low 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 w