Tag Archives: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The Song of Hiawatha,” completed

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Aboriginals, American Literature

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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. ♥

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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
WordPress

“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
WordPress

“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
WordPress

More on the Tail-Fisher

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Canada, United States

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How the Rabbit lost His Tail

Photo credit: Google

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In a post published in 2011, I traced Reynard the Fox’s steps from various European countries to Georgia, US, where he is featured in Joel Chandler Harris‘ (9 December 1848 – 3 July 1908)[i] Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation.  It would be my opinion that deported Acadians told Reynard stories and Æsopic fables to the Black population of Georgia when they were finally allowed to leave the ships in which they sailed down the east coast of the current United States.  With the exception of Georgia, the Thirteen Colonies were not interested in providing a home to Catholics.  Acadians expelled in the second wave of the Grand Dérangement, c. 1857-58, were sent to England and France, but may also have moved to Louisiana.

The expulsion of the Acadians took place during the French and Indian War (1755-1763). British officials posted in Boston deported 11,500 Acadians to prevent this French-speaking population and their Amerindian allies from helping the increasingly dissatisfied citizens of the Thirteen Colonies gain independence from Britain.

Acadians lived in the present day Maritime Provinces of Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.  They also lived in the state of Maine, US.  Many fled to Canada where they lived in “P’tites ‘Cadies” (small Acadies) or were rescued by Amerindians when British soldiers were rounding them up.  Moreover, many of the deportees whose ships sailed down the coast of the eastern US,[ii] found their way back from Georgia to the current Canadian Maritime provinces.[iii]

However, among those who arrived in Georgia, US, a large number travelled to Louisiana, then a French colony, and their descendants are called Cajuns.  These are the Acadians who, in my opinion, told Reynard stories and Æsopic fables to the coloured population of Georgia whose status they shared.  However, in The Tales of Uncle Remus, the trickster ceases to be the fox.  In America, with a few exceptions, the tricksters will be the rabbit (Uncle Remus) and the coyote.  In Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit is led by Brer Fox into fishing with his tail.  As for our Cherokee tale, told in a video inserted at the bottow of this post, Fox is not only leading the rabbit but trying to play a trick on an American “trickster,” the rabbit.

Old Plantation Play Song, 1881

Old Plantation Play-Song, 1881 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Expulsion of the Acadians WordPress [iii]

Expulsion of the Acadians (Photo credit: Gov. of N.S. & WordPress [iv])

Évangéline, a Tale of Acadie

The deported Acadians were put aboard ships in a pêle-mêle fashion.  Husbands were separated from wives, parents from children and couples from one another.  American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882) immortalized this tragic event in an epic poem entitled Évangéline, published in 1847.  Longfellow‘s poem, Évangéline, a Tale of Acadie is a Gutenberg ebook (number 2039) that one can access by clicking on Évangéline.  Longfellow was motivated to write his Évangéline by American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (4 July 1804 – 19 May 1864) and he may have been helped by Thomas Chandler Haliburton.

The poem tells the story of a fictional, and now mythic, Évangéline whose family name is Bellefontaine.  She is separated from her betrothed, Gabriel Lajeunesse, during the Great Upheaval (le Grand Dérangement) and spends years looking for him.  She finds him in Philadelphia where, as an old woman, she is working as a Sister of Mercy tending to  the victims of an epidemic.  Her beloved Gabriel dies in her arms.  (See Évangéline, Wikipedia.)

Deportation_of_Acadians_order,_painting_by_JefferysDeportation Order

Charles William Jefferys (25 August 1869 – 8 October 1951)
Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org 
 

Brer Rabbit replaces Brer Fox as Trickster

But let us now return to Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox.

Interestingly, as mentioned above, the Tales of Uncle Remus include the tail-fisher motif in that a rabbit’s bushy tail is shortened when it gets stuck in the hole through which he is fishing, trying to catch fish, as did Brer Fox.  Although Brer Fox may have intended for Brer Rabbit to lose his tail, in Uncle Remus, the tail-fisher motif is mostly a “pourquoi” tale, the French word for “why.”  Such tales are origin stories or etiological tales.

Joel Chandler Harris devised an eye dialect to represent a Deep South Gullah. To  summarize the story, it tells of Brer (Brother) Rabbit who is.  walking down the road shaking his long, bushy tail when he meets Brer Fox walking along with a string of fish.  They spend time with one another (“wid wunner nudder,”) and Brer Fox says that he got the string of fish at the Baptizing creek.  Brer Fox tells Brer Rabbit that he sat there with his tail in the water and that, in the morning, he discovered he had caught many fish.

“…en drap his tail in de water en set dar twel day-light, en den draw up a whole armful er fishes, en dem w’at he don’t want, he kin fling back.”

(…and dropped his tail in the water and sat there until daylight, and then drew a whole armful of fish, and then those he did not want, he could throw back in the water.)

So Brer Rabbit tries to catch fish in the same manner, but the water freezes and when he tries to pull his tail it is no longer there:  “en lo en beholes, whar wuz his tail?” (and lo and behold, where was his tail?).

“One day Brer Rabbit wuz gwine down de road shakin’ his long, bushy tail, w’en who should he strike up wid but ole Brer Fox gwine amblin’ ’long wid a big string er fish!W’en dey pass de time er day wid wunner nudder, Brer Rabbit, he open up de confab, he did, en he ax Brer Fox whar he git dat nice string er fish, en Brer  Fox, he up’n ’spon’ dat he katch urn, en Brer Rabbit, he say whar’bouts, en Brer  Fox, he say down at de babtizin’ creek, en Brer Rabbit he ax how, kaze in dem days dey wuz monstus fon’ er minners, en Brer Fox, he sot down on a log, he did, en he up’n tell Brer Rabbit dat all he gotter do fer ter git er big mess er minners is ter go ter de creek atter sun down, en drap his tail in de water en set dar twel  day-light, en den draw up a whole armful er fishes, en dem w’at he don’t want, he kin fling back. Right dar’s whar Brer Rabbit drap his watermillion, kaze he tuck’n sot out dat night en went a fishin’. De wedder wuz sorter cole, en Brer Rabbit, he got ’im a bottle er dram en put out fer de creek, en w’en he git dar he pick out a good place, en he sorter squot down, he did, en let his tail hang in de water. He sot dar, en he sot dar, en he drunk his dram, en he think he Gwineter freeze, but bimeby day come, en dar he wuz. He make a pull, en he feel like he comin’ in two, en he fetch Nudder jerk, en lo en beholes, whar wuz his tail?” Chapter XXV 

Conclusion

This particular tale is an example of the tail-fisher motif, Aarne-Thompson: AT type 2.  However, I have also found the tail-fisher motif in a the Cherokee tale, mentioned above and told in the video inserted below.  As is the case in The Tales of Uncle Remus, our Cherokee tale is, first and foremost, an etiological or “pourquoi” tales, rather than a trickster tale but the fox remains the trickster.  However, of particular interest here is that The Tales of Uncle Remus are an American version of the Reynard stories and Æsopic and that they may have been transmitted to the Black population of Georgia, US, by Acadians deported in the first wave of the expulsion, when the ships carrying Acadian deportees sailed down to Georgia.[v]  However, were it not for Joel Chandler Harris, we may never have known why the Black population of Georgia knew about Reynard and various Æsopic tales.

As for our Cherokee tale, it is a Reynard story inasmuch as Fox wants to get back at the Rabbit because the Rabbit is a tricskter.  Moreover, the dramatis personae also includes a Bear, Bruin or Brun, bearing a Cherokee name.  In the Cherokee tale, the Bear helps pull the Rabbit out of the hole in the ice, which is when the Rabbit loses his tail.

It could be, therefore, that the Glooscap myths include one tale about a rabbit who lost its tail.

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[i] Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist. (See Joel Chandler Harris, in Wikipedia.)

[ii] To my knowledge, the history of the Expulsion has not been fully investigated.  It would appear that the Acadians were expelled in two waves, rather than all at once, and that some ships sailed towards Europe, to England and France.  Moreover, Paul Mascarène (c. 1684 – 22 January 1760), a descendant of French Huguenots émigrés, may have been among the officers who organized or suggested the Expulsion or Deportation.

[iii] Antonine Maillet’s novel entitled Pélagie-la-Charrette is about Acadians returning to their former territory.

[iv] Canada: Cultures and Colonialism to 1800 (HIST 4508).  WordPress

[v] See Micheline Bourbeau-Walker, « La Patrie littéraire : errance et résistance », Francophonies d’Amérique, <http://www.erudit.org/revue/fa/2002/v/n13/1005247ar.html?vue=resume>.

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Native American Indian Children’s Stories Storyteller Tales Legends Myths, told by Gregg Howard

Rabbit who loses his tail, Uncle Remus

Rabbit who loses his tail, Uncle Remus

© Micheline Walker
1 May 2013
WordPress 
Photo credit:  Google

“Un Canadien errant,” sung by Paul Robeson

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Art, Canada, Music

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Façade of the Church at Saint-Eustache, by Lord Charles Beauclerk, 1840
Vue de la façade de l’église Saint-Eustache occupée par les insurgés Lord Charles Beauclerk (1813-1842) (above)
Vue arrière de l’église Saint-Eustache et dispersion des insurgés
Lord Charles Beauclerk (1813-1842) (below)
Photo Credit: Musée McCord, for both illustrations
Both paintings are ink and watercolours and are available as lithographs at the McCord Museum. 
The Battle of Saint-Eustache (information)
 

Un Canadian errant

We do not know who wrote the music to which the text of Un Canadien errant (“A Wandering Canadian”) was set.  However, we know that the words were written in 1842 by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie after the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1836–38 and Lord Durham’s Report.  The “patriotes” lost their Bas-Canada.  It was their country.

Gérin-Lajoie wrote the words to this song while taking his classical exams at the Séminaire de Nicolet.  Successful candidates could enter a “Grand Séminaire” and become priests.  With this diploma,  it was also possible to study law and medicine.

Un Canadien errant  has become an unofficial patriotic anthem for French Canadians.  It has been appropriated, in a perfectly legitimate manner, by the Acadians who were exiled in 1755.  Their deportation is often called, the Great Upheaval, le Grand Dérangement. The Acadian version of Un Canadien errant is Un Acadien errant.

Un Canadien errant is also the unofficial anthem of all those of have been sent into exile, including African-Americans who were taken away from their country, never to return.

History has given the citizens of the world many reasons to bemoan cruelty, man’s cruelty to man (here the word man includes women and children).  These are events we bemoan, but one does not seek revenge.  In fact, even retaliation is dangerous because it may fuel a conflict.

Acadians have a more powerful “literary homeland” because  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882), an American, was motivated to write  Évangéline (1847).  Évangéline is a real person in the mind of Acadians, which seems perfectly acceptable.  There were many Évangélines who were separated from the man they loved.  People were put in different boats, separating not only couples but entire families.

Related posts: 
The Voyageur Mythified
Évangéline & the Literary Homeland (cont’d)
Évangéline & the Literary Homeland
La Corriveau: A Legend
The Aftermath: Krieghoff’s Quintessential Quebec
The Aftermath:  Aubert de Gaspé’s Anciens Canadiens ←
 
Related Article:
The Tragedy of Politics Overcomes Two Lovers, PRWeb
 
Un Canadian errant 
(N. B.  Paul Robeson sings a bilingual arrangement of Un Canadian errant)
1)
Un Canadien errant,
Banni de ses foyers,
Parcourait en pleurant
Des pays étrangers.
A wandering Canadian,
Banished from his hearths,
Traveled through[,] while weeping[,]
foreign countries. 
2)
Un jour, triste et pensif,
Assis au bord des flots,
Au courant fugitif
Il adressa ces mots:
One day, sad and pensive,
Seated at the edge of the floods,
To the fugitive current,
He addressed these words: 
3)
“Si tu vois mon pays,
Mon pays malheureux,
Va, dis / dire à mes amis
Que je me souviens d’eux.
“If you see my country,
My unhappy country,
Go say to my friends
That I remember them. 
4)  
“Ô jours si pleins d’appas
Vous êtes disparus,
Et ma patrie, hélas!
Je ne la verrai plus!
“O days so full of charm[s]
You have disappeared,
And my fatherland, alas!
I will see it no longer! 
5)
“Non, mais en expirant,
Ô mon cher Canada!
Mon regard languissant
Vers toi se portera…”
“No, but while expiring,
O my dear Canada!
My longing look
toward you will go…”
 

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Nana Mouskouri has also recorded this song.  It’s a very beautiful interpretation.  To hear her version, just click on her name.

Back View of the Church at Saint-Eustache
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)

 

800px-Flag_of_the_Patriote_movement_(Lower_Canada)_svg
© Micheline Walker
August 14th, 2012
WordPress