Hiawatha's Departure

Quiz — Hiawatha's Departure by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1. Recall – Form & Meter: What distinctive metrical pattern drives Hiawatha's Departure forward, and from which national epic did Longfellow borrow it?

1. Recall – Setting: On the shores of which Great Lake does the poem open, and what is the significance of Hiawatha facing westward as he departs?

1. Recall – Key Image: Which bird appears twice in the poem — once as a possible identity for the approaching canoe, and once as the final voice of farewell in the natural world's goodbye chorus?

1. Recall – Supporting Characters: Who are the two groups of people Hiawatha must say farewell to before he departs, and what does he take care not to do as he leaves?

1. Comprehension – Narrative Event: Describe the sequence of hospitality Hiawatha extends to the arriving missionaries. What sacred object is lit as part of this welcome, and what does its presence signify according to the poem's symbolism?

1. Comprehension – The Missionary's Message: What is the content of the message the Black-Robe chief delivers to Hiawatha's people, and how do the chiefs respond to it?

1. Comprehension – Hiawatha's Departure: When Hiawatha tells Nokomis he is travelling toward "the portals of the Sunset," what does this phrase reveal about the true nature of his journey?

1. Analysis – Symbolism: The birch canoe carries both the arriving missionaries and the departing Hiawatha. Explain what the canoe symbolises in the poem, and how Longfellow uses its final disappearance into the mist to deepen that symbolism.

1. Analysis – Tone & Structure: The poem's tone shifts between its opening stanzas and its conclusion. Trace this tonal journey and explain how the poem avoids becoming merely sentimental in its expression of grief.

1. Critical Analysis – Historical Context: Longfellow presents the arrival of Christian missionaries as an event that Hiawatha himself welcomes and even orchestrates. What does this portrayal reveal about the assumptions of Longfellow's era, and how have later readers and critics responded to this aspect of the poem?

Answer Key

1. Longfellow employs trochaic tetrameter, a steady, drum-like pattern of stressed-then-unstressed syllables, adapted from the Finnish national epic Kalevala.

1. The poem begins on the shores of Lake Superior (Gitche Gumee). The westward direction signifies death and passage into the afterlife — specifically "the Land of the Hereafter" — rooted in the Indigenous symbolic tradition where west represents the realm of the dead.

1. The heron (Shuh-shuh-gah) first appears as one of several birds the approaching canoe might be, then returns as the final natural voice to bid Hiawatha farewell, framing the poem and giving nature an active role in his departure.

1. Hiawatha bids farewell to his grandmother Nokomis and his people. He is careful not to disturb the sleeping missionary guests as he quietly departs.

1. Hiawatha raises his hands in welcome, invites the missionaries to sit on bison and ermine skins, and takes care to provide them with food and water. The peace-pipe (calumet) is then lit and shared, symbolising hospitality, sacred agreement, and the initiation of a new relationship founded in good faith.

1. The missionary recounts the life, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. The chiefs respond with polite, measured courtesy, indicating that they have listened and will consider the message — a respectful openness rather than an immediate call for conversion.

1. This phrase indicates that this journey transcends an ordinary one, representing a passage toward death itself. Hiawatha is making a definitive departure from the world of the living, rendering his farewell to Nokomis a final one.

1. The birch canoe symbolises transition and change — bringing the new (Christian missionaries) while carrying away the old (Hiawatha and the world he represents). As Hiawatha's canoe fades into the mist, likened to a new moon setting, Longfellow evokes something cyclical yet vanishing: beautiful, barely glimpsed, and ultimately gone.

1. The opening stanzas are vibrant and joyful — filled with sunshine, buzzing bees, and glimmering light — though there is an undercurrent of inevitability. By the poem's end, the tone shifts to one of pure lament. The grief avoids sentimentality because it is universalised: the entire natural world — forests, waves, birds — participates in the mourning, preventing any single voice from drowning in sorrow; thus, loss becomes a shared, ceremonial truth.

1. Longfellow's portrayal reflects the paternalistic assumptions of mid-19th-century America, depicting European Christianity as something a wise, noble Native leader would naturally embrace and welcome. This perspective overlooks the actual violence and coercion present in missionary colonisation. Later generations have critiqued the poem for romanticising and distorting Indigenous experiences, framing the displacement of Native traditions as an orderly, even dignified, transition rather than a historical trauma.