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Article: Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans 1880-1930.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Journal of Social History
- Article date:
- December 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930. By Alan Trachtenberg (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. xxv plus 369 pp. $30.00).
Hiawatha gets the prize for most misinterpreted American Indian. An Iroquoian culture hero, he converted to the cause of Deganawida, another culture hero who had taken on as his mission no less than the cessation of feuding among Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, and others. But Deganawida had a speech impediment and so Hiawatha, as his mouthpiece, went from tribe to tribe persuading the chiefs to stop the bloodshed and join a great council at Onondaga--from which the great League of the Iroquois was born.
That was the ...