The Story of Hiawatha, Adapted from LongfellowLongfellow, Henry Wadsworth
General
The Story of Hiawatha, Adapted from Longfellow
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
Hiawatha, active 15th century -- Poetry; Indians of North America -- Poetry; Iroquois Indians -- Kings and rulers -- Poetry
Then Mudjekeewis gripped his club and swung it high above his head,
shouting his war-cry in a terrible voice, and he struck the great bear
on the forehead a blow that would have split the rocks on which the
monster slept. The great bear rose and staggered forward, but his senses
reeled and his legs trembled beneath him. Stunned, he sat upon his
haunches, and from his mighty chest and throat came a little whimpering
cry like the crying of a woman. Mudjekeewis laughed at the great bear,
and raising his war-club once again, he broke the great bear's skull as
ice is broken in winter. He put on the belt of wampum and returned to
his own people, who were proud of him and cried out with one voice that
the West-wind should be given him to rule. Thenceforth he was known as
Kabeyun, father of the winds and ruler of the air.
Kabeyun had three sons, to whom he gave the three remaining winds of
heaven. To Wabun he gave the steady East-wind, fresh and damp with the
air of the ocean; to the lazy Shawondasee he gave the scented breezes
of the south, and to the cruel Kabibonokka he gave the icy gusts and
storm-blasts of the Northland.
Wabun, the young and beautiful, ruled the morning, and would fly from
hill to hill and plain to plain awakening the world. When he came with
the dew of early dawn upon his shoulders the wild fowl would splash amid
the marshes and the lakes and rivers wrinkle into life. The squirrels
would begin to chatter in the tree-tops, the moose would crash through
the thicket, and the smoke would rise from a thousand wigwams.
And yet, although the birds never sang so gayly as when Wabun was in the
air, and the flowers never smelled so sweet as when Wabun blew upon
their petals, he was not happy, for he lived alone in heaven. But one
morning, when he sprang from the cloud bank where he had lain through
the night, and when he was passing over a yet unawakened village, Wabun
saw a maiden picking rushes from the brink of a river, and as he passed
above her she looked up with eyes as blue as two blue lakes. Every
morning she waited for him by the river bank, and Wabun loved the
beautiful maiden. So he came down to earth and he wooed her, wrapped her
in his robe of crimson till he changed her to a star and he bore her
high into the heavens. There they may be seen always together, Wabun and
the pure, bright star he loves--the Star of Morning.
But his brother, the fierce and cruel Kabibonokka, lived among the
eternal ice caves and the snowdrifts of the north. He would whisk away
the leaves in autumn and send the sleet through the naked forest; he
would drive the wild fowl swiftly to the south and rush through the
woods after them, roaring and rattling the branches. He would bind the
lakes and rivers in the keenest, hardest ice, and make them hum and sing
beneath him as he whirled along beneath the stars, and he would cause
great floes and icebergs to creak and groan and grind together in agony
of cold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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