The Song of Hiawatha

The speaker considers where stories come from, saying that they live throughout nature and the landscape of the Ojibwe and Dakota people. However, the speaker heard them from a storyteller named Nawadaha, who in turn heard them from the natural world around him. Nawadaha was a singer who lived in an Indigenous village in the forest where he sang the song of Hiawatha’s adventures.

In the beginning, the great god Manito came to earth and created a pipe bowl out of the red stone he found there and a pipe stem from a reed. As he used the pipe to smoke willow bark, smoke rose high into the air and all the Indigenous tribes followed the smoke signal. After the tribes gathered, Manito told them he would send a prophet who would unite all the tribes. He invited them to lay down their weapons and their arguments, and instead make their own pipes from the red stone and smoke together as brothers.

In the country of the North Wind lives a great bear, Mishe Mokwa. All are afraid of him, except one young man named Mudjekeewis, who finds the bear sleeping and slays it to protect his people. For this feat, his people name him ruler of the West Wind.