The Song of Hiawatha

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1855

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Summary

Background

Canto Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Canto II

Cantos III-VI

Cantos VII-XII

Cantos XIII-XVII

Cantos XVIII-XXII

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Peace Pipe

The peace pipe bookends The Song of Hiawatha. The first canto is called “The Peace-Pipe,” illustrating how important this symbol of community is to Hiawatha’s people. In the first canto, the peace pipe is a civilizing instrument. The great god Gitche Manito fashions the first peace pipe out of red rock, showing the people how to use natural resources to create tools without destroying it. The peace pipe becomes a call to unity: When Gitche Manito smokes the pipe, the smoke rises into the air and summons all the nearby tribes, which until this moment have been scattered, isolated, and constantly in conflict:

All your strength is in your union,

All your danger is in discord;

Therefore be at peace henceforward,

And as brothers live together (2.112-15).

With the peace pipe, the great god brings them together at the cusp of a new age.

Later, with the arrival of European missionaries, Hiawatha’s tribes again face a dramatic transition. The poem would like to imagine that Christianity is a positive prospect for Indigenous people, so it commemorates this moment with the peace pipe Hiawatha shares with the colonizers. Of course, history—which would have been well-known to Longfellow—does not bear out this peaceful fantasy. Still, Hiawatha uses the peace pipe in the same way Gitche Manito did earlier, extending it as a symbol of unity. It also plays an important role in the welcome due to strangers via the sacred Indigenous tradition of hospitality. The reader, however, sees that this need to dutifully host newcomers, which has already ushered in tragedies like the warnings of the women ghosts and the death of Minnehaha, will spell ruin for Hiawatha’s people. Unlike in the preceding canto, where the personifications of summer and winter share a peace pipe together as the old man of winter is handing over his duties to the young man of spring, here one side of peace pipe ceremony participants does not have a vested interest in upholding the tradition of unity.

The Birch Canoe

Hiawatha’s birch canoe is one of his most constant tools: He builds it with his own hands and it often accompanies his adventures. In the seventh canto, “Hiawatha’s Sailing,” Hiawatha asks the forest around him for resources to make his canoe: the bark from the birch tree, the padding of cedar boughs, the roots of the larch tree and the resin of the fir tree. None of the trees are happy to comply, but they accede. Like the peace pipe, which was created from a part of the landscape, the birch canoe is another manifestation of human ingenuity and craft. Hiawatha proves his dominion over the natural world, rather than being a piece of it.

Once finished, the birch canoe responds to Hiawatha’s thoughts. He needs no paddles to steer it, but simply commands it with intent. Hiawatha and the birch canoe survive being inside the stomach of the great fish Nahma and the battle with the evil sorcerer Pearl-Feather. The birch canoe becomes an extension of Hiawatha, symbolizing his freedom to travel and explore.

However, another canoe plays an important contrasting role in the poem. After Kwasind is killed, his “birch canoe, abandoned, / Drifted empty down the river” (19.109-110). The empty canoe presages the struggles ahead; fittingly, when Hiawatha abdicates his rule over his people and leaves, he sails off in his own canoe.

Written Language

The canto “Picture Writing,” explores the benefits of written language as Hiawatha concludes that oral tradition allows too much wisdom and knowledge to be lost across generations. The pictographic language that Hiawatha develops is reminiscent of Indigenous totem poles, on which animal carvings represent families, myths, or events in a way that’s easy to remember and to communicate.

The introduction of writing symbolizes different things. As Hiawatha intended, the new language gives them a way to communicate stories and memories between ages and tribes. Future generations can now remember and honor the dead, and learn songs and history. In this way, written language functions like the peace pipe by bringing people together in harmony and understanding rather than violence. However, the introduction of writing also pulls the tribes away from established traditions and towards the new world of the white settlers. This method of sharing knowledge relies less on community and interpersonal connection, creating divisions.