DUMda DUMda DUMda DUMda
Like the constant beat of drums at a tribal gathering, the rhythm of the poem reverberates in our hearts:BY the SHORE of GITche GUMee, BY the SHINing BIG-Sea-WAter
We hear its rhythm as it carries us through the epic travels of the first legendary American hero, Hiawatha.This was not the first long poem that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, but “The Song of Hiawatha,” published in 1855, embodies the spirit needed by a nation on the verge of civil war. Longfellow got the story of an Onondaga tribal leader from historian and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who had collected the oral history of the Ojibway of northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Longfellow also heard stories from his friend, an Ojibway chief, who told him of the legendary tribal leader Hiawatha.
