The Song of Hiawatha

The peace pipe bookends The Song of Hiawatha. The first canto is called “The Peace-Pipe,” illustrating how important this symbol of community is to Hiawatha’s people. In the first canto, the peace pipe is a civilizing instrument. The great god Gitche Manito fashions the first peace pipe out of red rock, showing the people how to use natural resources to create tools without destroying it. The peace pipe becomes a call to unity: When Gitche Manito smokes the pipe, the smoke rises into the air and summons all the nearby tribes, which until this moment have been scattered, isolated, and constantly in conflict:

All your strength is in your union,

All your danger is in discord;

Therefore be at peace henceforward,

And as brothers live together (2.112-15).

With the peace pipe, the great god brings them together at the cusp of a new age.

Later, with the arrival of European missionaries, Hiawatha’s tribes again face a dramatic transition. The poem would like to imagine that Christianity is a positive prospect for Indigenous people, so it commemorates this moment with the peace pipe Hiawatha shares with the colonizers. Of course, history—which would have been well-known to Longfellow—does not bear out this peaceful fantasy.