|
|
Was the spirit of Osseo,
|
|
From the Evening Star descended,
|
|
Star of Evening, Star of Woman,
|
|
Star of tenderness and passion!
|
|
All its fire was in his bosom,
|
|
All its beauty in his spirit,
|
|
All its mystery in his being,
|
|
All its splendor in his language!
|
|
"And her lovers, the rejected,
|
|
Handsome men with belts of wampum,
|
|
Handsome men with paint and feathers.
|
|
Pointed at her in derision,
|
|
Followed her with jest and laughter.
|
|
But she said: 'I care not for you,
|
|
Care not for your belts of wampum,
|
|
Care not for your paint and feathers,
|
|
Care not for your jests and laughter;
|
|
I am happy with Osseo!'
|
|
'Once to some great feast invited,
|
|
Through the damp and dusk of evening,
|
|
Walked together the ten sisters,
|
|
Walked together with their husbands;
|
|
Slowly followed old Osseo,
|
|
With fair Oweenee beside him;
|
|
All the others chatted gayly,
|
|
These two only walked in silence.
|
|
"At the western sky Osseo
|
|
Gazed intent, as if imploring,
|
|
Often stopped and gazed imploring
|
|
At the trembling Star of Evening,
|
|
At the tender Star of Woman;
|
|
And they heard him murmur softly,
|
|
'Ah, showain nemeshin, Nosa!
|
|
Pity, pity me, my father!'
|
|
'Listen!' said the eldest sister,
|
|
'He is praying to his father!
|
|
What a pity that the old man
|
|
Does not stumble in the pathway,
|
|
Does not break his neck by falling!'
|
|
And they laughed till all the forest
|
|
Rang with their unseemly laughter.
|
|
"On their pathway through the woodlands
|
|
Lay an oak, by storms uprooted,
|
|
Lay the great trunk of an oak-tree,
|
|
Buried half in leaves and mosses,
|
|
Mouldering, crumbling, huge and hollow.
|
|
And Osseo, when he saw it,
|
|
Gave a shout, a cry of anguish,
|
|
Leaped into its yawning cavern,
|
|
At one end went in an old man,
|
|
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly;
|
|
From the other came a young man,
|
|
Tall and straight and strong and handsome.
|
|
"Thus Osseo was transfigured,
|
|
Thus restored to youth and beauty;
|
|
But, alas for good Osseo,
|
|
And for Oweenee, the faithful!
|
|
Strangely, too, was she transfigured.
|
|
Changed into a weak old woman,
|
|
With a staff she tottered onward,
|
|
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly!
|
|
And the sisters and their husbands
|
|
Laughed until the echoing forest
|
|
Rang with their unseemly laughter.
|
|
"But Osseo turned not from her,
|
|
Walked with slower step beside her,
|
|
Took her hand, as brown and withered
|
|
As an oak-leaf is in Winter,
|
|
Called her sweetheart, Nenemoosha,
|
|
Soothed her with soft words of kindness,
|
|
Till they reached the lodge of feasting,
|
|
Till they sat down in the wigwam,
|
|
Sacred to the Star of Evening,
|
|
To the tender Star of Woman.
|
|
"Wrapt in visions, lost in dreaming,
|
|
At the banquet sat Osseo;
|
|
All were merry, all were happy,
|
|
All were joyous but Osseo.
|
|
Neither food nor drink he tasted,
|
|
Neither did he speak nor listen;
|
|
But as one bewildered sat he,
|
|
Looking dreamily and sadly,
|
|
First at Oweenee, then upward
|
|
At the gleaming sky above them.
|
|
"Then a voice was heard, a whisper,
|
|
Coming from the starry distance,
|
|
Coming from the empty vastness,
|
|
Low, and musical, and tender;
|
|
And the voice said: 'O Osseo!
|
|
O my son, my best beloved!
|
|
Broken are the spells that bound you,
|
|
All the charms of the magicians,
|
|
All the magic powers of evil;
|
|
Come to me; ascend, Osseo!
|
|
"'Taste the food that stands before you:
|
|
It is blessed and enchanted,
|
|
It has magic virtues in it,
|
|
It will change you to a spirit.
|
|
All your bowls and all your kettles
|
|
Shall be wood and clay no longer;
|
|
But the bowls be changed to wampum,
|
|
And the kettles shall be silver;
|
|
They shall shine like shells of scarlet,
|
|
Like the fire shall gleam and glimmer.
|
|
"'And the women shall no longer
|
|
Bear the dreary doom of labor,
|
|
But be changed to birds, and glisten
|
|
With the beauty of the starlight,
|
|
Painted with the dusky splendors
|
|
Of the skies and clouds of evening!'
|
|
"What Osseo heard as whispers,
|
|
What as words he comprehended,
|
|
Was but music to the others,
|
|
Music as of birds afar off,
|
|
Of the whippoorwill afar off,
|
|
Of the lonely Wawonaissa
|
|
Singing in the darksome forest.
|
|
"Then the lodge began to tremble,
|
|
Straight began to shake and tremble,
|
|
And they felt it rising, rising,
|
|
Slowly through the air ascending,
|
|
From the darkness of the tree-tops
|
|
Forth into the dewy starlight,
|
|
Till it passed the topmost branches;
|
|
And behold! the wooden dishes
|
|
All were changed to shells of scarlet!
|
|
And behold! the earthen kettles
|
|
All were changed to bowls of silver!
|
|
And the roof-poles of the wigwam
|
|
Were as glittering rods of silver,
|
|
And the roof of bark upon them
|
|
As the shining shards of beetles.
|
|
"Then Osseo gazed around him,
|
|
And he saw the nine fair sisters,
|
|
All the sisters and their husbands,
|
|
Changed to birds of various plumage.
|
|
Some were jays and some were magpies,
|
|
Others thrushes, others blackbirds;
|
|
And they hopped, and sang, and twittered,
|
|
Perked and fluttered all their feathers,
|
|
Strutted in their shining plumage,
|
|
And their tails like fans unfolded.
|
|
"Only Oweenee, the youngest,
|
|
Was not changed, but sat in silence,
|
|
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly,
|
|
Looking sadly at the others;
|
|
Till Osseo, gazing upward,
|
|
Gave another cry of anguish,
|
|
Such a cry as he had uttered
|
|
By the oak-tree in the forest.
|
|
"Then returned her youth and beauty,
|
|
And her soiled and tattered garments
|
|
Were transformed to robes of ermine,
|
|
And her staff became a feather,
|
|
Yes, a shining silver feather!
|
|
"And again the wigwam trembled,
|
|
Swayed and rushed through airy currents,
|
|
Through transparent cloud and vapor,
|
|
And amid celestial splendors
|
|
On the Evening Star alighted,
|
|
As a snow-flake falls on snow-flake,
|
|
As a leaf drops on a river,
|
|
As the thistledown on water.
|
|
"Forth with cheerful words of welcome
|
|
Came the father of Osseo,
|
|
He with radiant locks of silver,
|
|
He with eyes serene and tender.
|
|
And he said: `My son, Osseo,
|
|
Hang the cage of birds you bring there,
|
|
Hang the cage with rods of silver,
|
|
And the birds with glistening feathers,
|
|
At the doorway of my wigwam.'
|
|
"At the door he hung the bird-cage,
|
|
And they entered in and gladly
|
|
Listened to Osseo's father,
|
|
Ruler of the Star of Evening,
|
|
As he said: `O my Osseo!
|
|
I have had compassion on you,
|
|
Given you back your youth and beauty,
|
|
Into birds of various plumage
|
|
Changed your sisters and their husbands;
|
|
Changed them thus because they mocked you
|
|
In the figure of the old man,
|
|
In that aspect sad and wrinkled,
|
|
Could not see your heart of passion,
|
|
Could not see your youth immortal;
|
|
Only Oweenee, the faithful,
|
|
Saw your naked heart and loved you.
|
|
"`In the lodge that glimmers yonder,
|
|
In the little star that twinkles
|
|
Through the vapors, on the left hand,
|
|
Lives the envious Evil Spirit,
|
|
The Wabeno, the magician,
|
|
Who transformed you to an old man.
|
|
Take heed lest his beams fall on you,
|
|
For the rays he darts around him
|
|
Are the power of his enchantment,
|
|
Are the arrows that he uses.'
|
|
"Many years, in peace and quiet,
|
|
On the peaceful Star of Evening
|
|
Dwelt Osseo with his father;
|
|
Many years, in song and flutter,
|
|
At the doorway of the wigwam,
|
|
Hung the cage with rods of silver,
|
|
And fair Oweenee, the faithful,
|
|
Bore a son unto Osseo,
|
|
With the beauty of his mother,
|
|
With the courage of his father.
|
|
"And the boy grew up and prospered,
|
|
And Osseo, to delight him,
|
|
Made him little bows and arrows,
|
|
Opened the great cage of silver,
|
|
And let loose his aunts and uncles,
|
|
All those birds with glossy feathers,
|
|
For his little son to shoot at.
|
|
"Round and round they wheeled and darted,
|
|
Filled the Evening Star with music,
|
|
With their songs of joy and freedom
|
|
Filled the Evening Star with splendor,
|
|
With the fluttering of their plumage;
|
|
Till the boy, the little hunter,
|
|
Bent his bow and shot an arrow,
|
|
Shot a swift and fatal arrow,
|
|
And a bird, with shining feathers,
|
|
At his feet fell wounded sorely.
|
|
"But, O wondrous transformation!
|
|
`T was no bird he saw before him,
|
|
`T was a beautiful young woman,
|
|
With the arrow in her bosom!
|
|
"When her blood fell on the planet,
|
|
On the sacred Star of Evening,
|
|
Broken was the spell of magic,
|
|
Powerless was the strange enchantment,
|
|
And the youth, the fearless bowman,
|
|
Suddenly felt himself descending,
|
|
Held by unseen hands, but sinking
|
|
Downward through the empty spaces,
|
|
Downward through the clouds and vapors,
|
|
Till he rested on an island,
|
|
On an island, green and grassy,
|
|
Yonder in the Big-Sea-Water.
|
|
"After him he saw descending
|
|
All the birds with shining feathers,
|
|
Fluttering, falling, wafted downward,
|
|
Like the painted leaves of Autumn;
|
|
And the lodge with poles of silver,
|
|
With its roof like wings of beetles,
|
|
Like the shining shards of beetles,
|
|
By the winds of heaven uplifted,
|
|
Slowly sank upon the island,
|
|
Bringing back the good Osseo,
|
|
Bringing Oweenee, the faithful.
|
|
"Then the birds, again transfigured,
|
|
Reassumed the shape of mortals,
|
|
Took their shape, but not their stature;
|
|
They remained as Little People,
|
|
Like the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies,
|
|
And on pleasant nights of Summer,
|
|
When the Evening Star was shining,
|
|
Hand in hand they danced together
|
|
On the island's craggy headlands,
|
|
On the sand-beach low and level.
|
|
"Still their glittering lodge is seen there,
|
|
On the tranquil Summer evenings,
|
|
And upon the shore the fisher
|
|
Sometimes hears their happy voices,
|
|
Sees them dancing in the starlight !"
|
|
When the story was completed,
|
|
When the wondrous tale was ended,
|
|
Looking round upon his listeners,
|
|
Solemnly Iagoo added:
|
|
"There are great men, I have known such,
|
|
Whom their people understand not,
|
|
Whom they even make a jest of,
|
|
Scoff and jeer at in derision.
|
|
From the story of Osseo
|
|
Let us learn the fate of jesters!"
|
|
All the wedding guests delighted
|
|
Listened to the marvellous story,
|
|
Listened laughing and applauding,
|
|
And they whispered to each other:
|
|
"Does he mean himself, I wonder?
|
|
And are we the aunts and uncles?"
|
|
Then again sang Chibiabos,
|
|
Sang a song of love and longing,
|
|
In those accents sweet and tender,
|
|
In those tones of pensive sadness,
|
|
Sang a maiden's lamentation
|
|
For her lover, her Algonquin.
|
|
"When I think of my beloved,
|
|
Ah me! think of my beloved,
|
|
When my heart is thinking of him,
|
|
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!
|
|
"Ah me! when I parted from him,
|
|
Round my neck he hung the wampum,
|
|
As a pledge, the snow-white wampum,
|
|
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!
|
|
"`I will go with you, he whispered,
|
|
Ah me! to your native country;
|
|
Let me go with you, he whispered,
|
|
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!
|
|
"Far away, away, I answered,
|
|
Very far away, I answered,
|
|
Ah me! is my native country,
|
|
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!
|
|
"When I looked back to behold him,
|
|
Where we parted, to behold him,
|
|
After me he still was gazing,
|
|
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!
|
|
"By the tree he still was standing,
|
|
By the fallen tree was standing,
|
|
That had dropped into the water,
|
|
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!
|
|
"When I think of my beloved,
|
|
Ah me! think of my beloved,
|
|
When my heart is thinking of him,
|
|
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!"
|
|
Such was Hiawatha's Wedding,
|
|
Such the dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Such the story of Iagoo,
|
|
Such the songs of Chibiabos;
|
|
Thus the wedding banquet ended,
|
|
And the wedding guests departed,
|
|
Leaving Hiawatha happy
|
|
With the night and Minnehaha.
|
|
|
|
XIII
|
|
|
|
Blessing the Cornfields
|
|
|
|
Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
|
|
Of the happy days that followed,
|
|
In the land of the Ojibways,
|
|
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
|
|
Sing the mysteries of Mondamin,
|
|
Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields!
|
|
Buried was the bloody hatchet,
|
|
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
|
|
Buried were all warlike weapons,
|
|
And the war-cry was forgotten.
|
|
There was peace among the nations;
|
|
Unmolested roved the hunters,
|
|
Built the birch canoe for sailing,
|
|
Caught the fish in lake and river,
|
|
Shot the deer and trapped the beaver;
|
|
Unmolested worked the women,
|
|
Made their sugar from the maple,
|
|
Gathered wild rice in the meadows,
|
|
Dressed the skins of deer and beaver.
|
|
All around the happy village
|
|
Stood the maize-fields, green and shining,
|
|
Waved the green plumes of Mondamin,
|
|
Waved his soft and sunny tresses,
|
|
Filling all the land with plenty.
|
|
`T was the women who in Spring-time
|
|
Planted the broad fields and fruitful,
|
|
Buried in the earth Mondamin;
|
|
`T was the women who in Autumn
|
|
Stripped the yellow husks of harvest,
|
|
Stripped the garments from Mondamin,
|
|
Even as Hiawatha taught them.
|
|
Once, when all the maize was planted,
|
|
Hiawatha, wise and thoughtful,
|
|
Spake and said to Minnehaha,
|
|
To his wife, the Laughing Water:
|
|
"You shall bless to-night the cornfields,
|
|
Draw a magic circle round them,
|
|
To protect them from destruction,
|
|
Blast of mildew, blight of insect,
|
|
Wagemin, the thief of cornfields,
|
|
Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear
|
|
"In the night, when all Is silence,'
|
|
In the night, when all Is darkness,
|
|
When the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin,
|
|
Shuts the doors of all the wigwams,
|
|
So that not an ear can hear you,
|
|
So that not an eye can see you,
|
|
Rise up from your bed in silence,
|
|
Lay aside your garments wholly,
|
|
Walk around the fields you planted,
|
|
Round the borders of the cornfields,
|
|
Covered by your tresses only,
|
|
Robed with darkness as a garment.
|
|
"Thus the fields shall be more fruitful,
|
|
And the passing of your footsteps
|
|
Draw a magic circle round them,
|
|
So that neither blight nor mildew,
|
|
Neither burrowing worm nor insect,
|
|
Shall pass o'er the magic circle;
|
|
Not the dragon-fly, Kwo-ne-she,
|
|
Nor the spider, Subbekashe,
|
|
Nor the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena;
|
|
Nor the mighty caterpillar,
|
|
Way-muk-kwana, with the bear-skin,
|
|
King of all the caterpillars!"
|
|
On the tree-tops near the cornfields
|
|
Sat the hungry crows and ravens,
|
|
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
|
|
With his band of black marauders.
|
|
And they laughed at Hiawatha,
|
|
Till the tree-tops shook with laughter,
|
|
With their melancholy laughter,
|
|
At the words of Hiawatha.
|
|
"Hear him!" said they; "hear the Wise Man,
|
|
Hear the plots of Hiawatha!"
|
|
When the noiseless night descended
|
|
Broad and dark o'er field and forest,
|
|
When the mournful Wawonaissa
|
|
Sorrowing sang among the hemlocks,
|
|
And the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin,
|
|
Shut the doors of all the wigwams,
|
|
From her bed rose Laughing Water,
|
|
Laid aside her garments wholly,
|
|
And with darkness clothed and guarded,
|
|
Unashamed and unaffrighted,
|
|
Walked securely round the cornfields,
|
|
Drew the sacred, magic circle
|
|
Of her footprints round the cornfields.
|
|
No one but the Midnight only
|
|
Saw her beauty in the darkness,
|
|
No one but the Wawonaissa
|
|
Heard the panting of her bosom
|
|
Guskewau, the darkness, wrapped her
|
|
Closely in his sacred mantle,
|
|
So that none might see her beauty,
|
|
So that none might boast, "I saw her!"
|
|
On the morrow, as the day dawned,
|
|
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
|
|
Gathered all his black marauders,
|
|
Crows and blackbirds, jays and ravens,
|
|
Clamorous on the dusky tree-tops,
|
|
And descended, fast and fearless,
|
|
On the fields of Hiawatha,
|
|
On the grave of the Mondamin.
|
|
"We will drag Mondamin," said they,
|
|
"From the grave where he is buried,
|
|
Spite of all the magic circles
|
|
Laughing Water draws around it,
|
|
Spite of all the sacred footprints
|
|
Minnehaha stamps upon it!"
|
|
But the wary Hiawatha,
|
|
Ever thoughtful, careful, watchful,
|
|
Had o'erheard the scornful laughter
|
|
When they mocked him from the tree-tops.
|
|
"Kaw!" he said, "my friends the ravens!
|
|
Kahgahgee, my King of Ravens!
|
|
I will teach you all a lesson
|
|
That shall not be soon forgotten!"
|
|
He had risen before the daybreak,
|
|
He had spread o'er all the cornfields
|
|
Snares to catch the black marauders,
|
|
And was lying now in ambush
|
|
In the neighboring grove of pine-trees,
|
|
Waiting for the crows and blackbirds,
|
|
Waiting for the jays and ravens.
|
|
Soon they came with caw and clamor,
|
|
Rush of wings and cry of voices,
|
|
To their work of devastation,
|
|
Settling down upon the cornfields,
|
|
Delving deep with beak and talon,
|
|
For the body of Mondamin.
|
|
And with all their craft and cunning,
|
|
All their skill in wiles of warfare,
|
|
They perceived no danger near them,
|
|
Till their claws became entangled,
|
|
Till they found themselves imprisoned
|
|
In the snares of Hiawatha.
|
|
From his place of ambush came he,
|
|
Striding terrible among them,
|
|
And so awful was his aspect
|
|
That the bravest quailed with terror.
|
|
Without mercy he destroyed them
|
|
Right and left, by tens and twenties,
|
|
And their wretched, lifeless bodies
|
|
Hung aloft on poles for scarecrows
|
|
Round the consecrated cornfields,
|
|
As a signal of his vengeance,
|
|
As a warning to marauders.
|
|
Only Kahgahgee, the leader,
|
|
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
|
|
He alone was spared among them
|
|
As a hostage for his people.
|
|
With his prisoner-string he bound him,
|
|
Led him captive to his wigwam,
|
|
Tied him fast with cords of elm-bark
|
|
To the ridge-pole of his wigwam.
|
|
"Kahgahgee, my raven!" said he,
|
|
"You the leader of the robbers,
|
|
You the plotter of this mischief,
|
|
The contriver of this outrage,
|
|
I will keep you, I will hold you,
|
|
As a hostage for your people,
|
|
As a pledge of good behavior!"
|
|
And he left him, grim and sulky,
|
|
Sitting in the morning sunshine
|
|
On the summit of the wigwam,
|
|
Croaking fiercely his displeasure,
|
|
Flapping his great sable pinions,
|
|
Vainly struggling for his freedom,
|
|
Vainly calling on his people!
|
|
Summer passed, and Shawondasee
|
|
Breathed his sighs o'er all the landscape,
|
|
From the South-land sent his ardor,
|
|
Wafted kisses warm and tender;
|
|
And the maize-field grew and ripened,
|
|
Till it stood in all the splendor
|
|
Of its garments green and yellow,
|
|
Of its tassels and its plumage,
|
|
And the maize-ears full and shining
|
|
Gleamed from bursting sheaths of verdure.
|
|
Then Nokomis, the old woman,
|
|
Spake, and said to Minnehaha:
|
|
`T is the Moon when, leaves are falling;
|
|
All the wild rice has been gathered,
|
|
And the maize is ripe and ready;
|
|
Let us gather in the harvest,
|
|
Let us wrestle with Mondamin,
|
|
Strip him of his plumes and tassels,
|
|
Of his garments green and yellow!"
|
|
And the merry Laughing Water
|
|
Went rejoicing from the wigwam,
|
|
With Nokomis, old and wrinkled,
|
|
And they called the women round them,
|
|
Called the young men and the maidens,
|
|
To the harvest of the cornfields,
|
|
To the husking of the maize-ear.
|
|
On the border of the forest,
|
|
Underneath the fragrant pine-trees,
|
|
Sat the old men and the warriors
|
|
Smoking in the pleasant shadow.
|
|
In uninterrupted silence
|
|
Looked they at the gamesome labor
|
|
Of the young men and the women;
|
|
Listened to their noisy talking,
|
|
To their laughter and their singing,
|
|
Heard them chattering like the magpies,
|
|
Heard them laughing like the blue-jays,
|
|
Heard them singing like the robins.
|
|
And whene'er some lucky maiden
|
|
Found a red ear in the husking,
|
|
Found a maize-ear red as blood is,
|
|
"Nushka!" cried they all together,
|
|
"Nushka! you shall have a sweetheart,
|
|
You shall have a handsome husband!"
|
|
"Ugh!" the old men all responded
|
|
From their seats beneath the pine-trees.
|
|
And whene'er a youth or maiden
|
|
Found a crooked ear in husking,
|
|
Found a maize-ear in the husking
|
|
Blighted, mildewed, or misshapen,
|
|
Then they laughed and sang together,
|
|
Crept and limped about the cornfields,
|
|
Mimicked in their gait and gestures
|
|
Some old man, bent almost double,
|
|
Singing singly or together:
|
|
"Wagemin, the thief of cornfields!
|
|
Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear!"
|
|
Till the cornfields rang with laughter,
|
|
Till from Hiawatha's wigwam
|
|
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
|
|
Screamed and quivered in his anger,
|
|
And from all the neighboring tree-tops
|
|
Cawed and croaked the black marauders.
|
|
"Ugh!" the old men all responded,
|
|
From their seats beneath the pine-trees!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XIV
|
|
|
|
Picture-Writing
|
|
|
|
In those days said Hiawatha,
|
|
"Lo! how all things fade and perish!
|
|
From the memory of the old men
|
|
Pass away the great traditions,
|
|
The achievements of the warriors,
|
|
The adventures of the hunters,
|
|
All the wisdom of the Medas,
|
|
All the craft of the Wabenos,
|
|
All the marvellous dreams and visions
|
|
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!
|
|
"Great men die and are forgotten,
|
|
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom
|
|
Perish in the ears that hear them,
|
|
Do not reach the generations
|
|
That, as yet unborn, are waiting
|
|
In the great, mysterious darkness
|
|
Of the speechless days that shall be!
|
|
"On the grave-posts of our fathers
|
|
Are no signs, no figures painted;
|
|
Who are in those graves we know not,
|
|
Only know they are our fathers.
|
|
Of what kith they are and kindred,
|
|
From what old, ancestral Totem,
|
|
Be it Eagle, Bear, or Beaver,
|
|
They descended, this we know not,
|
|
Only know they are our fathers.
|
|
"Face to face we speak together,
|
|
But we cannot speak when absent,
|
|
Cannot send our voices from us
|
|
To the friends that dwell afar off;
|
|
Cannot send a secret message,
|
|
But the bearer learns our secret,
|
|
May pervert it, may betray it,
|
|
May reveal it unto others."
|
|
Thus said Hiawatha, walking
|
|
In the solitary forest,
|
|
Pondering, musing in the forest,
|
|
On the welfare of his people.
|
|
From his pouch he took his colors,
|
|
Took his paints of different colors,
|
|
On the smooth bark of a birch-tree
|
|
Painted many shapes and figures,
|
|
Wonderful and mystic figures,
|
|
And each figure had a meaning,
|
|
Each some word or thought suggested.
|
|
Gitche Manito the Mighty,
|
|
He, the Master of Life, was painted
|
|
As an egg, with points projecting
|
|
To the four winds of the heavens.
|
|
Everywhere is the Great Spirit,
|
|
Was the meaning of this symbol.
|
|
Gitche Manito the Mighty,
|
|
He the dreadful Spirit of Evil,
|
|
As a serpent was depicted,
|
|
As Kenabeek, the great serpent.
|
|
Very crafty, very cunning,
|
|
Is the creeping Spirit of Evil,
|
|
Was the meaning of this symbol.
|
|
Life and Death he drew as circles,
|
|
Life was white, but Death was darkened;
|
|
Sun and moon and stars he painted,
|
|
Man and beast, and fish and reptile,
|
|
Forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers.
|
|
For the earth he drew a straight line,
|
|
For the sky a bow above it;
|
|
White the space between for daytime,
|
|
Filled with little stars for night-time;
|
|
On the left a point for sunrise,
|
|
On the right a point for sunset,
|
|
On the top a point for noontide,
|
|
And for rain and cloudy weather
|
|
Waving lines descending from it.
|
|
|
|
Footprints pointing towards a wigwam
|
|
Were a sign of invitation,
|
|
Were a sign of guests assembling;
|
|
Bloody hands with palms uplifted
|
|
Were a symbol of destruction,
|
|
Were a hostile sign and symbol.
|
|
All these things did Hiawatha
|
|
Show unto his wondering people,
|
|
And interpreted their meaning,
|
|
And he said: "Behold, your grave-posts
|
|
Have no mark, no sign, nor symbol,
|
|
Go and paint them all with figures;
|
|
Each one with its household symbol,
|
|
With its own ancestral Totem;
|
|
So that those who follow after
|
|
May distinguish them and know them."
|
|
And they painted on the grave-posts
|
|
On the graves yet unforgotten,
|
|
Each his own ancestral Totem,
|
|
Each the symbol of his household;
|
|
Figures of the Bear and Reindeer,
|
|
Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver,
|
|
Each inverted as a token
|
|
That the owner was departed,
|
|
That the chief who bore the symbol
|
|
Lay beneath in dust and ashes.
|
|
And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
|
|
The Wabenos, the Magicians,
|
|
And the Medicine-men, the Medas,
|
|
Painted upon bark and deer-skin
|
|
Figures for the songs they chanted,
|
|
For each song a separate symbol,
|
|
Figures mystical and awful,
|
|
Figures strange and brightly colored;
|
|
And each figure had its meaning,
|
|
Each some magic song suggested.
|
|
The Great Spirit, the Creator,
|
|
Flashing light through all the heaven;
|
|
The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek,
|
|
With his bloody crest erected,
|
|
Creeping, looking into heaven;
|
|
In the sky the sun, that listens,
|
|
And the moon eclipsed and dying;
|
|
Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk,
|
|
And the cormorant, bird of magic;
|
|
Headless men, that walk the heavens,
|
|
Bodies lying pierced with arrows,
|
|
Bloody hands of death uplifted,
|
|
Flags on graves, and great war-captains
|
|
Grasping both the earth and heaven!
|
|
Such as these the shapes they painted
|
|
On the birch-bark and the deer-skin;
|
|
Songs of war and songs of hunting,
|
|
Songs of medicine and of magic,
|
|
All were written in these figures,
|
|
For each figure had its meaning,
|
|
Each its separate song recorded.
|
|
Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
|
|
The most subtle of all medicines,
|
|
The most potent spell of magic,
|
|
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
|
|
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
|
|
Symbol and interpretation.
|
|
First a human figure standing,
|
|
Painted in the brightest scarlet;
|
|
`T Is the lover, the musician,
|
|
And the meaning is, "My painting
|
|
Makes me powerful over others."
|
|
Then the figure seated, singing,
|
|
Playing on a drum of magic,
|
|
And the interpretation, "Listen!
|
|
`T Is my voice you hear, my singing!"
|
|
Then the same red figure seated
|
|
In the shelter of a wigwam,
|
|
And the meaning of the symbol,
|
|
"I will come and sit beside you
|
|
In the mystery of my passion!"
|
|
Then two figures, man and woman,
|
|
Standing hand in hand together
|
|
With their hands so clasped together
|
|
That they seemed in one united,
|
|
And the words thus represented
|
|
Are, "I see your heart within you,
|
|
And your cheeks are red with blushes!"
|
|
Next the maiden on an island,
|
|
In the centre of an Island;
|
|
And the song this shape suggested
|
|
Was, "Though you were at a distance,
|
|
Were upon some far-off island,
|
|
Such the spell I cast upon you,
|
|
Such the magic power of passion,
|
|
I could straightway draw you to me!"
|
|
Then the figure of the maiden
|
|
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
|
|
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
|
|
Saying, "Though you were far from me
|
|
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
|
|
Still the voice of love would reach you!"
|
|
And the last of all the figures
|
|
Was a heart within a circle,
|
|
Drawn within a magic circle;
|
|
And the image had this meaning:
|
|
"Naked lies your heart before me,
|
|
To your naked heart I whisper!"
|
|
Thus it was that Hiawatha,
|
|
In his wisdom, taught the people
|
|
All the mysteries of painting,
|
|
All the art of Picture-Writing,
|
|
On the smooth bark of the birch-tree,
|
|
On the white skin of the reindeer,
|
|
On the grave-posts of the village.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XV
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Lamentation
|
|
|
|
In those days the Evil Spirits,
|
|
All the Manitos of mischief,
|
|
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
|
|
And his love for Chibiabos,
|
|
Jealous of their faithful friendship,
|
|
And their noble words and actions,
|
|
Made at length a league against them,
|
|
To molest them and destroy them.
|
|
Hiawatha, wise and wary,
|
|
Often said to Chibiabos,
|
|
"O my brother! do not leave me,
|
|
Lest the Evil Spirits harm you!"
|
|
Chibiabos, young and heedless,
|
|
Laughing shook his coal-black tresses,
|
|
Answered ever sweet and childlike,
|
|
"Do not fear for me, O brother!
|
|
Harm and evil come not near me!"
|
|
Once when Peboan, the Winter,
|
|
Roofed with ice the Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
When the snow-flakes, whirling downward,
|
|
Hissed among the withered oak-leaves,
|
|
Changed the pine-trees into wigwams,
|
|
Covered all the earth with silence,
|
|
Armed with arrows, shod with snow-shoes,
|
|
Heeding not his brother's warning,
|
|
Fearing not the Evil Spirits,
|
|
Forth to hunt the deer with antlers
|
|
All alone went Chibiabos.
|
|
Right across the Big-Sea-Water
|
|
Sprang with speed the deer before him.
|
|
With the wind and snow he followed,
|
|
O'er the treacherous ice he followed,
|
|
Wild with all the fierce commotion
|
|
And the rapture of the hunting.
|
|
But beneath, the Evil Spirits
|
|
Lay in ambush, waiting for him,
|
|
Broke the treacherous ice beneath him,
|
|
Dragged him downward to the bottom,
|
|
Buried in the sand his body.
|
|
Unktahee, the god of water,
|
|
He the god of the Dacotahs,
|
|
Drowned him in the deep abysses
|
|
Of the lake of Gitche Gumee.
|
|
From the headlands Hiawatha
|
|
Sent forth such a wail of anguish,
|
|
Such a fearful lamentation,
|
|
That the bison paused to listen,
|
|
And the wolves howled from the prairies,
|
|
And the thunder in the distance
|
|
Starting answered "Baim-wawa!"
|
|
Then his face with black he painted,
|
|
With his robe his head he covered,
|
|
In his wigwam sat lamenting,
|
|
Seven long weeks he sat lamenting,
|
|
Uttering still this moan of sorrow:
|
|
"He is dead, the sweet musician!
|
|
He the sweetest of all singers!
|
|
He has gone from us forever,
|
|
He has moved a little nearer
|
|
To the Master of all music,
|
|
To the Master of all singing!
|
|
O my brother, Chibiabos!"
|
|
And the melancholy fir-trees
|
|
Waved their dark green fans above him,
|
|
Waved their purple cones above him,
|
|
Sighing with him to console him,
|
|
Mingling with his lamentation
|
|
Their complaining, their lamenting.
|
|
Came the Spring, and all the forest
|
|
Looked in vain for Chibiabos;
|
|
Sighed the rivulet, Sebowisha,
|
|
Sighed the rushes in the meadow.
|
|
From the tree-tops sang the bluebird,
|
|
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
|
|
"Chibiabos! Chibiabos!
|
|
He is dead, the sweet musician!"
|
|
From the wigwam sang the robin,
|
|
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
|
|
"Chibiabos! Chibiabos!
|
|
He is dead, the sweetest singer!"
|
|
And at night through all the forest
|
|
Went the whippoorwill complaining,
|
|
Wailing went the Wawonaissa,
|
|
"Chibiabos! Chibiabos!
|
|
He is dead, the sweet musician!
|
|
He the sweetest of all singers!"
|
|
Then the Medicine-men, the Medas,
|
|
The magicians, the Wabenos,
|
|
And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
|
|
Came to visit Hiawatha;
|
|
Built a Sacred Lodge beside him,
|
|
To appease him, to console him,
|
|
Walked in silent, grave procession,
|
|
Bearing each a pouch of healing,
|
|
Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter,
|
|
Filled with magic roots and simples,
|
|
Filled with very potent medicines.
|
|
When he heard their steps approaching~,
|
|
Hiawatha ceased lamenting,
|
|
Called no more on Chibiabos;
|
|
Naught he questioned, naught he answered,
|
|
But his mournful head uncovered,
|
|
From his face the mourning colors
|
|
Washed he slowly and in silence,
|
|
Slowly and in silence followed
|
|
Onward to the Sacred Wigwam.
|
|
There a magic drink they gave him,
|
|
Made of Nahma-wusk, the spearmint,
|
|
And Wabeno-wusk, the yarrow,
|
|
Roots of power, and herbs of healing;
|
|
Beat their drums, and shook their rattles;
|
|
Chanted singly and in chorus,
|
|
Mystic songs like these, they chanted.
|
|
"I myself, myself! behold me!
|
|
`T Is the great Gray Eagle talking;
|
|
Come, ye white crows, come and hear him!
|
|
The loud-speaking thunder helps me;
|
|
All the unseen spirits help me;
|
|
I can hear their voices calling,
|
|
All around the sky I hear them!
|
|
I can blow you strong, my brother,
|
|
I can heal you, Hiawatha!"
|
|
"Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus,
|
|
"Wayha-way!" the mystic chorus.
|
|
Friends of mine are all the serpents!
|
|
Hear me shake my skin of hen-hawk!
|
|
Mahng, the white loon, I can kill him;
|
|
I can shoot your heart and kill it!
|
|
I can blow you strong, my brother,
|
|
I can heal you, Hiawatha !"
|
|
"Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus,
|
|
"Wayhaway!" the mystic chorus.
|
|
"I myself, myself! the prophet!
|
|
When I speak the wigwam trembles,
|
|
Shakes the Sacred Lodge with terror,
|
|
Hands unseen begin to shake it!
|
|
When I walk, the sky I tread on
|
|
Bends and makes a noise beneath me!
|
|
I can blow you strong, my brother!
|
|
Rise and speak, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
"Hi-au-ha!" replied the chorus,
|
|
"Way-ha-way!" the mystic chorus.
|
|
Then they shook their medicine-pouches
|
|
O'er the head of Hiawatha,
|
|
Danced their medicine-dance around him;
|
|
And upstarting wild and haggard,
|
|
Like a man from dreams awakened,
|
|
He was healed of all his madness.
|
|
As the clouds are swept from heaven,
|
|
Straightway from his brain departed
|
|
All his moody melancholy;
|
|
As the ice is swept from rivers,
|
|
Straightway from his heart departed
|
|
All his sorrow and affliction.
|
|
Then they summoned Chibiabos
|
|
From his grave beneath the waters,
|
|
From the sands of Gitche Gumee
|
|
Summoned Hiawatha's brother.
|
|
And so mighty was the magic
|
|
Of that cry and invocation,
|
|
That he heard it as he lay there
|
|
Underneath the Big-Sea-Water;
|
|
From the sand he rose and listened,
|
|
Heard the music and the singing,
|
|
Came, obedient to the summons,
|
|
To the doorway of the wigwam,
|
|
But to enter they forbade him.
|
|
Through a chink a coal they gave him,
|
|
Through the door a burning fire-brand;
|
|
Ruler in the Land of Spirits,
|
|
Ruler o'er the dead, they made him,
|
|
Telling him a fire to kindle
|
|
For all those that died thereafter,
|
|
Camp-fires for their night encampments
|
|
On their solitary journey
|
|
To the kingdom of Ponemah,
|
|
To the land of the Hereafter.
|
|
From the village of his childhood,
|
|
From the homes of those who knew him,
|
|
Passing silent through the forest,
|
|
Like a smoke-wreath wafted sideways,
|
|
Slowly vanished Chibiabos!
|
|
Where he passed, the branches moved not,
|
|
Where he trod, the grasses bent not,
|
|
And the fallen leaves of last year
|
|
Made no sound beneath his footstep.
|
|
Four whole days he journeyed onward
|
|
Down the pathway of the dead men;
|
|
On the dead-man's strawberry feasted,
|
|
Crossed the melancholy river,
|
|
On the swinging log he crossed it,
|
|
Came unto the Lake of Silver,
|
|
In the Stone Canoe was carried
|
|
To the Islands of the Blessed,
|
|
To the land of ghosts and shadows.
|
|
On that journey, moving slowly,
|
|
Many weary spirits saw he,
|
|
Panting under heavy burdens,
|
|
Laden with war-clubs, bows and arrows,
|
|
Robes of fur, and pots and kettles,
|
|
And with food that friends had given
|
|
For that solitary journey.
|
|
"Ay! why do the living," said they,
|
|
"Lay such heavy burdens on us!
|
|
Better were it to go naked,
|
|
Better were it to go fasting,
|
|
Than to bear such heavy burdens
|
|
On our long and weary journey!"
|
|
Forth then issued Hiawatha,
|
|
Wandered eastward, wandered westward,
|
|
Teaching men the use of simples
|
|
And the antidotes for poisons,
|
|
And the cure of all diseases.
|
|
Thus was first made known to mortals
|
|
All the mystery of Medamin,
|
|
All the sacred art of healing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XVI
|
|
|
|
Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
|
|
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
|
|
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
|
|
Vexed the village with disturbance;
|
|
You shall hear of all his mischief,
|
|
And his flight from Hiawatha,
|
|
And his wondrous transmigrations,
|
|
And the end of his adventures.
|
|
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
|
|
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
|
|
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
|
|
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
|
|
It was he who in his frenzy
|
|
Whirled these drifting sands together,
|
|
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
|
|
When, among the guests assembled,
|
|
He so merrily and madly
|
|
Danced at Hiawatha's wedding,
|
|
Danced the Beggar's Dance to please them.
|
|
Now, in search of new adventures,
|
|
From his lodge went Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Came with speed into the village,
|
|
Found the young men all assembled
|
|
In the lodge of old Iagoo,
|
|
Listening to his monstrous stories,
|
|
To his wonderful adventures.
|
|
He was telling them the story
|
|
Of Ojeeg, the Summer-Maker,
|
|
How he made a hole in heaven,
|
|
How he climbed up into heaven,
|
|
And let out the summer-weather,
|
|
The perpetual, pleasant Summer;
|
|
How the Otter first essayed it;
|
|
How the Beaver, Lynx, and Badger
|
|
Tried in turn the great achievement,
|
|
From the summit of the mountain
|
|
Smote their fists against the heavens,
|
|
Smote against the sky their foreheads,
|
|
Cracked the sky, but could not break it;
|
|
How the Wolverine, uprising,
|
|
Made him ready for the encounter,
|
|
Bent his knees down, like a squirrel,
|
|
Drew his arms back, like a cricket.
|
|
"Once he leaped," said old Iagoo,
|
|
"Once he leaped, and lo! above him
|
|
Bent the sky, as ice in rivers
|
|
When the waters rise beneath it;
|
|
Twice he leaped, and lo! above him
|
|
Cracked the sky, as ice in rivers
|
|
When the freshet is at highest!
|
|
Thrice he leaped, and lo! above him
|
|
Broke the shattered sky asunder,
|
|
And he disappeared within it,
|
|
And Ojeeg, the Fisher Weasel,
|
|
With a bound went in behind him!"
|
|
"Hark you!" shouted Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
As he entered at the doorway;
|
|
"I am tired of all this talking,
|
|
Tired of old Iagoo's stories,
|
|
Tired of Hiawatha's wisdom.
|
|
Here is something to amuse you,
|
|
Better than this endless talking."
|
|
Then from out his pouch of wolf-skin
|
|
Forth he drew, with solemn manner,
|
|
All the game of Bowl and Counters,
|
|
Pugasaing, with thirteen pieces.
|
|
White on one side were they painted,
|
|
And vermilion on the other;
|
|
Two Kenabeeks or great serpents,
|
|
Two Ininewug or wedge-men,
|
|
One great war-club, Pugamaugun,
|
|
And one slender fish, the Keego,
|
|
Four round pieces, Ozawabeeks,
|
|
And three Sheshebwug or ducklings.
|
|
All were made of bone and painted,
|
|
All except the Ozawabeeks;
|
|
These were brass, on one side burnished,
|
|
And were black upon the other.
|
|
In a wooden bowl he placed them,
|
|
Shook and jostled them together,
|
|
Threw them on the ground before him,
|
|
Thus exclaiming and explaining:
|
|
"Red side up are all the pieces,
|
|
And one great Kenabeek standing
|
|
On the bright side of a brass piece,
|
|
On a burnished Ozawabeek;
|
|
Thirteen tens and eight are counted."
|
|
Then again he shook the pieces,
|
|
Shook and jostled them together,
|
|
Threw them on the ground before him,
|
|
Still exclaiming and explaining:
|
|
"White are both the great Kenabeeks,
|
|
White the Ininewug, the wedge-men,
|
|
Red are all the other pieces;
|
|
Five tens and an eight are counted."
|
|
Thus he taught the game of hazard,
|
|
Thus displayed it and explained it,
|
|
Running through its various chances,
|
|
Various changes, various meanings:
|
|
Twenty curious eyes stared at him,
|
|
Full of eagerness stared at him.
|
|
"Many games," said old Iagoo,
|
|
"Many games of skill and hazard
|
|
Have I seen in different nations,
|
|
Have I played in different countries.
|
|
He who plays with old Iagoo
|
|
Must have very nimble fingers;
|
|
Though you think yourself so skilful,
|
|
I can beat you, Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
I can even give you lessons
|
|
In your game of Bowl and Counters!"
|
|
So they sat and played together,
|
|
All the old men and the young men,
|
|
Played for dresses, weapons, wampum,
|
|
Played till midnight, played till morning,
|
|
Played until the Yenadizze,
|
|
Till the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Of their treasures had despoiled them,
|
|
Of the best of all their dresses,
|
|
Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine,
|
|
Belts of wampum, crests of feathers,
|
|
Warlike weapons, pipes and pouches.
|
|
Twenty eyes glared wildly at him,
|
|
Like the eyes of wolves glared at him.
|
|
Said the lucky Pau-Puk-Keewis:
|
|
"In my wigwam I am lonely,
|
|
In my wanderings and adventures
|
|
I have need of a companion,
|
|
Fain would have a Meshinauwa,
|
|
An attendant and pipe-bearer.
|
|
I will venture all these winnings,
|
|
All these garments heaped about me,
|
|
All this wampum, all these feathers,
|
|
On a single throw will venture
|
|
All against the young man yonder!"
|
|
`T was a youth of sixteen summers,
|
|
`T was a nephew of Iagoo;
|
|
Face-in-a-Mist, the people called him.
|
|
As the fire burns in a pipe-head
|
|
Dusky red beneath the ashes,
|
|
So beneath his shaggy eyebrows
|
|
Glowed the eyes of old Iagoo.
|
|
"Ugh!" he answered very fiercely;
|
|
"Ugh!" they answered all and each one.
|
|
Seized the wooden bowl the old man,
|
|
Closely in his bony fingers
|
|
Clutched the fatal bowl, Onagon,
|
|
Shook it fiercely and with fury,
|
|
Made the pieces ring together
|
|
As he threw them down before him.
|
|
Red were both the great Kenabeeks,
|
|
Red the Ininewug, the wedge-men,
|
|
Red the Sheshebwug, the ducklings,
|
|
Black the four brass Ozawabeeks,
|
|
White alone the fish, the Keego;
|
|
Only five the pieces counted!
|
|
Then the smiling Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Shook the bowl and threw the pieces;
|
|
Lightly in the air he tossed them,
|
|
And they fell about him scattered;
|
|
Dark and bright the Ozawabeeks,
|
|
Red and white the other pieces,
|
|
And upright among the others
|
|
One Ininewug was standing,
|
|
Even as crafty Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Stood alone among the players,
|
|
Saying, "Five tens! mine the game is,"
|
|
Twenty eyes glared at him fiercely,
|
|
Like the eyes of wolves glared at him,
|
|
As he turned and left the wigwam,
|
|
Followed by his Meshinauwa,
|
|
By the nephew of Iagoo,
|
|
By the tall and graceful stripling,
|
|
Bearing in his arms the winnings,
|
|
Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine,
|
|
Belts of wampum, pipes and weapons.
|
|
"Carry them," said Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Pointing with his fan of feathers,
|
|
"To my wigwam far to eastward,
|
|
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo!"
|
|
Hot and red with smoke and gambling
|
|
Were the eyes of Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
As he came forth to the freshness
|
|
Of the pleasant Summer morning.
|
|
All the birds were singing gayly,
|
|
All the streamlets flowing swiftly,
|
|
And the heart of Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Sang with pleasure as the birds sing,
|
|
Beat with triumph like the streamlets,
|
|
As he wandered through the village,
|
|
In the early gray of morning,
|
|
With his fan of turkey-feathers,
|
|
With his plumes and tufts of swan's down,
|
|
Till he reached the farthest wigwam,
|
|
Reached the lodge of Hiawatha.
|
|
Silent was it and deserted;
|
|
No one met him at the doorway,
|
|
No one came to bid him welcome;
|
|
But the birds were singing round it,
|
|
In and out and round the doorway,
|
|
Hopping, singing, fluttering, feeding,
|
|
And aloft upon the ridge-pole
|
|
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
|
|
Sat with fiery eyes, and, screaming,
|
|
Flapped his wings at Pau-Puk-Keewis.
|
|
"All are gone! the lodge Is empty!"
|
|
Thus it was spake Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
In his heart resolving mischief
|
|
"Gone is wary Hiawatha,
|
|
Gone the silly Laughing Water,
|
|
Gone Nokomis, the old woman,
|
|
And the lodge is left unguarded!"
|
|
By the neck he seized the raven,
|
|
Whirled it round him like a rattle,
|
|
Like a medicine-pouch he shook it,
|
|
Strangled Kahgahgee, the raven,
|
|
From the ridge-pole of the wigwam
|
|
Left its lifeless body hanging,
|
|
As an insult to its master,
|
|
As a taunt to Hiawatha.
|
|
With a stealthy step he entered,
|
|
Round the lodge in wild disorder
|
|
Threw the household things about him,
|
|
Piled together in confusion
|
|
Bowls of wood and earthen kettles,
|
|
Robes of buffalo and beaver,
|
|
Skins of otter, lynx, and ermine,
|
|
As an insult to Nokomis,
|
|
As a taunt to Minnehaha.
|
|
Then departed Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Whistling, singing through the forest,
|
|
Whistling gayly to the squirrels,
|
|
Who from hollow boughs above him
|
|
Dropped their acorn-shells upon him,
|
|
Singing gayly to the wood birds,
|
|
Who from out the leafy darkness
|
|
Answered with a song as merry.
|
|
Then he climbed the rocky headlands,
|
|
Looking o'er the Gitche Gumee,
|
|
Perched himself upon their summit,
|
|
Waiting full of mirth and mischief
|
|
The return of Hiawatha.
|
|
Stretched upon his back he lay there;
|
|
Far below him splashed the waters,
|
|
Plashed and washed the dreamy waters;
|
|
Far above him swam the heavens,
|
|
Swam the dizzy, dreamy heavens;
|
|
Round him hovered, fluttered, rustled
|
|
Hiawatha's mountain chickens,
|
|
Flock-wise swept and wheeled about him,
|
|
Almost brushed him with their pinions.
|
|
And he killed them as he lay there,
|
|
Slaughtered them by tens and twenties,
|
|
Threw their bodies down the headland,
|
|
Threw them on the beach below him,
|
|
Till at length Kayoshk, the sea-gull,
|
|
Perched upon a crag above them,
|
|
Shouted: "It is Pau-Puk-Keewis!
|
|
He is slaying us by hundreds!
|
|
Send a message to our brother,
|
|
Tidings send to Hiawatha!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XVII
|
|
|
|
The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
|
|
Full of wrath was Hiawatha
|
|
When he came into the village,
|
|
Found the people in confusion,
|
|
Heard of all the misdemeanors,
|
|
All the malice and the mischief,
|
|
Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis.
|
|
Hard his breath came through his nostrils,
|
|
Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered
|
|
Words of anger and resentment,
|
|
Hot and humming, like a hornet.
|
|
"I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Slay this mischief-maker!" said he.
|
|
"Not so long and wide the world is,
|
|
Not so rude and rough the way is,
|
|
That my wrath shall not attain him,
|
|
That my vengeance shall not reach him!"
|
|
Then in swift pursuit departed
|
|
Hiawatha and the hunters
|
|
On the trail of Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Through the forest, where he passed it,
|
|
To the headlands where he rested;
|
|
But they found not Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Only in the trampled grasses,
|
|
In the whortleberry-bushes,
|
|
Found the couch where he had rested,
|
|
Found the impress of his body.
|
|
From the lowlands far beneath them,
|
|
From the Muskoday, the meadow,
|
|
Pau-Puk-Keewis, turning backward,
|
|
Made a gesture of defiance,
|
|
Made a gesture of derision;
|
|
And aloud cried Hiawatha,
|
|
From the summit of the mountains:
|
|
"Not so long and wide the world is,
|
|
Not so rude and rough the way is,
|
|
But my wrath shall overtake you,
|
|
And my vengeance shall attain you!"
|
|
Over rock and over river,
|
|
Through bush, and brake, and forest,
|
|
Ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis;
|
|
Like an antelope he bounded,
|
|
Till he came unto a streamlet
|
|
In the middle of the forest,
|
|
To a streamlet still and tranquil,
|
|
That had overflowed its margin,
|
|
To a dam made by the beavers,
|
|
To a pond of quiet water,
|
|
Where knee-deep the trees were standing,
|
|
Where the water lilies floated,
|
|
Where the rushes waved and whispered.
|
|
On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
On the dam of trunks and branches,
|
|
Through whose chinks the water spouted,
|
|
O'er whose summit flowed the streamlet.
|
|
From the bottom rose the beaver,
|
|
Looked with two great eyes of wonder,
|
|
Eyes that seemed to ask a question,
|
|
At the stranger, Pau-Puk-Keewis.
|
|
On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
O'er his ankles flowed the streamlet,
|
|
Flowed the bright and silvery water,
|
|
And he spake unto the beaver,
|
|
With a smile he spake in this wise:
|
|
"O my friend Ahmeek, the beaver,
|
|
Cool and pleasant Is the water;
|
|
Let me dive into the water,
|
|
Let me rest there in your lodges;
|
|
Change me, too, into a beaver!"
|
|
Cautiously replied the beaver,
|
|
With reserve he thus made answer:
|
|
"Let me first consult the others,
|
|
Let me ask the other beavers."
|
|
Down he sank into the water,
|
|
Heavily sank he, as a stone sinks,
|
|
Down among the leaves and branches,
|
|
Brown and matted at the bottom.
|
|
On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
O'er his ankles flowed the streamlet,
|
|
Spouted through the chinks below him,
|
|
Dashed upon the stones beneath him,
|
|
Spread serene and calm before him,
|
|
And the sunshine and the shadows
|
|
Fell in flecks and gleams upon him,
|
|
Fell in little shining patches,
|
|
Through the waving, rustling branches.
|
|
From the bottom rose the beavers,
|
|
Silently above the surface
|
|
Rose one head and then another,
|
|
Till the pond seemed full of beavers,
|
|
Full of black and shining faces.
|
|
To the beavers Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Spake entreating, said in this wise:
|
|
"Very pleasant Is your dwelling,
|
|
O my friends! and safe from danger;
|
|
Can you not, with all your cunning,
|
|
All your wisdom and contrivance,
|
|
Change me, too, into a beaver?"
|
|
"Yes!" replied Ahmeek, the beaver,
|
|
He the King of all the beavers,
|
|
"Let yourself slide down among us,
|
|
Down into the tranquil water."
|
|
Down into the pond among them
|
|
Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis;
|
|
Black became his shirt of deer-skin,
|
|
Black his moccasins and leggings,
|
|
In a broad black tail behind him
|
|
Spread his fox-tails and his fringes;
|
|
He was changed into a beaver.
|
|
"Make me large," said Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
"Make me large and make me larger,
|
|
Larger than the other beavers."
|
|
"Yes," the beaver chief responded,
|
|
"When our lodge below you enter,
|
|
In our wigwam we will make you
|
|
Ten times larger than the others."
|
|
Thus into the clear, brown water
|
|
Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis:
|
|
Found the bottom covered over
|
|
With the trunks of trees and branches,
|
|
Hoards of food against the winter,
|
|
Piles and heaps against the famine;
|
|
Found the lodge with arching doorway,
|
|
Leading into spacious chambers.
|
|
Here they made him large and larger,
|
|
Made him largest of the beavers,
|
|
Ten times larger than the others.
|
|
"You shall be our ruler," said they;
|
|
"Chief and King of all the beavers."
|
|
But not long had Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Sat in state among the beavers,
|
|
When there came a voice, of warning
|
|
From the watchman at his station
|
|
In the water-flags and lilies,
|
|
Saying, "Here Is Hiawatha!
|
|
Hiawatha with his hunters!"
|
|
Then they heard a cry above them,
|
|
Heard a shouting and a tramping,
|
|
Heard a crashing and a rushing,
|
|
And the water round and o'er them
|
|
Sank and sucked away in eddies,
|
|
And they knew their dam was broken.
|
|
On the lodge's roof the hunters
|
|
Leaped, and broke it all asunder;
|
|
Streamed the sunshine through the crevice,
|
|
Sprang the beavers through the doorway,
|
|
Hid themselves in deeper water,
|
|
In the channel of the streamlet;
|
|
But the mighty Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Could not pass beneath the doorway;
|
|
He was puffed with pride and feeding,
|
|
He was swollen like a bladder.
|
|
Through the roof looked Hiawatha,
|
|
Cried aloud, "O Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Vain are all your craft and cunning,
|
|
Vain your manifold disguises!
|
|
Well I know you, Pau-Puk-Keewis!"
|
|
With their clubs they beat and bruised him,
|
|
Beat to death poor Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Pounded him as maize is pounded,
|
|
Till his skull was crushed to pieces.
|
|
Six tall hunters, lithe and limber,
|
|
Bore him home on poles and branches,
|
|
Bore the body of the beaver;
|
|
But the ghost, the Jeebi in him,
|
|
Thought and felt as Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Still lived on as Pau-Puk-Keewis.
|
|
And it fluttered, strove, and struggled,
|
|
Waving hither, waving thither,
|
|
As the curtains of a wigwam
|
|
Struggle with their thongs of deer-skin,
|
|
When the wintry wind is blowing;
|
|
Till it drew itself together,
|
|
Till it rose up from the body,
|
|
Till it took the form and features
|
|
Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Vanishing into the forest.
|
|
But the wary Hiawatha
|
|
Saw the figure ere it vanished,
|
|
Saw the form of Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Glide into the soft blue shadow
|
|
Of the pine-trees of the forest;
|
|
Toward the squares of white beyond it,
|
|
Toward an opening in the forest.
|
|
Like a wind it rushed and panted,
|
|
Bending all the boughs before it,
|
|
And behind it, as the rain comes,
|
|
Came the steps of Hiawatha.
|
|
To a lake with many islands
|
|
Came the breathless Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Where among the water-lilies
|
|
Pishnekuh, the brant, were sailing;
|
|
Through the tufts of rushes floating,
|
|
Steering through the reedy Islands.
|
|
Now their broad black beaks they lifted,
|
|
Now they plunged beneath the water,
|
|
Now they darkened in the shadow,
|
|
Now they brightened in the sunshine.
|
|
"Pishnekuh!" cried Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
"Pishnekuh! my brothers!" said he,
|
|
"Change me to a brant with plumage,
|
|
With a shining neck and feathers,
|
|
Make me large, and make me larger,
|
|
Ten times larger than the others."
|
|
Straightway to a brant they changed him,
|
|
With two huge and dusky pinions,
|
|
With a bosom smooth and rounded,
|
|
With a bill like two great paddles,
|
|
Made him larger than the others,
|
|
Ten times larger than the largest,
|
|
Just as, shouting from the forest,
|
|
On the shore stood Hiawatha.
|
|
Up they rose with cry and clamor,
|
|
With a whir and beat of pinions,
|
|
Rose up from the reedy Islands,
|
|
From the water-flags and lilies.
|
|
And they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis:
|
|
"In your flying, look not downward,
|
|
Take good heed and look not downward,
|
|
Lest some strange mischance should happen,
|
|
Lest some great mishap befall you!"
|
|
Fast and far they fled to northward,
|
|
Fast and far through mist and sunshine,
|
|
Fed among the moors and fen-lands,
|
|
Slept among the reeds and rushes.
|
|
On the morrow as they journeyed,
|
|
Buoyed and lifted by the South-wind,
|
|
Wafted onward by the South-wind,
|
|
Blowing fresh and strong behind them,
|
|
Rose a sound of human voices,
|
|
Rose a clamor from beneath them,
|
|
From the lodges of a village,
|
|
From the people miles beneath them.
|
|
For the people of the village
|
|
Saw the flock of brant with wonder,
|
|
Saw the wings of Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Flapping far up in the ether,
|
|
Broader than two doorway curtains.
|
|
Pau-Puk-Keewis heard the shouting,
|
|
Knew the voice of Hiawatha,
|
|
Knew the outcry of Iagoo,
|
|
And, forgetful of the warning,
|
|
Drew his neck in, and looked downward,
|
|
And the wind that blew behind him
|
|
Caught his mighty fan of feathers,
|
|
Sent him wheeling, whirling downward!
|
|
All in vain did Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Struggle to regain his balance!
|
|
Whirling round and round and downward,
|
|
He beheld in turn the village
|
|
And in turn the flock above him,
|
|
Saw the village coming nearer,
|
|
And the flock receding farther,
|
|
Heard the voices growing louder,
|
|
Heard the shouting and the laughter;
|
|
Saw no more the flocks above him,
|
|
Only saw the earth beneath him;
|
|
Dead out of the empty heaven,
|
|
Dead among the shouting people,
|
|
With a heavy sound and sullen,
|
|
Fell the brant with broken pinions.
|
|
But his soul, his ghost, his shadow,
|
|
Still survived as Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Took again the form and features
|
|
Of the handsome Yenadizze,
|
|
And again went rushing onward,
|
|
Followed fast by Hiawatha,
|
|
Crying: "Not so wide the world is,
|
|
Not so long and rough the way Is,
|
|
But my wrath shall overtake you,
|
|
But my vengeance shall attain you!"
|
|
And so near he came, so near him,
|
|
That his hand was stretched to seize him,
|
|
His right hand to seize and hold him,
|
|
When the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Whirled and spun about in circles,
|
|
Fanned the air into a whirlwind,
|
|
Danced the dust and leaves about him,
|
|
And amid the whirling eddies
|
|
Sprang into a hollow oak-tree,
|
|
Changed himself into a serpent,
|
|
Gliding out through root and rubbish.
|
|
With his right hand Hiawatha
|
|
Smote amain the hollow oak-tree,
|
|
Rent it into shreds and splinters,
|
|
Left it lying there in fragments.
|
|
But in vain; for Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Once again in human figure,
|
|
Full in sight ran on before him,
|
|
Sped away in gust and whirlwind,
|
|
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
|
|
Westward by the Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
Came unto the rocky headlands,
|
|
To the Pictured Rocks of sandstone,
|
|
Looking over lake and landscape.
|
|
And the Old Man of the Mountain,
|
|
He the Manito of Mountains,
|
|
Opened wide his rocky doorways,
|
|
Opened wide his deep abysses,
|
|
Giving Pau-Puk-Keewis shelter
|
|
In his caverns dark and dreary,
|
|
Bidding Pau-Puk-Keewis welcome
|
|
To his gloomy lodge of sandstone.
|
|
There without stood Hiawatha,
|
|
Found the doorways closed against him,
|
|
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
|
|
Smote great caverns in the sandstone,
|
|
Cried aloud in tones of thunder,
|
|
"Open! I am Hiawatha!"
|
|
But the Old Man of the Mountain
|
|
Opened not, and made no answer
|
|
From the silent crags of sandstone,
|
|
From the gloomy rock abysses.
|
|
Then he raised his hands to heaven,
|
|
Called imploring on the tempest,
|
|
Called Waywassimo, the lightning,
|
|
And the thunder, Annemeekee;
|
|
And they came with night and darkness,
|
|
Sweeping down the Big-Sea-Water
|
|
From the distant Thunder Mountains;
|
|
And the trembling Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Heard the footsteps of the thunder,
|
|
Saw the red eyes of the lightning,
|
|
Was afraid, and crouched and trembled.
|
|
Then Waywassimo, the lightning,
|
|
Smote the doorways of the caverns,
|
|
With his war-club smote the doorways,
|
|
Smote the jutting crags of sandstone,
|
|
And the thunder, Annemeekee,
|
|
Shouted down into the caverns,
|
|
Saying, "Where is Pau-Puk-Keewis!"
|
|
And the crags fell, and beneath them
|
|
Dead among the rocky ruins
|
|
Lay the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Lay the handsome Yenadizze,
|
|
Slain in his own human figure.
|
|
Ended were his wild adventures,
|
|
Ended were his tricks and gambols,
|
|
Ended all his craft and cunning,
|
|
Ended all his mischief-making,
|
|
All his gambling and his dancing,
|
|
All his wooing of the maidens.
|
|
Then the noble Hiawatha
|
|
Took his soul, his ghost, his shadow,
|
|
Spake and said: "O Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
Never more in human figure
|
|
Shall you search for new adventures'
|
|
Never more with jest and laughter
|
|
Dance the dust and leaves in whirlwinds;
|
|
But above there in the heavens
|
|
You shall soar and sail in circles;
|
|
I will change you to an eagle,
|
|
To Keneu, the great war-eagle,
|
|
Chief of all the fowls with feathers,
|
|
Chief of Hiawatha's chickens."
|
|
And the name of Pau-Puk-Keewis
|
|
Lingers still among the people,
|
|
Lingers still among the singers,
|
|
And among the story-tellers;
|
|
And in Winter, when the snow-flakes
|
|
Whirl in eddies round the lodges,
|
|
When the wind in gusty tumult
|
|
O'er the smoke-flue pipes and whistles,
|
|
"There," they cry, "comes Pau-Puk-Keewis,
|
|
He is dancing through the village,
|
|
He is gathering in his harvest!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XVIII
|
|
|
|
The Death of Kwasind
|
|
|
|
Far and wide among the nations
|
|
Spread the name and fame of Kwasind;
|
|
No man dared to strive with Kwasind,
|
|
No man could compete with Kwasind.
|
|
But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies,
|
|
They the envious Little People,
|
|
They the fairies and the pygmies,
|
|
Plotted and conspired against him.
|
|
"If this hateful Kwasind," said they,
|
|
"If this great, outrageous fellow
|
|
Goes on thus a little longer,
|
|
Tearing everything he touches,
|
|
Rending everything to pieces,
|
|
Filling all the world with wonder,
|
|
What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies?
|
|
Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies?
|
|
He will tread us down like mushrooms,
|
|
Drive us all into the water,
|
|
Give our bodies to be eaten
|
|
By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs,
|
|
By the Spirits of the water!
|
|
So the angry Little People
|
|
All conspired against the Strong Man,
|
|
All conspired to murder Kwasind,
|
|
Yes, to rid the world of Kwasind,
|
|
The audacious, overbearing,
|
|
Heartless, haughty, dangerous Kwasind!
|
|
Now this wondrous strength of Kwasind
|
|
In his crown alone was seated;
|
|
In his crown too was his weakness;
|
|
There alone could he be wounded,
|
|
Nowhere else could weapon pierce him,
|
|
Nowhere else could weapon harm him.
|
|
Even there the only weapon
|
|
That could wound him, that could slay him,
|
|
Was the seed-cone of the pine-tree,
|
|
Was the blue cone of the fir-tree.
|
|
This was Kwasind's fatal secret,
|
|
Known to no man among mortals;
|
|
But the cunning Little People,
|
|
The Puk-Wudjies, knew the secret,
|
|
Knew the only way to kill him.
|
|
So they gathered cones together,
|
|
Gathered seed-cones of the pine-tree,
|
|
Gathered blue cones of the fir-tree,
|
|
In the woods by Taquamenaw,
|
|
Brought them to the river's margin,
|
|
Heaped them in great piles together,
|
|
Where the red rocks from the margin
|
|
Jutting overhang the river.
|
|
There they lay in wait for Kwasind,
|
|
The malicious Little People.
|
|
`T was an afternoon in Summer;
|
|
Very hot and still the air was,
|
|
Very smooth the gliding river,
|
|
Motionless the sleeping shadows:
|
|
Insects glistened in the sunshine,
|
|
Insects skated on the water,
|
|
Filled the drowsy air with buzzing,
|
|
With a far resounding war-cry.
|
|
Down the river came the Strong Man,
|
|
In his birch canoe came Kwasind,
|
|
Floating slowly down the current
|
|
Of the sluggish Taquamenaw,
|
|
Very languid with the weather,
|
|
Very sleepy with the silence.
|
|
From the overhanging branches,
|
|
From the tassels of the birch-trees,
|
|
Soft the Spirit of Sleep descended;
|
|
By his airy hosts surrounded,
|
|
His invisible attendants,
|
|
Came the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin;
|
|
Like a burnished Dush-kwo-ne-she,
|
|
Like a dragon-fly, he hovered
|
|
O'er the drowsy head of Kwasind.
|
|
To his ear there came a murmur
|
|
As of waves upon a sea-shore,
|
|
As of far-off tumbling waters,
|
|
As of winds among the pine-trees;
|
|
And he felt upon his forehead
|
|
Blows of little airy war-clubs,
|
|
Wielded by the slumbrous legions
|
|
Of the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin,
|
|
As of some one breathing on him.
|
|
At the first blow of their war-clubs,
|
|
Fell a drowsiness on Kwasind;
|
|
At the second blow they smote him,
|
|
Motionless his paddle rested;
|
|
At the third, before his vision
|
|
Reeled the landscape Into darkness,
|
|
Very sound asleep was Kwasind.
|
|
So he floated down the river,
|
|
Like a blind man seated upright,
|
|
Floated down the Taquamenaw,
|
|
Underneath the trembling birch-trees,
|
|
Underneath the wooded headlands,
|
|
Underneath the war encampment
|
|
Of the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies.
|
|
There they stood, all armed and waiting,
|
|
Hurled the pine-cones down upon him,
|
|
Struck him on his brawny shoulders,
|
|
On his crown defenceless struck him.
|
|
"Death to Kwasind!" was the sudden
|
|
War-cry of the Little People.
|
|
And he sideways swayed and tumbled,
|
|
Sideways fell into the river,
|
|
Plunged beneath the sluggish water
|
|
Headlong, as an otter plunges;
|
|
And the birch canoe, abandoned,
|
|
Drifted empty down the river,
|
|
Bottom upward swerved and drifted:
|
|
Nothing more was seen of Kwasind.
|
|
But the memory of the Strong Man
|
|
Lingered long among the people,
|
|
And whenever through the forest
|
|
Raged and roared the wintry tempest,
|
|
And the branches, tossed and troubled,
|
|
Creaked and groaned and split asunder,
|
|
"Kwasind!" cried they; "that is Kwasind!
|
|
He is gathering in his fire-wood!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XIX
|
|
|
|
The Ghosts
|
|
|
|
Never stoops the soaring vulture
|
|
On his quarry in the desert,
|
|
On the sick or wounded bison,
|
|
But another vulture, watching
|
|
From his high aerial look-out,
|
|
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
|
|
And a third pursues the second,
|
|
Coming from the invisible ether,
|
|
First a speck, and then a vulture,
|
|
Till the air is dark with pinions.
|
|
So disasters come not singly;
|
|
But as if they watched and waited,
|
|
Scanning one another's motions,
|
|
When the first descends, the others
|
|
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
|
|
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
|
|
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
|
|
Till the air is dark with anguish.
|
|
Now, o'er all the dreary North-land,
|
|
Mighty Peboan, the Winter,
|
|
Breathing on the lakes and rivers,
|
|
Into stone had changed their waters.
|
|
From his hair he shook the snow-flakes,
|
|
Till the plains were strewn with whiteness,
|
|
One uninterrupted level,
|
|
As if, stooping, the Creator
|
|
With his hand had smoothed them over.
|
|
Through the forest, wide and wailing,
|
|
Roamed the hunter on his snow-shoes;
|
|
In the village worked the women,
|
|
Pounded maize, or dressed the deer-skin;
|
|
And the young men played together
|
|
On the ice the noisy ball-play,
|
|
On the plain the dance of snow-shoes.
|
|
One dark evening, after sundown,
|
|
In her wigwam Laughing Water
|
|
Sat with old Nokomis, waiting
|
|
For the steps of Hiawatha
|
|
Homeward from the hunt returning.
|
|
On their faces gleamed the firelight,
|
|
Painting them with streaks of crimson,
|
|
In the eyes of old Nokomis
|
|
Glimmered like the watery moonlight,
|
|
In the eyes of Laughing Water
|
|
Glistened like the sun in water;
|
|
And behind them crouched their shadows
|
|
In the corners of the wigwam,
|
|
And the smoke In wreaths above them
|
|
Climbed and crowded through the smoke-flue.
|
|
Then the curtain of the doorway
|
|
From without was slowly lifted;
|
|
Brighter glowed the fire a moment,
|
|
And a moment swerved the smoke-wreath,
|
|
As two women entered softly,
|
|
Passed the doorway uninvited,
|
|
Without word of salutation,
|
|
Without sign of recognition,
|
|
Sat down in the farthest corner,
|
|
Crouching low among the shadows.
|
|
From their aspect and their garments,
|
|
Strangers seemed they in the village;
|
|
Very pale and haggard were they,
|
|
As they sat there sad and silent,
|
|
Trembling, cowering with the shadows.
|
|
Was it the wind above the smoke-flue,
|
|
Muttering down into the wigwam?
|
|
Was it the owl, the Koko-koho,
|
|
Hooting from the dismal forest?
|
|
Sure a voice said in the silence:
|
|
"These are corpses clad in garments,
|
|
These are ghosts that come to haunt you,
|
|
From the kingdom of Ponemah,
|
|
From the land of the Hereafter!"
|
|
Homeward now came Hiawatha
|
|
From his hunting in the forest,
|
|
With the snow upon his tresses,
|
|
And the red deer on his shoulders.
|
|
At the feet of Laughing Water
|
|
Down he threw his lifeless burden;
|
|
Nobler, handsomer she thought him,
|
|
Than when first he came to woo her,
|
|
First threw down the deer before her,
|
|
As a token of his wishes,
|
|
As a promise of the future.
|
|
Then he turned and saw the strangers,
|
|
Cowering, crouching with the shadows;
|
|
Said within himself, "Who are they?
|
|
What strange guests has Minnehaha?"
|
|
But he questioned not the strangers,
|
|
Only spake to bid them welcome
|
|
To his lodge, his food, his fireside.
|
|
When the evening meal was ready,
|
|
And the deer had been divided,
|
|
Both the pallid guests, the strangers,
|
|
Springing from among the shadows,
|
|
Seized upon the choicest portions,
|
|
Seized the white fat of the roebuck,
|
|
Set apart for Laughing Water,
|
|
For the wife of Hiawatha;
|
|
Without asking, without thanking,
|
|
Eagerly devoured the morsels,
|
|
Flitted back among the shadows
|
|
In the corner of the wigwam.
|
|
Not a word spake Hiawatha,
|
|
Not a motion made Nokomis,
|
|
Not a gesture Laughing Water;
|
|
Not a change came o'er their features;
|
|
Only Minnehaha softly
|
|
Whispered, saying, "They are famished;
|
|
Let them do what best delights them;
|
|
Let them eat, for they are famished."
|
|
Many a daylight dawned and darkened,
|
|
Many a night shook off the daylight
|
|
As the pine shakes off the snow-flakes
|
|
From the midnight of its branches;
|
|
Day by day the guests unmoving
|
|
Sat there silent in the wigwam;
|
|
But by night, in storm or starlight,
|
|
Forth they went into the forest,
|
|
Bringing fire-wood to the wigwam,
|
|
Bringing pine-cones for the burning,
|
|
Always sad and always silent.
|
|
And whenever Hiawatha
|
|
Came from fishing or from hunting,
|
|
When the evening meal was ready,
|
|
And the food had been divided,
|
|
Gliding from their darksome corner,
|
|
Came the pallid guests, the strangers,
|
|
Seized upon the choicest portions
|
|
Set aside for Laughing Water,
|
|
And without rebuke or question
|
|
Flitted back among the shadows.
|
|
Never once had Hiawatha
|
|
By a word or look reproved them;
|
|
Never once had old Nokomis
|
|
Made a gesture of impatience;
|
|
Never once had Laughing Water
|
|
Shown resentment at the outrage.
|
|
All had they endured in silence,
|
|
That the rights of guest and stranger,
|
|
That the virtue of free-giving,
|
|
By a look might not be lessened,
|
|
By a word might not be broken.
|
|
Once at midnight Hiawatha,
|
|
Ever wakeful, ever watchful,
|
|
In the wigwam, dimly lighted
|
|
By the brands that still were burning,
|
|
By the glimmering, flickering firelight
|
|
Heard a sighing, oft repeated,
|
|
From his couch rose Hiawatha,
|
|
From his shaggy hides of bison,
|
|
Pushed aside the deer-skin curtain,
|
|
Saw the pallid guests, the shadows,
|
|
Sitting upright on their couches,
|
|
Weeping in the silent midnight.
|
|
And he said: "O guests! why is it
|
|
That your hearts are so afflicted,
|
|
That you sob so in the midnight?
|
|
Has perchance the old Nokomis,
|
|
Has my wife, my Minnehaha,
|
|
Wronged or grieved you by unkindness,
|
|
Failed in hospitable duties?"
|
|
Then the shadows ceased from weeping,
|
|
Ceased from sobbing and lamenting,
|
|
And they said, with gentle voices:
|
|
"We are ghosts of the departed,
|
|
Souls of those who once were with you.
|
|
From the realms of Chibiabos
|
|
Hither have we come to try you,
|
|
Hither have we come to warn you.
|
|
"Cries of grief and lamentation
|
|
Reach us in the Blessed Islands;
|
|
Cries of anguish from the living,
|
|
Calling back their friends departed,
|
|
Sadden us with useless sorrow.
|
|
Therefore have we come to try you;
|
|
No one knows us, no one heeds us.
|
|
We are but a burden to you,
|
|
And we see that the departed
|
|
Have no place among the living.
|
|
"Think of this, O Hiawatha!
|
|
Speak of it to all the people,
|
|
That henceforward and forever
|
|
They no more with lamentations
|
|
Sadden the souls of the departed
|
|
In the Islands of the Blessed.
|
|
"Do not lay such heavy burdens
|
|
In the graves of those you bury,
|
|
Not such weight of furs and wampum,
|
|
Not such weight of pots and kettles,
|
|
For the spirits faint beneath them.
|
|
Only give them food to carry,
|
|
Only give them fire to light them.
|
|
"Four days is the spirit's journey
|
|
To the land of ghosts and shadows,
|
|
Four its lonely night encampments;
|
|
Four times must their fires be lighted.
|
|
Therefore, when the dead are buried,
|
|
Let a fire, as night approaches,
|
|
Four times on the grave be kindled,
|
|
That the soul upon its journey
|
|
May not lack the cheerful firelight,
|
|
May not grope about in darkness.
|
|
"Farewell, noble Hiawatha!
|
|
We have put you to the trial,
|
|
To the proof have put your patience,
|
|
By the insult of our presence,
|
|
By the outrage of our actions.
|
|
We have found you great and noble.
|
|
Fail not in the greater trial,
|
|
Faint not In the harder struggle."
|
|
When they ceased, a sudden darkness
|
|
Fell and filled the silent wigwam.
|
|
Hiawatha heard a rustle
|
|
As of garments trailing by him,
|
|
Heard the curtain of the doorway
|
|
Lifted by a hand he saw not,
|
|
Felt the cold breath of the night air,
|
|
For a moment saw the starlight;
|
|
But he saw the ghosts no longer,
|
|
Saw no more the wandering spirits
|
|
From the kingdom of Ponemah,
|
|
From the land of the Hereafter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XX
|
|
|
|
The Famine
|
|
|
|
Oh the long and dreary Winter!
|
|
Oh the cold and cruel Winter!
|
|
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
|
|
Froze the ice on lake and river,
|
|
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
|
|
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
|
|
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
|
|
Through the forest, round the village.
|
|
Hardly from his buried wigwam
|
|
Could the hunter force a passage;
|
|
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
|
|
Vainly walked he through the forest,
|
|
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
|
|
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
|
|
In the snow beheld no footprints,
|
|
In the ghastly, gleaming forest
|
|
Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
|
|
Perished there from cold and hunger.
|
|
Oh the famine and the fever!
|
|
Oh the wasting of the famine!
|
|
Oh the blasting of the fever!
|
|
Oh the wailing of the children!
|
|
Oh the anguish of the women!
|
|
All the earth was sick and famished;
|
|
Hungry was the air around them,
|
|
Hungry was the sky above them,
|
|
And the hungry stars in heaven
|
|
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!
|
|
Into Hiawatha's wigwam
|
|
Came two other guests, as silent
|
|
As the ghosts were, and as gloomy,
|
|
Waited not to be invited
|
|
Did not parley at the doorway
|
|
Sat there without word of welcome
|
|
In the seat of Laughing Water;
|
|
Looked with haggard eyes and hollow
|
|
At the face of Laughing Water.
|
|
And the foremost said: "Behold me!
|
|
I am Famine, Bukadawin!"
|
|
And the other said: "Behold me!
|
|
I am Fever, Ahkosewin!"
|
|
And the lovely Minnehaha
|
|
Shuddered as they looked upon her,
|
|
Shuddered at the words they uttered,
|
|
Lay down on her bed in silence,
|
|
Hid her face, but made no answer;
|
|
Lay there trembling, freezing, burning
|
|
At the looks they cast upon her,
|
|
At the fearful words they uttered.
|
|
Forth into the empty forest
|
|
Rushed the maddened Hiawatha;
|
|
In his heart was deadly sorrow,
|
|
In his face a stony firmness;
|
|
On his brow the sweat of anguish
|
|
Started, but it froze and fell not.
|
|
Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting,
|
|
With his mighty bow of ash-tree,
|
|
With his quiver full of arrows,
|
|
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
|
|
Into the vast and vacant forest
|
|
On his snow-shoes strode he forward.
|
|
"Gitche Manito, the Mighty!"
|
|
Cried he with his face uplifted
|
|
In that bitter hour of anguish,
|
|
"Give your children food, O father!
|
|
Give us food, or we must perish!
|
|
Give me food for Minnehaha,
|
|
For my dying Minnehaha!"
|
|
Through the far-resounding forest,
|
|
Through the forest vast and vacant
|
|
Rang that cry of desolation,
|
|
But there came no other answer
|
|
Than the echo of his crying,
|
|
Than the echo of the woodlands,
|
|
"Minnehaha! Minnehaha!"
|
|
All day long roved Hiawatha
|
|
In that melancholy forest,
|
|
Through the shadow of whose thickets,
|
|
In the pleasant days of Summer,
|
|
Of that ne'er forgotten Summer,
|
|
He had brought his young wife homeward
|
|
From the land of the Dacotahs;
|
|
When the birds sang in the thickets,
|
|
And the streamlets laughed and glistened,
|
|
And the air was full of fragrance,
|
|
And the lovely Laughing Water
|
|
Said with voice that did not tremble,
|
|
"I will follow you, my husband!"
|
|
In the wigwam with Nokomis,
|
|
With those gloomy guests that watched her,
|
|
With the Famine and the Fever,
|
|
She was lying, the Beloved,
|
|
She, the dying Minnehaha.
|
|
"Hark!" she said; "I hear a rushing,
|
|
Hear a roaring and a rushing,
|
|
Hear the Falls of Minnehaha
|
|
Calling to me from a distance!"
|
|
"No, my child!" said old Nokomis,
|
|
"`T is the night-wind in the pine-trees!"
|
|
"Look!" she said; "I see my father
|
|
Standing lonely at his doorway,
|
|
Beckoning to me from his wigwam
|
|
In the land of the Dacotahs!"
|
|
"No, my child!" said old Nokomis.
|
|
"`T is the smoke, that waves and beckons!"
|
|
"Ah!" said she, "the eyes of Pauguk
|
|
Glare upon me in the darkness,
|
|
I can feel his icy fingers
|
|
Clasping mine amid the darkness!
|
|
Hiawatha! Hiawatha!"
|
|
And the desolate Hiawatha,
|
|
Far away amid the forest,
|
|
Miles away among the mountains,
|
|
Heard that sudden cry of anguish,
|
|
Heard the voice of Minnehaha
|
|
Calling to him in the darkness,
|
|
"Hiawatha! Hiawatha!"
|
|
Over snow-fields waste and pathless,
|
|
Under snow-encumbered branches,
|
|
Homeward hurried Hiawatha,
|
|
Empty-handed, heavy-hearted,
|
|
Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing:
|
|
"Wahonowin! Wahonowin!
|
|
Would that I had perished for you,
|
|
Would that I were dead as you are!
|
|
Wahonowin!. Wahonowin!"
|
|
And he rushed into the wigwam,
|
|
Saw the old Nokomis slowly
|
|
Rocking to and fro and moaning,
|
|
Saw his lovely Minnehaha
|
|
Lying dead and cold before him,
|
|
And his bursting heart within him
|
|
Uttered such a cry of anguish,
|
|
That the forest moaned and shuddered,
|
|
That the very stars in heaven
|
|
Shook and trembled with his anguish.
|
|
Then he sat down, still and speechless,
|
|
On the bed of Minnehaha,
|
|
At the feet of Laughing Water,
|
|
At those willing feet, that never
|
|
More would lightly run to meet him,
|
|
Never more would lightly follow.
|
|
With both hands his face he covered,
|
|
Seven long days and nights he sat there,
|
|
As if in a swoon he sat there,
|
|
Speechless, motionless, unconscious
|
|
Of the daylight or the darkness.
|
|
Then they buried Minnehaha;
|
|
In the snow a grave they made her
|
|
In the forest deep and darksome
|
|
Underneath the moaning hemlocks;
|
|
Clothed her in her richest garments
|
|
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine,
|
|
Covered her with snow, like ermine;
|
|
Thus they buried Minnehaha.
|
|
And at night a fire was lighted,
|
|
On her grave four times was kindled,
|
|
For her soul upon its journey
|
|
To the Islands of the Blessed.
|
|
From his doorway Hiawatha
|
|
Saw it burning In the forest,
|
|
Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks;
|
|
From his sleepless bed uprising,
|
|
From the bed of Minnehaha,
|
|
Stood and watched it at the doorway,
|
|
That it might not be extinguished,
|
|
Might not leave her in the darkness.
|
|
"Farewell!" said he, "Minnehaha!
|
|
Farewell, O my Laughing Water!
|
|
All my heart is buried with you,
|
|
All my thoughts go onward with you!
|
|
Come not back again to labor,
|
|
Come not back again to suffer,
|
|
Where the Famine and the Fever
|
|
Wear the heart and waste the body.
|
|
Soon my task will be completed,
|
|
Soon your footsteps I shall follow
|
|
To the Islands of the Blessed,
|
|
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
|
|
To the Land of the Hereafter!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XXI
|
|
|
|
The White Man's Foot
|
|
|
|
In his lodge beside a river,
|
|
Close beside a frozen river,
|
|
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
|
|
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
|
|
Dull and low his fire was burning,
|
|
And the old man shook and trembled,
|
|
Folded in his Waubewyon,
|
|
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
|
|
Hearing nothing but the tempest
|
|
As it roared along the forest,
|
|
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
|
|
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
|
|
All the coals were white with ashes,
|
|
And the fire was slowly dying,
|
|
As a young man, walking lightly,
|
|
At the open doorway entered.
|
|
Red with blood of youth his cheeks were,
|
|
Soft his eyes, as stars In Spring-time,
|
|
Bound his forehead was with grasses;
|
|
Bound and plumed with scented grasses,
|
|
On his lips a smile of beauty,
|
|
Filling all the lodge with sunshine,
|
|
In his hand a bunch of blossoms
|
|
Filling all the lodge with sweetness.
|
|
"Ah, my son!" exclaimed the old man,
|
|
"Happy are my eyes to see you.
|
|
Sit here on the mat beside me,
|
|
Sit here by the dying embers,
|
|
Let us pass the night together,
|
|
Tell me of your strange adventures,
|
|
Of the lands where you have travelled;
|
|
I will tell you of my prowess,
|
|
Of my many deeds of wonder."
|
|
From his pouch he drew his peace-pipe,
|
|
Very old and strangely fashioned;
|
|
Made of red stone was the pipe-head,
|
|
And the stem a reed with feathers;
|
|
Filled the pipe with bark of willow,
|
|
Placed a burning coal upon it,
|
|
Gave it to his guest, the stranger,
|
|
And began to speak in this wise:
|
|
"When I blow my breath about me,
|
|
When I breathe upon the landscape,
|
|
Motionless are all the rivers,
|
|
Hard as stone becomes the water!"
|
|
And the young man answered, smiling:
|
|
"When I blow my breath about me,
|
|
When I breathe upon the landscape,
|
|
Flowers spring up o'er all the meadows,
|
|
Singing, onward rush the rivers!"
|
|
"When I shake my hoary tresses,"
|
|
Said the old man darkly frowning,
|
|
"All the land with snow is covered;
|
|
All the leaves from all the branches
|
|
Fall and fade and die and wither,
|
|
For I breathe, and lo! they are not.
|
|
From the waters and the marshes,
|
|
Rise the wild goose and the heron,
|
|
Fly away to distant regions,
|
|
For I speak, and lo! they are not.
|
|
And where'er my footsteps wander,
|
|
All the wild beasts of the forest
|
|
Hide themselves in holes and caverns,
|
|
And the earth becomes as flintstone!"
|
|
"When I shake my flowing ringlets,"
|
|
Said the young man, softly laughing,
|
|
"Showers of rain fall warm and welcome,
|
|
Plants lift up their heads rejoicing,
|
|
Back Into their lakes and marshes
|
|
Come the wild goose and the heron,
|
|
Homeward shoots the arrowy swallow,
|
|
Sing the bluebird and the robin,
|
|
And where'er my footsteps wander,
|
|
All the meadows wave with blossoms,
|
|
All the woodlands ring with music,
|
|
All the trees are dark with foliage!"
|
|
While they spake, the night departed:
|
|
From the distant realms of Wabun,
|
|
From his shining lodge of silver,
|
|
Like a warrior robed and painted,
|
|
Came the sun, and said, "Behold me
|
|
Gheezis, the great sun, behold me!"
|
|
Then the old man's tongue was speechless
|
|
And the air grew warm and pleasant,
|
|
And upon the wigwam sweetly
|
|
Sang the bluebird and the robin,
|
|
And the stream began to murmur,
|
|
And a scent of growing grasses
|
|
Through the lodge was gently wafted.
|
|
And Segwun, the youthful stranger,
|
|
More distinctly in the daylight
|
|
Saw the icy face before him;
|
|
It was Peboan, the Winter!
|
|
From his eyes the tears were flowing,
|
|
As from melting lakes the streamlets,
|
|
And his body shrunk and dwindled
|
|
As the shouting sun ascended,
|
|
Till into the air it faded,
|
|
Till into the ground it vanished,
|
|
And the young man saw before him,
|
|
On the hearth-stone of the wigwam,
|
|
Where the fire had smoked and smouldered,
|
|
Saw the earliest flower of Spring-time,
|
|
Saw the Beauty of the Spring-time,
|
|
Saw the Miskodeed in blossom.
|
|
Thus it was that in the North-land
|
|
After that unheard-of coldness,
|
|
That intolerable Winter,
|
|
Came the Spring with all its splendor,
|
|
All its birds and all its blossoms,
|
|
All its flowers and leaves and grasses.
|
|
Sailing on the wind to northward,
|
|
Flying in great flocks, like arrows,
|
|
Like huge arrows shot through heaven,
|
|
Passed the swan, the Mahnahbezee,
|
|
Speaking almost as a man speaks;
|
|
And in long lines waving, bending
|
|
Like a bow-string snapped asunder,
|
|
Came the white goose, Waw-be-wawa;
|
|
And in pairs, or singly flying,
|
|
Mahng the loon, with clangorous pinions,
|
|
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa.
|
|
In the thickets and the meadows
|
|
Piped the bluebird, the Owaissa,
|
|
On the summit of the lodges
|
|
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
|
|
In the covert of the pine-trees
|
|
Cooed the pigeon, the Omemee;
|
|
And the sorrowing Hiawatha,
|
|
Speechless in his infinite sorrow,
|
|
Heard their voices calling to him,
|
|
Went forth from his gloomy doorway,
|
|
Stood and gazed into the heaven,
|
|
Gazed upon the earth and waters.
|
|
From his wanderings far to eastward,
|
|
From the regions of the morning,
|
|
From the shining land of Wabun,
|
|
Homeward now returned Iagoo,
|
|
The great traveller, the great boaster,
|
|
Full of new and strange adventures,
|
|
Marvels many and many wonders.
|
|
And the people of the village
|
|
Listened to him as he told them
|
|
Of his marvellous adventures,
|
|
Laughing answered him in this wise:
|
|
"Ugh! it is indeed Iagoo!
|
|
No one else beholds such wonders!"
|
|
He had seen, he said, a water
|
|
Bigger than the Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
Broader than the Gitche Gumee,
|
|
Bitter so that none could drink it!
|
|
At each other looked the warriors,
|
|
Looked the women at each other,
|
|
Smiled, and said, "It cannot be so!"
|
|
Kaw!" they said, it cannot be so!"
|
|
O'er it, said he, o'er this water
|
|
Came a great canoe with pinions,
|
|
A canoe with wings came flying,
|
|
Bigger than a grove of pine-trees,
|
|
Taller than the tallest tree-tops!
|
|
And the old men and the women
|
|
Looked and tittered at each other;
|
|
"Kaw!" they said, "we don't believe it!"
|
|
From its mouth, he said, to greet him,
|
|
Came Waywassimo, the lightning,
|
|
Came the thunder, Annemeekee!
|
|
And the warriors and the women
|
|
Laughed aloud at poor Iagoo;
|
|
"Kaw!" they said, "what tales you tell us!"
|
|
In it, said he, came a people,
|
|
In the great canoe with pinions
|
|
Came, he said, a hundred warriors;
|
|
Painted white were all their faces
|
|
And with hair their chins were covered!
|
|
And the warriors and the women
|
|
Laughed and shouted in derision,
|
|
Like the ravens on the tree-tops,
|
|
Like the crows upon the hemlocks.
|
|
"Kaw!" they said, "what lies you tell us!
|
|
Do not think that we believe them!"
|
|
Only Hiawatha laughed not,
|
|
But he gravely spake and answered
|
|
To their jeering and their jesting:
|
|
"True is all Iagoo tells us;
|
|
I have seen it in a vision,
|
|
Seen the great canoe with pinions,
|
|
Seen the people with white faces,
|
|
Seen the coming of this bearded
|
|
People of the wooden vessel
|
|
From the regions of the morning,
|
|
From the shining land of Wabun.
|
|
"Gitche Manito, the Mighty,
|
|
The Great Spirit, the Creator,
|
|
Sends them hither on his errand.
|
|
Sends them to us with his message.
|
|
Wheresoe'er they move, before them
|
|
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
|
|
Swarms the bee, the honey-maker;
|
|
Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them
|
|
Springs a flower unknown among us,
|
|
Springs the White-man's Foot in blossom.
|
|
"Let us welcome, then, the strangers,
|
|
Hail them as our friends and brothers,
|
|
And the heart's right hand of friendship
|
|
Give them when they come to see us.
|
|
Gitche Manito, the Mighty,
|
|
Said this to me in my vision.
|
|
"I beheld, too, in that vision
|
|
All the secrets of the future,
|
|
Of the distant days that shall be.
|
|
I beheld the westward marches
|
|
Of the unknown, crowded nations.
|
|
All the land was full of people,
|
|
Restless, struggling, toiling, striving,
|
|
Speaking many tongues, yet feeling
|
|
But one heart-beat in their bosoms.
|
|
In the woodlands rang their axes,
|
|
Smoked their towns in all the valleys,
|
|
Over all the lakes and rivers
|
|
Rushed their great canoes of thunder.
|
|
"Then a darker, drearier vision
|
|
Passed before me, vague and cloud-like;
|
|
I beheld our nation scattered,
|
|
All forgetful of my counsels,
|
|
Weakened, warring with each other:
|
|
Saw the remnants of our people
|
|
Sweeping westward, wild and woful,
|
|
Like the cloud-rack of a tempest,
|
|
Like the withered leaves of Autumn!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
XXII
|
|
|
|
Hiawatha's Departure
|
|
|
|
By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
|
|
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
|
|
At the doorway of his wigwam,
|
|
In the pleasant Summer morning,
|
|
Hiawatha stood and waited.
|
|
All the air was full of freshness,
|
|
All the earth was bright and joyous,
|
|
And before him, through the sunshine,
|
|
Westward toward the neighboring forest
|
|
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
|
|
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
|
|
Burning, singing In the sunshine.
|
|
Bright above him shone the heavens,
|
|
Level spread the lake before him;
|
|
From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
|
|
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
|
|
On its margin the great forest
|
|
Stood reflected in the water,
|
|
Every tree-top had its shadow,
|
|
Motionless beneath the water.
|
|
From the brow of Hiawatha
|
|
Gone was every trace of sorrow,
|
|
As the fog from off the water,
|
|
As the mist from off the meadow.
|
|
With a smile of joy and triumph,
|
|
With a look of exultation,
|
|
As of one who in a vision
|
|
Sees what is to be, but is not,
|
|
Stood and waited Hiawatha.
|
|
Toward the sun his hands were lifted,
|
|
Both the palms spread out against it,
|
|
And between the parted fingers
|
|
Fell the sunshine on his features,
|
|
Flecked with light his naked shoulders,
|
|
As it falls and flecks an oak-tree
|
|
Through the rifted leaves and branches.
|
|
O'er the water floating, flying,
|
|
Something in the hazy distance,
|
|
Something in the mists of morning,
|
|
Loomed and lifted from the water,
|
|
Now seemed floating, now seemed flying,
|
|
Coming nearer, nearer, nearer.
|
|
Was it Shingebis the diver?
|
|
Or the pelican, the Shada?
|
|
Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah?
|
|
Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa,
|
|
With the water dripping, flashing,
|
|
From its glossy neck and feathers?
|
|
It was neither goose nor diver,
|
|
Neither pelican nor heron,
|
|
O'er the water floating, flying,
|
|
Through the shining mist of morning,
|
|
But a birch canoe with paddles,
|
|
Rising, sinking on the water,
|
|
Dripping, flashing in the sunshine;
|
|
And within it came a people
|
|
From the distant land of Wabun,
|
|
From the farthest realms of morning
|
|
Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,
|
|
He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face,
|
|
With his guides and his companions.
|
|
And the noble Hiawatha,
|
|
With his hands aloft extended,
|
|
Held aloft in sign of welcome,
|
|
Waited, full of exultation,
|
|
Till the birch canoe with paddles
|
|
Grated on the shining pebbles,
|
|
Stranded on the sandy margin,
|
|
Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face,
|
|
With the cross upon his bosom,
|
|
Landed on the sandy margin.
|
|
Then the joyous Hiawatha
|
|
Cried aloud and spake in this wise:
|
|
"Beautiful is the sun, O strangers,
|
|
When you come so far to see us!
|
|
All our town in peace awaits you,
|
|
All our doors stand open for you;
|
|
You shall enter all our wigwams,
|
|
For the heart's right hand we give you.
|
|
"Never bloomed the earth so gayly,
|
|
Never shone the sun so brightly,
|
|
As to-day they shine and blossom
|
|
When you come so far to see us!
|
|
Never was our lake so tranquil,
|
|
Nor so free from rocks, and sand-bars;
|
|
For your birch canoe in passing
|
|
Has removed both rock and sand-bar.
|
|
"Never before had our tobacco
|
|
Such a sweet and pleasant flavor,
|
|
Never the broad leaves of our cornfields
|
|
Were so beautiful to look on,
|
|
As they seem to us this morning,
|
|
When you come so far to see us!'
|
|
And the Black-Robe chief made answer,
|
|
Stammered In his speech a little,
|
|
Speaking words yet unfamiliar:
|
|
"Peace be with you, Hiawatha,
|
|
Peace be with you and your people,
|
|
Peace of prayer, and peace of pardon,
|
|
Peace of Christ, and joy of Mary!"
|
|
Then the generous Hiawatha
|
|
Led the strangers to his wigwam,
|
|
Seated them on skins of bison,
|
|
Seated them on skins of ermine,
|
|
And the careful old Nokomis
|
|
Brought them food in bowls of basswood,
|
|
Water brought in birchen dippers,
|
|
And the calumet, the peace-pipe,
|
|
Filled and lighted for their smoking.
|
|
All the old men of the village,
|
|
All the warriors of the nation,
|
|
All the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
|
|
The magicians, the Wabenos,
|
|
And the Medicine-men, the Medas,
|
|
Came to bid the strangers welcome;
|
|
"It is well", they said, "O brothers,
|
|
That you come so far to see us!"
|
|
In a circle round the doorway,
|
|
With their pipes they sat In silence,
|
|
Waiting to behold the strangers,
|
|
Waiting to receive their message;
|
|
Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face,
|
|
From the wigwam came to greet them,
|
|
Stammering in his speech a little,
|
|
Speaking words yet unfamiliar;
|
|
"It Is well," they said, "O brother,
|
|
That you come so far to see us!"
|
|
Then the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,
|
|
Told his message to the people,
|
|
Told the purport of his mission,
|
|
Told them of the Virgin Mary,
|
|
And her blessed Son, the Saviour,
|
|
How in distant lands and ages
|
|
He had lived on earth as we do;
|
|
How he fasted, prayed, and labored;
|
|
How the Jews, the tribe accursed,
|
|
Mocked him, scourged him, crucified him;
|
|
How he rose from where they laid him,
|
|
Walked again with his disciples,
|
|
And ascended into heaven.
|
|
And the chiefs made answer, saying:
|
|
"We have listened to your message,
|
|
We have heard your words of wisdom,
|
|
We will think on what you tell us.
|
|
It is well for us, O brothers,
|
|
That you come so far to see us!"
|
|
Then they rose up and departed
|
|
Each one homeward to his wigwam,
|
|
To the young men and the women
|
|
Told the story of the strangers
|
|
Whom the Master of Life had sent them
|
|
From the shining land of Wabun.
|
|
Heavy with the heat and silence
|
|
Grew the afternoon of Summer;
|
|
With a drowsy sound the forest
|
|
Whispered round the sultry wigwam,
|
|
With a sound of sleep the water
|
|
Rippled on the beach below it;
|
|
From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless
|
|
Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena;
|
|
And the guests of Hiawatha,
|
|
Weary with the heat of Summer,
|
|
Slumbered in the sultry wigwam.
|
|
Slowly o'er the simmering landscape
|
|
Fell the evening's dusk and coolness,
|
|
And the long and level sunbeams
|
|
Shot their spears into the forest,
|
|
Breaking through its shields of shadow,
|
|
Rushed into each secret ambush,
|
|
Searched each thicket, dingle, hollow;
|
|
Still the guests of Hiawatha
|
|
Slumbered In the silent wigwam.
|
|
From his place rose Hiawatha,
|
|
Bade farewell to old Nokomis,
|
|
Spake in whispers, spake in this wise,
|
|
Did not wake the guests, that slumbered.
|
|
"I am going, O Nokomis,
|
|
On a long and distant journey,
|
|
To the portals of the Sunset.
|
|
To the regions of the home-wind,
|
|
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin.
|
|
But these guests I leave behind me,
|
|
In your watch and ward I leave them;
|
|
See that never harm comes near them,
|
|
See that never fear molests them,
|
|
Never danger nor suspicion,
|
|
Never want of food or shelter,
|
|
In the lodge of Hiawatha!"
|
|
Forth into the village went he,
|
|
Bade farewell to all the warriors,
|
|
Bade farewell to all the young men,
|
|
Spake persuading, spake in this wise:
|
|
I am going, O my people,
|
|
On a long and distant journey;
|
|
Many moons and many winters
|
|
Will have come, and will have vanished,
|
|
Ere I come again to see you.
|
|
But my guests I leave behind me;
|
|
Listen to their words of wisdom,
|
|
Listen to the truth they tell you,
|
|
For the Master of Life has sent them
|
|
From the land of light and morning!"
|
|
On the shore stood Hiawatha,
|
|
Turned and waved his hand at parting;
|
|
On the clear and luminous water
|
|
Launched his birch canoe for sailing,
|
|
From the pebbles of the margin
|
|
Shoved it forth into the water;
|
|
Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!"
|
|
And with speed it darted forward.
|
|
And the evening sun descending
|
|
Set the clouds on fire with redness,
|
|
Burned the broad sky, like a prairie,
|
|
Left upon the level water
|
|
One long track and trail of splendor,
|
|
Down whose stream, as down a river,
|
|
Westward, westward Hiawatha
|
|
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
|
|
Sailed into the purple vapors,
|
|
Sailed into the dusk of evening:
|
|
And the people from the margin
|
|
Watched him floating, rising, sinking,
|
|
Till the birch canoe seemed lifted
|
|
High into that sea of splendor,
|
|
Till it sank into the vapors
|
|
Like the new moon slowly, slowly
|
|
Sinking in the purple distance.
|
|
And they said, "Farewell forever!"
|
|
Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
And the forests, dark and lonely,
|
|
Moved through all their depths of darkness,
|
|
Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
And the waves upon the margin
|
|
Rising, rippling on the pebbles,
|
|
Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
|
|
From her haunts among the fen-lands,
|
|
Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"
|
|
Thus departed Hiawatha,
|
|
Hiawatha the Beloved,
|
|
In the glory of the sunset,.
|
|
In the purple mists of evening,
|
|
To the regions of the home-wind,
|
|
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
|
|
To the Islands of the Blessed,
|
|
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
|
|
To the Land of the Hereafter!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VOCABULARY
|
|
|
|
Adjidau'mo, the red squirrel
|
|
Ahdeek', the reindeer
|
|
Ahmeek', the beaver
|
|
Annemee'kee, the thunder
|
|
Apuk'wa. a bulrush
|
|
Baim-wa'wa, the sound of the thunder
|
|
Bemah'gut, the grape-vine
|
|
Chemaun', a birch canoe
|
|
Chetowaik', the plover
|
|
Chibia'bos, a musician; friend of Hiawatha; ruler of the Land of
|
|
Spirits
|
|
Dahin'da, the bull frog
|
|
Dush-kwo-ne'-she or Kwo-ne'-she, the dragon fly
|
|
Esa, shame upon you
|
|
Ewa-yea', lullaby
|
|
Gitche Gu'mee, The Big-Sea-Water, Lake Superior
|
|
Gitche Man'ito, the Great Spirit, the Master of Life
|
|
Gushkewau', the darkness
|
|
Hiawa'tha, the Prophet. the Teacher, son of Mudjekeewis, the
|
|
West-Wind and Wenonah, daughter of Nokomis
|
|
Ia'goo, a great boaster and story-teller
|
|
Inin'ewug, men, or pawns in the Game of the Bowl
|
|
Ishkoodah', fire, a comet
|
|
Jee'bi, a ghost, a spirit
|
|
Joss'akeed, a prophet
|
|
Kabibonok'ka, the North-Wind
|
|
Ka'go, do not
|
|
Kahgahgee', the raven
|
|
Kaw, no
|
|
Kaween', no indeed
|
|
Kayoshk', the sea-gull
|
|
Kee'go, a fish
|
|
Keeway'din, the Northwest wind, the Home-wind
|
|
Kena'beek, a serpent
|
|
Keneu', the great war-eagle
|
|
Keno'zha, the pickerel
|
|
Ko'ko-ko'ho, the owl
|
|
Kuntasoo', the Game of Plumstones
|
|
Kwa'sind, the Strong Man
|
|
Kwo-ne'-she, or Dush-kwo-ne'-she, the dragon-fly
|
|
Mahnahbe'zee, the swan
|
|
Mahng, the loon
|
|
Mahnomo'nee, wild rice
|
|
Ma'ma, the woodpecker
|
|
Me'da, a medicine-man
|
|
Meenah'ga, the blueberry
|
|
Megissog'won, the great Pearl-Feather, a magician, and the Manito
|
|
of Wealth
|
|
Meshinau'wa, a pipe-bearer
|
|
Minjekah'wun, Hiawatha's mittens
|
|
Minneha'ha, Laughing Water; wife of Hiawatha; a water-fall in a
|
|
stream running into the Mississippi between Fort Snelling and the
|
|
Falls of St. Anthony
|
|
Minne-wa'wa, a pleasant sound, as of the wind in the trees
|
|
Mishe-Mo'kwa, the Great Bear
|
|
Mishe-Nah'ma, the Great Sturgeon
|
|
Miskodeed', the Spring-Beauty, the Claytonia Virginica
|
|
Monda'min, Indian corn
|
|
Moon of Bright Nights, April
|
|
Moon of Leaves, May
|
|
Moon of Strawberries, June
|
|
Moon of the Falling Leaves, September
|
|
Moon of Snow-shoes, November
|
|
Mudjekee'wis, the West-Wind; father of Hiawatha
|
|
Mudway-aush'ka, sound of waves on a shore
|
|
Mushkoda'sa, the grouse
|
|
Nah'ma, the sturgeon
|
|
Nah'ma-wusk, spearmint
|
|
Na'gow Wudj'oo, the Sand Dunes of Lake Superior
|
|
Nee-ba-naw'-baigs, water-spirits
|
|
Nenemoo'sha, sweetheart
|
|
Nepah'win, sleep
|
|
Noko'mis, a grandmother, mother of Wenonah
|
|
No'sa, my father
|
|
Nush'ka, look! look!
|
|
Odah'min, the strawberry
|
|
Okahha'wis, the fresh-water herring
|
|
Ome'mee, the pigeon
|
|
Ona'gon, a bowl
|
|
Opechee', the robin
|
|
Osse'o, Son of the Evening Star
|
|
Owais'sa, the blue-bird
|
|
Oweenee', wife of Osseo
|
|
Ozawa'beek, a round piece of brass or copper in the Game of the
|
|
Bowl
|
|
Pah-puk-kee'na, the grasshopper
|
|
Pau'guk, death
|
|
Pau-Puk-Kee'wis, the handsome Yenadizze, the son of Storm Fool
|
|
Pe'boan, Winter
|
|
Pem'ican, meat of the deer or buffalo dried and pounded
|
|
Pezhekee', the bison
|
|
Pishnekuh', the brant
|
|
Pone'mah, hereafter
|
|
Puggawau'gun, a war-club
|
|
Puk-Wudj'ies, little wild men of the woods; pygmies
|
|
Sah-sah-je'wun, rapids
|
|
Segwun', Spring
|
|
Sha'da, the pelican
|
|
Shahbo'min, the gooseberry
|
|
Shah-shah, long ago
|
|
Shaugoda'ya, a coward
|
|
Shawgashee', the craw-fish
|
|
Shawonda'see, the South-Wind
|
|
Shaw-shaw, the swallow
|
|
Shesh'ebwug, ducks; pieces in the Game of the Bowl
|
|
Shin'gebis, the diver, or grebe
|
|
Showain'neme'shin, pity me
|
|
Shuh-shuh-gah', the blue heron
|
|
Soan-ge-ta'ha, strong-hearted
|
|
Subbeka'she, the spider
|
|
Sugge'me, the mosquito
|
|
To'tem, family coat-of-arms
|
|
Ugh, yes
|
|
Ugudwash', the sun-fish
|
|
Unktahee', the God of Water
|
|
Wabas'so, the rabbit, the North
|
|
Wabe'no, a magician, a juggler
|
|
Wabe'no-wusk, yarrow
|
|
Wa'bun, the East-Wind
|
|
Wa'bun An'nung, the Star of the East, the Morning Star
|
|
Wahono'win, a cry of lamentation
|
|
Wah-wah-tay'see, the fire-fly
|
|
Waubewy'on, a white skin wrapper
|
|
Wa'wa, the wild goose
|
|
Waw-be-wa'wa, the white goose
|
|
Wawonais'sa, the whippoorwill
|
|
Way-muk-kwa'na, the caterpillar
|
|
Weno'nah, the eldest daughter; Hiawatha's mother, daughter of
|
|
Nokomis
|
|
Yenadiz'ze, an idler and gambler; an Indian dandy
|
|
|