Category Archives: American Literature

“The Song of Hiawatha,” completed

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

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Manabozho in the flood. (Illustration by R.C. Armour, from his book North American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore and Legends, 1905)

Manabozho in the flood. (Illustration by R. C. Armour, from his book North American Indian Fairy Tales Folklore and Legends, 1905) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pictured above, for the second time in this little series on North American Indians, is Manabozho or Nanabozho and his “brothers:” the beaver, the otter and the muskrat. We know that Manabozho, a Objiwa, who lived near Lake Superior, Longfellow’s “Gitche Gumee,” was swallowed by the king-fish whom he killed by pounding on his heart. Manabozho is a “Culture Hero:” he “made land.”

The Historical Hiawatha

Hiawatha, “the hero of these legends [Longfellow’s legends],” was not Hiawatha (who was a historical Iroquois leader of the sixteenth century”), but Manabozho[1] who “joined Huron (the Wyandot people) Deganawida in a plan to end warfare among Native Americans in what is now New York State.”[2]

In fact, as a follower of the Great Peacemaker, Deganawida, the historical Hiawatha did as “Gitche Manito, the mighty, the creator of the nations[.]” (Canto i) requests Longfellow’s Hiawatha to do. He brought peace.

In The Song of Hiawatha, Gitche Manito, a creator, was tired of the wars waged among Amerindian tribes and sent a prophet: Hiawatha. The Iroquois and Hurons speak related languages.

“I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
I have given you bear and bison,
I have given you roe and reindeer,
I have given you brant and beaver,
Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl,
Filled the rivers full of fishes:
Why then are you not contented?
Why then will you hunt each other?”

“I am weary of your quarrels,…” (Canto i) 

Hiawatha (Photo credit: Gutenberg 8090)

Hiawatha (Photo credit: Gutenberg [EBook #9080]) (The artist’s name is at the top right of the image.)

From the full moon fell Nokomis

From the full moon fell Nokomis (Photo credit: Gutenberg [EBook #31922]

Westward, Westward, Hiawathat sailed into the fiery sunset

Westward, Westward, Hiawatha sailed into the fiery sunset (Photo credit: Gutenberg [EBook #31922]

Manabozho as Creator

Longfellow’s source was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, but although Hiawatha is generally considered a substitute for Manabozho, Manabozho was a creator, in which he again differs from Longfellow’s Hiawatha. According  to Stith  Thompson:

“[s]ometimes we find the Creator living in a world before he has created it, and sometimes we are told of a primeval water presumably covering a not-yet-created. The latter conception is present in almost every American Indian creation story, with the probable exception of the Eskimo. It is on such a body of primeval water that the Creator, sometimes with a companion, finds himself floating about on a boat or raft. He sends various animals down to the bottom of the water to try to find some earth. One after another, they float back dead and unsuccessful. Finally, one of them, usually the muskrat, comes back with a bit of soil between his paws. The Creator takes this soil and works with it so that it expands and becomes the earth floating upon the original flood.” (my bold letters)[3]

This is the story, entitled “A Legend of Manabozho,” R. C. Armour illustrated in North American Indian Fairy Tales Folklore and Legends (1905).[4] This Manabozho “made the land.” (p. 11 and p. 14) He is also the shapeshifter we have already met. As we have seen, he was able to transform himself into the trunk of a tree to escape a snake. Afterwards, his “brothers” were the beaver, the otter and the muskrat.

In short, Hiawatha described above as Manabozho, is not Manabozho, in that he does not make land. (See The Song of Hiawatha, Wikipedia.) He is a hero because of his legendary deeds. Nanabozho, however, is the Ojibwa “Culture Hero:” a creator and a shapeshifter. In The Song of Hiawatha, the only deity is Gitche Manito, as his name suggests: Manito.

“I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
I have given you bear and bison, …” (Canto I)

One wonders why Longfellow called his variant of Manabozho, Hiawatha. It could simply be that he considered Hiawatha a more poetical name than Manabozho. Longfellow was a poet and poetry has its own imperatives, hence a degree of poetic license. Yet, both Hiawatha and Manabozho or Nanabozho, are inside the stomach of a fish.

Hiawatha and Winnehaha
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hiawatha, by Edmonia Lewis, marble, 1868, Newark Museum.
Minnehaha, by Edmonia Lewis, marble, 1868, Newark Museum.

summary

Hiawatha is the son of Mudjekeewis and Wenonah, but his birth is described as “miraculous” in Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. According to Chambers Biographical Dictionary, his name means “He Makes Rivers.”[5]

He was brought up by his grandmother Nokomis (featured in an image above), his mother Wenonah having died at the time of his birth. Using his “magic mittens” and “enchanted” moccasins, an Amerindian variant of European seven-league boots, he goes to avenge his mother who appears to have been seduced by Mudjekeewis, the West Wind. Father and son fight but are reconciled. (Canto iv)

  1. Hiawatha is the son of Wenonah and Mudjekeewis
  2. Hiawatha wants to avenge his mother, who was abused by Mudjekeewis
  3. Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis are reconciled
  4. Hiawatha defeats Mondamin, the Corn Spirit and becomes the leader of his people
  5. Maize grows from the buried body of Mondamin
  6. Hiawatha kills the sturgeon Nahma (who has swollen both Hiawatha and his canoe)
  7. He destroys Pearl-Feather, the sender of disease and death
  8. Hiawatha marries Minnehaha, daughter of an arrow-maker and a Dakotah once hostile Dakotah, she is brought up by Nokowis, as is Hiawatha
  9. Wedding feast and Song of the Evening Star: idyllic time of peace and culture. Osseo is reminiscent of “Beauty and the Beast” and Apuleius’ Golden Ass
  10. Hiawatha rules until the death of Chibiabos, the musician man
  11. Hiawatha kills Pau-Puk-Keewis, who has insulted him
  12. Kwasing dies, killed by Puk-Wudjies, the little people, a variant of Pygmies
  13. Ghosts are famished and soon afterwards Hiawatha’s people are victims of a famine
  14. Famine kills Minnehaha
  15. Bees: fore-runner of the white
  16. Hiawatha leaves for the Isles of the Blest in Keewaydin to rule the kingdom of the Northwest Wind.”
  17. Hiawatha tells his people to heed a missionary offering a new religion.[6]
  18. The Squirrel is named Jidanneo and each seagull, a Kayoshk

The Evening Star: Osseo

I had planned to tell the story of Osseo and his wife Oweenee and will, briefly. It resembles “Beauty and the Beast,” but metamorphoses are so numerous that one is reminded of Apuleius’ Golden Ass.

Oweenee, the youngest of ten beautiful daughters, marries Osseo, an ugly old man, because she loves him. Her nine sisters laugh. Osseo goes through an entry in an oak tree and emerges as a beautiful man. Oweenee, however, has become an ugly old woman. Osseo loves her as she loved him. As for the nine sisters and their husbands, they have been transformed into birds. Osseo’s father arrives just in time, and tells Osseo to put the birds in a gilded cage and to bring the cage to his wigwam.

Although she looks old, Oweenee gives birth to a boy. When he learns to use his arrow, the boy points at the birds and hits one of them. The bird falls, but he is no longer a bird but a beautiful woman with an arrow in her bosom. She bleeds and her blood triggers metamorphoses. Oweenee is her beautiful self again and the birds are humans, but small: Puk-Wudjies (see 12, Summary). In fact, we are at the wedding again…

Then come scourges.

Conclusion

Canto xiv is about the importance of literacy…, but it cannot be discussed in this post as I must close and we haven’t discussed Glooscap, a gigantic creator who comes out of nothing, ex nihilo.

Stith Thompson writes about the work of ethnologists: Henry Schoolcraft (28 March 1794 – 10 December 1864), James Mooney (10 February 1861 – 22 December 1921)and, especially, Franz Boas, a famous ethnologist.

Not all tribes were removed, Southwest tribes weren’t. So anthropologists have collected hundreds of stories. However, although Longfellow was familiar with Amerindian lore, The Song of Hiawatha was written by a poet and lovingly.

It has been mocked, but it remains a favourite. For one thing, if well written, stories of star-crossed lovers are popular. Moreover, Longfellow knew that the Southeast Cherokee had been removed from their land, knowledge that undoubtedly saddened him and may explain the scourges.

My kindest regards to all of you. ♥

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

____________________ 

[1] Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: The University of California Press, 1977 [1946]), p. 307.

[2] “Hiawatha,” in Una Govern, editor, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 7th edition (Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2003 [1897]).

[3] Stith Thompson, The Folktale, p. 311.

[4] R. C. Armour (illust.), North-American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Legends (London: Gibbons & Co. and Philadelphia: Co J. B. Lippincott, 1905). Kessinger Legacy Reprints.

[5] “Hiawatha,” in Adrian Room (revised by), Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 16th edition (London: Cassell, 2004 [1959]).

[6] “Hiawatha,” in James D. Hart with revisions and additions by Phillip W. Leininger, The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Sixth Edition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Hiawatha Melodrama

Antonín Dvořák, Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.”
Kevin Deas (narrator), Post Classical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez
Naxos
Visual artist: Peter Bogdanoff & John James Audubon, Frederic Church, George Catlin, Herbert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington …

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Photo credit: Google images)

© Micheline Walker
31 August 2015
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“The Song of Hiawatha,” as Amerindian Lore

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Aboriginals, American Literature, Myths

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Hiawatha

“The Song of Hiawatha,” The Children’s Own Longfellow, 1908 (Photo credit: Gutenberg #9080)

Mythifying 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882), could create characters that would seem real to his readers. For Acadians who were deported (see Deportation of the Acadians), Longfellow’s fictional Évangéline, the heroine of an epic poem he published in 1847, is real. She spent years seeking Gabriel, her fiancé. When she found him, he was one of the dying she was attending to as a Sister of Mercy. Longfellow gave Acadians a heroic past that elevated them. Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha would not return their homes to North-American Indians, but it would mythicize them by giving them the obligatory glorious past in the person of Hiawatha, a Noble Savage.

The plight of Amerindians was greater than that of Acadians. The Removal Act of 1830 and the Cherokee Removal Act of 1838 deprived a large number of North America’s aboriginals of a territory that had been theirs since time immemorial.

The history of this Cherokee removal of 1838, as gleaned by the author from the lips of actors in the tragedy, may well exceed in weight of grief and pathos any other passage in American history. Even the much-sung exile of the Acadians falls far behind it in its sum of death and misery. (James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokees EBook #45634, p. 130.)

Henry Schoolcraft by Beal Brothers, 1855 (Photo credit: Wikipedia

Henry Schoolcraft by the Beal Brothers, 1855 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sources: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

  • The growth of folkloristics and ethnology
  • The Jesuit Relations
  • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (28 March 1793 – 10 December 1864)
  • The Brothers Grimm
  • Other sources
  • Manabozho

However, at that time in history, disciplines such as folkloristics and ethnology were emerging. As we have seen in earlier posts, the Brothers Grimm were folklorists.[1] The two brothers scoured German-language lands collecting folklore in the hope that tales would yield a unifying identity to scattered German-speaking Europeans.

As for Longfellow, his Song of Hiawatha would use Amerindian tales told to the rhythm of the trochaic meter of the Finnish Kalevala (see Trochaic tetrameter, Wikipedia), but he could not return to Amerindians the territory that was taken from them. Amerindians had been dispossessed and relocated. He could however ennoble America’s crushed aboriginals. To a large extent, Hiawatha is yet another chapter in the history of the Noble Savage which, according to Stith Thompson, finds its beginning in the Jesuit Relations, the yearly report Jesuit missionaries to New France sent to their superiors in France.[2]

The Jesuits (Thompson: 297-298) recorded the tales told by the Amerindians and, by the same token, were witnesses to what I will call ‘natural virtue,’ virtue that was not related to Catholicism and Christianity. One of our colleagues, Françoise Duhamel, wrote a comment associating the Noble Savage to Romanticism. French Romantic author François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand wrote Atala (1801), René (1802), Les Natchez (1790s) Voyage en Amérique (1826), thus invigorating the concept of the Noble Savage. Chateaubriand travelled to the United States in 1791. As an aristocrat, he was forced to leave France during the French Revolution. He was an émigré.

The Song of Hiawatha did elevate Amerindians. However, Native Americans also became a subject matter in emerging disciplines such as folkloristics and ethnology. In this regard, Longfellow’s main source would be Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an Indian agent for the American government and an ethnologist. In 1846, eight years after the Cherokee Removal Act, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft “was commissioned for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States, which was published in six volumes from 1851 to 1857.” (See Henry Schoolcraft, Wikipedia.) Britannica refers to two volumes.[3]

Henry Schoolcraft had been married to Jane Johnston (1800 – 1842), the “mixed race daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother, who was the daughter of a war chief.” (See Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Wikipedia). She had taught her husband Ojibwa. Jane Johnston is the first American Indian writer.

Longfellow also drew his subject matter from the Narratives of John Heckewelder (12 March 1743 – 21 January 1823), a missionary to the Indians, from Ojibwe[4] Chief Kahge-ga-gah-bowh “during his visits at the author’s,” and from “Black Hawk and other Sac [Sauk] and Fox Indians Longfellow encountered on Boston Common.”  (See The Song of Hiawatha, Wikipedia.) Hiawatha is an Ojibwa and there can be no doubt that Longfellow knew Amerindian tales. One need only read North American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore and Legends (Amazon), illustrated by R. C. Armour and published in 1905. Would that this book were online! It may be, but I have not found it.[5]

R. C. Armour’s book features Mudjikewis, Hiawatha’s father in The Song of Hiawatha, the mischievous Paupukkewis (p. 15) whose name is Pau-Puk-Keewis in Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. More importantly, the book R. C. Armour illustrated, tells the adventures of Manabozho.

For instance, Manabozho is swallowed whole by the king-fish, a sturgeon named Nahma. So is Hiawatha. After giving a name—Ajidanneo (animal tail)—to a squirrel that has entered the fish, depicted in the image at the top of this post, Manabozho-Hiawatha “recommenced his attack of the king-fish’s heart, and by repeated blows he at last succeeded in killing him.” (p. 71) Gulls, whom he calls “my younger brothers” helped open the mouth of the sturgeon to free Hiawatha. As we have seen, for North-American Indians, there is no difference between humans and animals, hence the “my younger brothers” referring to the gulls. Manabozho names the gulls Kayoshk, a word meaning “noble scratchers” (p. 71). Moreover, Manabozho “made the land” (p. 11), in which he would be a creator.

The killing of Nahma is one of Hiawatha’s legendary deeds (geste, in chanson de geste). Two other legendary deeds are the killing of Mondamin, the Corn Spirit (canto v), and that of Pearl-Feather, the sender of death (canto viii). So is, to a lesser extent, the killing of Pau-Puk-Keewis (canto xiv).

Hiawatha by Thomas Ea kins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hiawatha by Thomas Eakins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Death of Minnehaha

Death of Minnehaha by William de Leftwich Dodge, 1885. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Temporary Conclusion

Were The Song of Hiawatha a fairy tale, it would end with the marriage of Hiawatha and Minnehaha. Moreover, the wedding-feast is followed by cantos that are looked upon as idyllic.

“As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other!” (Canto x of xxii)

Canto (xi) The Wedding-Feast (appearance of Pau-Puk-Keewis)
Canto (xii) The Evening Star (metamorphoses)
Canto (xiii) Blessing of the Corn-Fields (the food of Amerindians)
Canto (xiv) Picture writing (to be able to write)

However, Hiawatha will lose his friends Chibiabos, the musician (canto xv) and Kwasind (canto xviii). We know moreover that the white man is arriving. Finally, having lost the beautiful Winnehaha, Hiawatha will walk into the sunset to go and rule the kingdom of the Northwest.

“In the wigwam with Nokomis [Minnehaha’s mother],
With those gloomy guests that watched her,
With the Famine and the Fever,
She was lying, the Beloved,
She, the dying Minnehaha.” (canto xx of xxii)

I am inserting a video, a lovely reading of the Pau-Puk-Keewis episode, and will then close because this post is already very long and my computer has slowed down.

Hiawatha was made into three Cantatas by Samuel Coleridge Taylor. This is not the music we will hear. The text and music we will hear is the Hiawatha Melodrama, based on Antonín Dvořák‘s Ninth Symphony: “From the New World,” Op. 95, B. 178.

In short, Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha is a product of its times. It partakes of the intellectual endeavours of folklorists and ethnologists.

Next, we will hear that Hiawatha is Manabozho. These were still the early years of ethnology! We should also tell more about Osseo (canto xii).

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Sources and Resources

____________________ 

[1] Antti Aarne would publish his first index of folk-literature: Verzeichnis der Märchentypen, in 1910. Stith Thompson would continue Aarne’s work and publish his six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955-1958). It is an online publication.

[2] Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: The University of California Press, 1977 [1946]), pp. 297-298.

[3] “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 29 Aug. 2015
<http://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Wadsworth-Longfellow>.

[4] Ojibwa are also called Ojibwe or Chippewa.

[5] R. C. Armour, illustrator, North-American Indian Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Legends (London: Gibbons & Co. and Philadelphia: Co. J. B. Lippincott, 1905). Kessinger Legacy Reprints.

Hiawatha Melodrama: The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis

Antonín Dvořák
Kevin Deas (narrator), Post Classical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez
Naxos
Visual artist: Peter Bogdanoff

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Longfellow (Google images)

© Micheline Walker
29 August 2015
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“The Song of Hiawatha,” a Prologue

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Aboriginals, American Literature, Myths

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Hiawatha and Minnehaha

Hiawatha and Minnehaha sculpture by Jacob Fjelde near Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s The Song of Hiawatha, published in 1855, will be posted today or early tomorrow, but it may require a short follow-up article. I have retold the entire story ‘succinctly,’ but it nevertheless made for a long article.

The Song of Hiawatha,

Hiawatha is given a mission by “Gitche Manito, the mighty, the creator of the nations[.]” (Canto i). He will be a “prophet” and put an end to the wars American Indian tribes wage one against another. The Song of Hiawatha is an epic poem, and therefore resembles the Epic of Gilgamesh and, closer to us, The Song of Roland in which Roland and his men defeat countless Saracens, Muslims, at the Battle of Roncevaux (778). It also brings to mind The Poem of the Cid, El Cantar de Mio Cid.

Hiawatha becomes a hero through legendary deeds and marries the beautiful Minnehaha. But we sense a tragedy. Ghosts come to haunt Winnehaha. They are famished, so she gives them food. This is a premonition. Famine kills Winnehaha and devastates Hiawatha’s people.

Much was expected of Hiawatha, much that he could not accomplish. The white man was arriving. After the death of Winnehaha, Hiawatha marches West to the Isles of the Blest in Keewaydin, where he will rule what I believe is the evanescent kingdom of the “Northwest Wind.”

“I beheld, too, in that vision
All the secrets of the future,
Of the distant days that shall be.
I beheld the westward marches
Of the unknown, crowded nations.
All the land was full of people,
Restless, struggling, toiling, striving,
Speaking many tongues, yet feeling
But one heart-beat in their bosoms.
In the woodlands rang their axes,
Smoked their towns in all the valleys,
Over all the lakes and rivers
Rushed their great canoes of thunder.

“Then a darker, drearier vision
Passed before me, vague and cloud-like;
I beheld our nation scattered,
All forgetful of my counsels,
Weakened, warring with each other:
Saw the remnants of our people
Sweeping westward, wild and woful,
Like the cloud-rack of a tempest,
Like the withered leaves of Autumn! (Canto xxi of xxii )

Before leaving, Hiawatha tells his people not to fear the Black Robes, the missionaries. I think we are now hearing Longfellow’s own voice.

Postage stamp issued on 16 February, 1940

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Postage Stamp issued on 16 February 1940 (Photo credit: Google Images)

The Song of Hiawatha (1855) was enormously successful, as had been Longfellow’s Évangéline, published in 1847.

Évangéline is the lesser tragedy. Acadians were deported. They were put aboard ships dividing families and betrothed. The Cajuns, descendants of Acadians, live in Louisiana, but many returned home or went into hiding, a large number went to Quebec, protected by Amerindians. For the most part, Acadians live in the Atlantic provinces of Canada, but their farms were not returned to them. However, they have been mythicized by Longfellow, which is a form of redemption, poetical as it may be.

To a certain extent, the same is true of The Song of Hiawatha. It ennobled a people. But Amerindians had been relocated; they had been torn away from the land that had always been theirs.

Ethnologists, two of whom are Claude Lévi-Strauss and Franz Boas, devoted long and insightful studies to Amerindians, totemism in particular, and the interest they have taken in Amerindian folklore and mythology has served to dignify North America’s Indians, which is not insignificant, but …

06fc0521-ffd5-4000-b7be-ccc0442e2dd4_fit_175_175
Évangéline (Google Images)

© Micheline Walker
27 August 2015
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Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in Abolitionists, American Literature, Art, Slavery

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 001 
 
Uncle Tom and Little Eva, by Edwin Longsden Long R. A. (12 July 1829 – 15 May 1891), a children’s edition
(Photo credit: Project Gutenberg [EBook #11171])
 
Edwin Longsden Long R. A. (12 July 1829 – 15 May 1891)
 

Two Classics: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus

Both Harriet Beecher Stowe and Joel Chandler Harris were criticized for creating or perpetuating stereotypes concerning the Black in America. Yet, Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, made the evils of slavery known to millions of readers. As for Joel Chandler Harris‘ Uncle Remus stories, they were trickster stories that fascinate folklorists in that they were told by Uncle Remus but do not originate in African tales. Africans brought Anansi to the United States. These stories are spider tales and may be  ancestors to Spider-man.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s (14 June 1811 – 1 July 1896) is the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. When President Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809 – 15 April 1865) met Mrs Stowe, he exclaimed: “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” (See Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wikipedia.) This was an exaggeration, but not by much.[i] According to the Oxford Companion to American Literature (sixth edition, 1995), Harriet Beecher Stowe was not an abolitionist, but it would be my opinion that Mrs Stowe played too significant a role in the abolition of slavery not to have been or become an abolitionist at heart.

In 1832, Harriet Beecher, Lyman Beecher‘s daughter, left Litchfield, Connecticut, where she was born and raised. She followed her family to Cincinnati Ohio and started to work as a teacher. While living in Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher took refuge in Washington, Kentucky because Cincinnati was afflicted with a serious cholera epidemic. There were slaves in Kentucky, chattel slaves mainly. During that visit to Kentucky, Harriet Beecher was taken to see a slave auction. This was her first exposure to slavery.  However, in 1836, she married Calvin Eliss Stowe (6 April 1802 – 22 August 1886), an American Biblical scholar who taught at Harriet’s father’s theological seminary, Lane, and was an ardent and active opponent of slavery. Mrs Stowe died in Hartford, Connecticut, her home for 23 years.

The Treatment of Slaves: the facts

“The treatment of slaves in the United States varied widely depending on conditions, times and places. Treatment was generally characterized by brutality, degradation, and inhumanity. Whippings, executions, and rapes were commonplace. According to Adalberto Aguirre,[ii] there were 1,161 slaves executed in the U.S. between the 1790s and 1850s. Exceptions existed to virtually every generalization; for instance, there were slaves who employed white workers, slave doctors who treated upper-class white patients, and slaves who rented out their labor. After 1820 [in the US, the slave trade was abolished in 1807], in response to the inability to import new slaves from Africa, some slaveholders improved the living conditions of their slaves, to influence them not to attempt escape.” (See Slavery, Wikipedia.)

Harriet Beecher Stowe & William Still

The Underground Railroad

Calvin Eliss Stowe, Harriet’s husband, was associated with The Underground Railroad, a movement founded by William Still (7 October 1821 – 14 July 1902), “The Father of the Underground Railroad” and a writer. Still’s Underground Railroad is a Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #15263].[iii] Members of this movement provided safe houses and protected slaves fleeing north from slave-hunters, a form of witch-hunting.[iv] For instance, individuals dressed as policemen, were catching slaves travelling to Canada. Members of the Underground Railroad asked Bostonians to protect the beleaguered Black population. (See the image at the foot of this post, c 1851.)

Initially, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), the best-selling novel of the 19th century, was serialized in the National Era (1851-1852), serialization was common practice in the 19th century, but it appeared in book form in 1852, selling 300,000 copies. Stowe was famous. Mrs Stowe was influenced by a Slave Narrative: The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849) a work by Josiah Henson (15 June 1789 – 5 May 1883). Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an eloquent response to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

722px-Brooklyn_Museum_-_A_Ride_for_Liberty_--_The_Fugitive_Slaves_-_Eastman_Johnson_-_overall
 767px-Eastman_Johnson_-_Negro_Life_at_the_South_-_ejb_-_fig_67_-_pg_120

 Eastman Johnson (29 July 1824 – 5 April 1906)

A Ride for Liberty 
Negro Life at the South

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: an Instrument of Change

As for Stowe, the novelist, after reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, many among her world-wide  “audience,” became abolitionists or were endeared to the cause of abolition. Literature and the arts in general, not to mention a good education, are powerful instruments of change. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an instrument of abolition. It was a “story” with characters one could relate to and start loving. It spoke to the heart and was both a moment of grace and an instance of defiance.

Knowingly or unknowlingly, Harriet Beecher Stowe did join her husband who, as a member of The Underground Railroad, also defied the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, a continuation of the Fugitive Act of 1793. There was a price to pay. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father, a staunch conservative, came under attack because of his daughter’s book. However, there was praise. Stowe was received by President Abraham Lincoln (25 November 1862), three years before the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and one year before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1st January, 1863). She was also received by Queen Victoria. Besides, whatever her perception of herself, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) opposed, in no uncertain terms, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin summarized

It’s a simple story. Uncle Tom is a slave who “belongs” to the Shelby family, who are ‘good’ slave owners.  Due to financial difficulties, the Shelbys are about to sell their slaves. Uncle Tom helps the mulatto girl Eliza and her child cross the frozen Ohio River. But he stays behind out of loyalty to his owners. He is sold to a slave trader and separated from his family. But young George Shelby vows to redeem him.

Going down the Mississippi, Tom saves young Eva’s life and her family, the St Clares, are  most grateful to Tom. They buy him and he becomes their servant in New Orleans. For two years, Tom is happy with Eva and her rather naughty Black friend Topsy.

However, happiness is short-lived. Eva is frail and dies. Then her father is killed accidentally. So Uncle Tom is auctioned off to the Legree family, ‘bad’ slave owners. Simon Legree is a brutal man who drinks to excess. However, he has found in Uncle Tom a forgiving slave and becomes more lenient, which makes him fear his slaves. Two of them make believe they have run away. Uncle Tom will not reveal Cassie’s and Emmaline’s whereabouts. In a fit of rage, Simon Legree has Uncle Tom flogged to death. 

Uncle Tom still has a friend in George Shelby, but George arrives as Tom is dying. Unable to save Uncle Tom, George swears to devote his life to the abolition of slavery. He is true to the promise he made to redeem Uncle Tom.

Eva and Topsy

Eva and Topsy[v]

Topsy (left) and Little Eva, characters from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851–52); lithograph by Louisa Corbaux, 1852. Louisa Corbaux/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZC4-2974)
(Photo credit: The Encyclopædia Britannica)
This picture is available on the internet.  Please refrain from associating it to my blog.
 

A Successful Plot

There may be ‘bad’ slave owners, but there are ‘good’ ones. The readers need only identify with the Shelbys and, particularly, with George who keeps his promise to redeem Uncle Tom. The readers may also identify with little Eva whose friend Topsy is a Black child. Although Eva is the daughter of a slave trader, she loves uncle Tom and plays with Topsy. There is, therefore, inherent goodness in Uncle Tom. He is a human being, endowed with moral superiority. He is loyal to the Shelbys and he tries to help Simon Legree. Moreover, although George Shelby arrives too late, George Shelby, who is good, knows that Tom is a fine man.  Had Uncle Tom not been dying, he would have been redeemed by his former owners. But the timing is wrong and one cannot fault timing. Bad timing is an accident and creates suspense, a favourite device in fiction. Uncle Tom dies, but it is one person’s fault, Legree, not a community nor the readers, except that slavery has made this horrifying death possible.

So there is an indictment of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; an unambiguous indictment. In this respect, Mrs Stowe does not waver. Uncle Tom is consistently at the mercy of “owners.” If a slave is purchased by a ‘bad’ slave owner, his or her fate can be an unjust and painful death. However, we can count on George to be victorious. He is a saviour figure. Mrs Stowe’s account of the plight of slaves is therefore nuancé. In fact, fate is portrayed as unkind, whatever the colour of one’s skin. The Shelbys are impoverished and little Eva’s health is so fragile that she dies.

In other words, Uncle Tom’s story is very sad and there is one very ‘bad’ man whose skin is white.[vi] So, despite gradations and many happy moments, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is about the wrongs of slavery. Uncle Tom is sold and he is killed as though his life meant nothing, which was precisely the case. In the days of slavery, the life of a slave meant nothing, which was and remains an infamy.

I will therefore close by repeating Abraham Lincoln’s words: “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” (See Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wikipedia.)

Sources:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a Gutenberg Project publication [EBook #11171]
The Underground Railroad is a Gutenberg Project publication [EBook #15263]
Wikipedia (as indicated, a quotation at a time)
The Oxford Companion to American Literature (1995)
The Encyclopædia Britannica.[iv]
                                                
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[i] A. Aguirre, Jr., “Slave executions in the United States,” The Social Science Journal, vol. 36, issue 1 (1999), pp. 1–31. (Quoted in Slavery in  the United States, Wikipedia.)
[ii] Anti-Slavery Society: http://anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/hus-utc.htm
[iii] The Underground Railroad is a Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #15263] 
[iv] A large number of fugitive slaves were transported to Liberia.
[v] “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 29 Nov. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/614067/Uncle-Toms-Cabin>. 
[vi] There were exceptions, but nearly all slave owners in America had white skin.
 

[

Kidnap Poster, c 1851

Kidnap Poster,   1851

© Micheline Walker
29 November 2013
WordPress

The Battle of Fort William Henry & Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans

26 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in American Literature, History, Literature

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James Fenimore Cooper by
John Wesley Jarvis
(c. 1781 – 1839)
 
The Last of the Mohicans, 1826 
 

The Last of the Mohicans is an American historical novel written by James Fenimore Cooper (15 September 1789 – 14 September 1851) that  commemorates the Siege of Fort William Henry.

Drawing of Otsego Hall, the residence of Unite...

Otsego Hall

Drawing of Otsego Hall, the residence of United States author James Fenimore Cooper. A few years after his death it burned, and the surrounding land was sold by the heirs. His daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, incorporated some of the bricks in a residence she built. It had been built by his father (completed 1799). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

—ooo—

Six years earlier, Cooper had begun his literary career with the publication of The Precaution (1820), written in response to his wife, Susan DeLancey, who “challenged his claim that he could write a better book than the English novel he was reading to her.”[i]  Good for her and good for all readers. Cooper’s second book, The Spy, published in 1821, was a great success and marks the birth of a great American novelist. In 1823, he published The Pioneers, which confirmed his amazing talent for creating very fluent novels based on life in America.

The Pioneers was the first of his Leatherstocking Tales, a series in which he inserted The Last of the Mohicans, a novel that features Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye), a pioneering scout. Ending his Leatherstocking Tales series are The Pathfinder(1840) and The Deerslayer(1841).

The PLOT as told in the Oxford Companion to American Literature [ii]

The Last of the Mohicans is a romance featuring Cora and Alice Munro, the daughters of the English commander, Lieutenant-Colonel George Munro. They wish to join their father and are accompanied by Major Duncan Heyward and the singing teacher David Gamut, Alice’s fiancé. Also present is Amerindian Magua, a traitor to the British who will meet a sorry end, shot by Hawkeye and falling down a precipice to his death.  As the party travels to besieged Lake George, Magua’s treacherous intentions are foiled by Hawkeye, Bumppo, and his friend, chief Chingachgook and his son Uncas. They are the “only survivors of the Mohican Aristocracy.” Cora and Alice are captured by Magua with the help of the Iroquois. Here Magua promises them safety if Cora will become his Squaw, which she refuses. At this point, an instance of kairos, the opportune moment, Hawkeye rescues the girls. They reach Fort William and remain there until their father, Munro or Monro capitulates.

A gallant Montcalm “gives them a safe-conduct[,]” but, as we know, the Siege of Fort William Henry was followed by a massacre. Fortunately the vigilant Hawkeye finds Cora, imprisoned in a Delaware camp, and Alice, in a Huron camp. But Heyward who has entered the camp “in disguise, rescues Alice and, with Uncas, escapes to the Delaware camp,” where they are well received.

Upon learning Uncas’s identity, old chief Tamenund “hails him as his destined successor.” The plot thickens, however, when Magua, our traitor, shockingly claims Cora as his “rightful property” and Uncas cannot object. However, “joined by the English, leads his tribe against the Hurons” and, when Magua “attempts to desert,” Uncas follows, and tries to rescue Cora. Uncas and Cora are killed, and Hawkeye shoots Magua, who falls from a precipice to his death,” as mentioned earlier. The group returns to “civilization,” except for Hawkeye “who continues his frontier career.”

It’s all there: good and bad Amerindians, brave Munro, or Monro, who fights to the bitter end, gallant Montcalm, the death of Uncas, the last Mohican, Cora, who will not be a traitor’s squaw, the death of the bad Amerindian, action galore, losses and gains, and, finally, the clash between civilization and the frontier, the novel’s main source of tension.

Civilization versus the frontier

James Fenimore Cooper was fascinated by the juxtaposition of the “civilized” and the unpredictable “frontier.”  Let me quote Wikipedia: “In the Last of the Mohicans, the stereotypical, nineteenth century view of the native is seen in the character of Magua, who is devoid of almost any redeeming qualities. In comparison, Chingachgook, the last chief of the Mohicans, is portrayed as noble, courageous, and heroic.”

Cooper was an extremely prolific and successful novelist. He was admired everywhere and by almost everyone, including the equally prolific Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885). Not that his art was very polished, but that he was inventive and a phenomenal storyteller, a feature that keeps the reader in suspense. Rare are those writers whose books one cannot put down as of the end of the first paragraph.

James Fenimore Cooper
1940 issue

Cooper is best remembered for his Leatherstocking Tales, featuring the wilderness scout called Natty Bumppo, or Hawkeye. They include The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841).  According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the “Leatherstocking” tales are Cooper’s “great imperfect masterpiece.”[iii]

However, he had been a midshipman and wrote sea novels or romances. He also wrote the scholarlyHistory of the Navy (1853) and championed egalitarianism.

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[i] James D Hart, with revision and additions by Phillip W. Leininger, The Oxford Companion to American Literature (Oxford University Press 1995[1941]).

[ii] George G. Dekker, “James Fenimore Cooper.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/136268/James-Fenimore-Cooper>.

[iii] Ibid.

© Micheline Walker
26 March 2012
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