Oh Hiawatha how you lend my heart to sadness
How you’ve been so great and noble
To your finest friends and people
How your handmade birch canoe
Rose and fell within the waters
How your willow bow and arrow
So skilled and faithful fed you
But in spite your faithful service
Your ever fearless journey
Dear sweet Minnehaha
Sent off to the blessed land
From a winter hunger fever
From her life so taketh your heart.
And loneliness then cometh
Though we all know just as seasons
So must come and go our good friends
Chibiabos, Kwasind and all kinfolk
And so we must take to remember
Four nights we must take care to
Send them off with mindful firelight
Four nights must we wake to stoke
Campfire for their journey.
How so easy it is to forget
All your deeds of strength and honour
Clearing rivers of their boulders
Catching Nahma, the sturgeon
In unnecessary tumult,
Fighting gravely the Pearl Feather
Fighting Megissogwon
That lived past the black pitch-water
Where fiery serpents gathered,
How Kahgahgee tried to
Take out Hiawatha’s corn fields
But how Hiawatha captured
Kahgahgee, the raven
And killed all the crows who plotted
With Kahgagee to
Cause destruction to his people.
So then why did you have to
Sail off in the Big-Sea-Water
Gitche Gumee shining brightly
So no more the sun would rise
Brightly on your wigwam, Hiawatha?