Born of Mohawk and Cayuga descent, musical icon Robbie Robertson learned the story of Hiawatha and his spiritual guide, the Peacemaker, as part of the Iroquois oral tradition. Now he shares the same gift of storytelling with a new generation. Hiawatha was a strong and articulate Mohawk who was chosen to translate the Peacemaker’s message of unity for the five warring Iroquois nations during the 14th century. This message not only succeeded in uniting the tribes but also forever changed how the Iroquois governed themselves—a blueprint for democracy that would later inspire the authors of the U.S. Constitution. Caldecott Honor–winning illustrator David Shannon brings the journey of Hiawatha and the Peacemaker to life with arresting oil paintings. Together, the team of Robertson and Shannon has crafted a new children’s classic that will both educate and inspire readers of all ages. Includes a CD featuring an original song written and performed by Robbie Robertson.

Originally published: Milwaukee: Kalmbach, 1970.

Weaving together the beautiful oral traditions of the American Indian into a grand epic poem, Longfellow's renowned classic is given a stunning visual interpretation by an award-winning artist. A "Booklist" Editor's Choice Book. Full color.

In the first biography of Longfellow in almost fifty years, Charles C. Calhoun seeks to solve a mystery: Why has one of America's most famous writers fallen into oblivion? His answer to this question takes us through a life story that reads like a Victorian family saga and reveals the man who introduced Americans to the literatures of other countries while creating a gallery of American icons - among them Paul Revere, John and Priscilla Alden, Miles Standish, the Village Blacksmith, Hiawatha, and Evangeline.

Begun as a pork-barrel project by the federal government in the early 1900s, the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians (also known as the Hiawatha Insane Asylum) quickly became a dumping ground for inconvenient Indians. The federal institution in Canton, South Dakota, deprived many Native patients of their freedom without genuine cause, often requiring only the signature of a reservation agent. Only nine Native patients in the asylum’s history were committed by court order. Without interpreters, mental evaluations, or therapeutic programs, few patients recovered. But who cared about Indians in South Dakota? After three decades of complacency, both the superintendent and the city of Canton were surprised to discover that someone did care, and that a bitter fight to shut the asylum down was about to begin. In this disturbing tale, Carla Joinson unravels the question of why this institution persisted for so many years. She also investigates the people who allowed Canton Asylum’s mismanagement to reach such staggering proportions and asks why its administrators and staff were so indifferent to the misery experienced by their patients. Vanished in Hiawatha is the harrowing tale of the mistreatment of Native American patients at a notorious asylum whose history helps us to understand the broader mistreatment of Native peoples under forced federal assimilation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.