In our literature many Amerind myths and legends have become firmly implanted, and they are now as much a part of it as the tale of Orpheus, or of Theseus, or of Hercules. Some of them have been beautified by the diction of our poets, and Longfellow’s rendering of _Hiawatha_ is admired the world over. This is good literature, but it is not good ethnology, because in it an Iroquois hero-god is placed in a setting of Algonquin legends, but this was not Longfellow’s mistake, but Schoolcraft’s, on whose work Longfellow based his poem. Jeremiah Curtin says: “Schoolcraft, with his amazing propensity to make mistakes, with his remarkable genius for missing the truth and confusing everything with which he came in contact, gave the name Hiawatha to his patchwork.... In the face of all this Schoolcraft makes Hiawatha, who is peculiarly Iroquois, the leading personage in his Algonkin conglomerate: Hiawatha being an Iroquois character of Central New York (he is connected more particularly with the region about Schenectady), while the actions to which Schoolcraft relates him pertain to the Algonkin Chippewas near Lake Superior. It is as if Europeans at some future age were to have placed before them a great epic narrative of French heroic adventure in which Prince Bismarck would appear as the chief and central Gallic figure in the glory and triumph of France.”[355] [Illustration: RUSHING EAGLE, 1872 Second chief of the Mandans and son of Four Bears, Catlin’s great friend ] [Illustration: FINE CLOTH PRESERVED BY COPPER BEADS] But Hiawatha, nevertheless, is incorporated in our language and our literature, and altogether the conquered race, as was inevitable, has left an impress on our character, on our language, on our geography, and on our literature which can never, even if desired, be effaced. The mark of our contact with the red man is upon us indelibly and forever. George Bancroft is not quite right when he says, “The memorials of their former existence are found only in the names of the rivers and the mountains.” These memorials have not only permeated our poetry and literature generally, but they are perpetuated in our daily food, and every mention of “succotash,” of “mush,” of “chocolate,” is a tribute to their existence, while the fragrance of the “tobacco” we smoke is incense to their memory. Mrs. Sigourney touched this subject prettily in the little poem entitled _Indian Names_: “Ye say they all have passed away, That noble race and brave, That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave; That mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter’s shout, But their name is on your waters, Ye may not wash it out.