March 25: The 19th-century Romantic Image of Native America

Readings: Henry Longfellow, Hiawatha, Chapters 10 and 22; Peter Burkholder, “Introduction to Romanticism,” History of Western Music. pp.602-06 (Norton, 2009).

OVERARCHING IDEA: “A good Indian is one who wants what’s best for his people and what is best for his people is to assimilate.” -Perspective of the Dominant Culture

Questions for discussion:

How is Native America portrayed in the poem of Hiawatha?

  • Gender roles

    • Submissive women

    • Traditional women’s roles

    • Going and finding/conquering a wife/woman

    • Marrying a Dakotan woman in order to ease tension

  • Grounded in nature - standing still (no references to innovation and technology)

    • The trope of, “A true Indian culture is unchanging” - Orientalism

    • Ambitious

  • Mystical

    • Smoking

    • Hiawatha’s other worldly abilities

    • Terms like, mystical

  • Conquering the West/Westward expansion

  • Altruistic

    • “A good Indian is one who wants what’s best for his people and what is best for his people is to assimilate.” - Perspective of the Dominant Culture

    • Disappearing at the end of the story because he is a representation fo the old so that they could adapt

Musical elements of exoticized Native American music

  • Open fifths in the bass

  • Grace notes

  • Pentatonic

  • Static harmony

  • Minor third

  • Almost always in minor

  • Melodic structure, starting at a higher pitch and descending

  • English Horn represents the pasture & bag pipes

  • Short long, short long, percussive element

  • Embodiment of a drum

How does Hiawatha respond to the coming of the missionaries (“Black-Robe chief”) and forces of assimilation?

He welcomes them joyously and asks for them to be taken care of when he leaves. It is written as if when the black robe chief came, their life had never been better.

OVERARCHING IDEA: “A good Indian is one who wants what’s best for his people and what is best for his people is to assimilate.”

How does this image of Native America relate to the movement of Romanticism?

  • Expression of self: Hiawatha’s journey and experience

  • Supernatural: Spirituality

    • Knowing through the irrational and instinctual

    • Inner and outer world

  • Nationalism

How is the exoticism similar to Carmen?

  • Invoking the sense of other with the text

  • A sense of unfamiliarity

  • They both represent freedom

  • Spirituality/natural intelligence

How is it different?

  • Portrayal of Missionaries

    • Not outwardly Racist

  • Native Americans were exoticized but they had many “American” values placed on them

  • Assimilation means that we need to make them similar to us in positive ways but also make sure that we know that they are different than and and something that needs to be controlled

How does the dominant image of American use the exoticized image of Native America?

  • A way to manipulate and control

Longfellow created this story from Jane Johnston (Ojibwe) and Henry Schoolcraft (agent of Indian affairs) who gave him materials to play

Brief history & significance of Native America 1880-1943

  • Its hard to be America without Native Americans (due to being pushed out and killed) because of how ingrained they were from the beginning. Ex: Boston Tea Party

  • Before civil war, Native Americans were going to live out west, after was when assimilation took place in legislation because the government wanted the resources on that land

  • Due to the destroying of the Native American culture because of the dominant culture, this era created this nostalgic view of what Native American culture meant to the dominant culture which made it romantic

Significance of the work of ethnologists

  • Published books on native American music

    • That is key to exoticism because we are needing this music

Issues of transformation in early ethnological work

  • The songs were complete changed from the original work

    • Changed into a piano tune that doesn’t sound like the drums and singing