The Indians’ hopes, fears, worships, and whole faith and life are found in their legends and myths. These are preserved by oral tradition, by being handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. In the leisure from hunting or war, they gather in the lodge or about the camp-fire and rehearse these stories. As Longfellow has sung: “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, I repeat them as I heard them From the lips of Nawadaha. “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.” THE “SONG OF HIAWATHA.” Hiawatha is a personage of miraculous birth, whom the Indians believed to have been sent among them to clear their rivers, forests and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. To the patient, toilsome investigations of Dr. H. R. Schoolcraft, our knowledge of Indian legends is due. The poet, Longfellow, has gracefully woven many of these legends together in his “Song of Hiawatha.”