Hiawatha – 2018 Edition. “Liawatha” by Tom Kratman.

I wrote 4000 words on Merchant and Empire yesterday, and the end of the book is in sight. My brain is fried, therefore I present a little something by Col. Tom Kratman. Language warning for the poem, so it is below the fold. Yes, it is very political.

The Song of Hiawatha is a 19th century epic poem based on actual mythology from the Indians near the Great Lakes. Although people make fun of it, Longfellow’s poem is a great story, although the ending is a little strange for modern readers. It, and Evangeline have been parodied many times.

However, during this election season, the poem serves as a wonderful setting for, well, you’ll see. The opening of the original’s second section:

On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry*,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.
From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O’er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
With his finger on the meadow
Traced a winding pathway for it,
Saying to it, “Run in this way!”
From the red stone of the quarry
With his hand he broke a fragment,
Moulded it into a pipe-head,
Shaped and fashioned it with figures;
From the margin of the river
Took a long reed for a pipe-stem,
With its dark green leaves upon it;
Filled the pipe with bark of willow,
With the bark of the red willow;
Breathed upon the neighboring forest,
Made its great boughs chafe together,
Till in flame they burst and kindled;
And erect upon the mountains,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe,
As a signal to the nations.

From: http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=63

*The pipestone quarry is in southern Minnesota near the town of Pipestone and is still in use. it is small but worth the visit.

Col. Kratman’s updated version [Language Warning: Not for the easily offended]:

Part the First

 

By the banks of the Charles River,

Right across the shining gilt dome,

On the application job-worth,

Near the old prestigious brick yard,
Lieawatha, also known as

Spreading Bull and Fauxcahontas,

Filled her out the little boxes

Checked she off the lie, “Cherokee.”

Never thinking she’d be found out

Thinking much of salary bloated

Contemplating huge fees speaking

Prestige endless, public office.

Thought she, “What’s one little white lie;

Lesser still one little red one?”

In she turned the application.

Made she Harvard swoon in virtue

“Have we now our red professor!

Better still, red not in one way,

But in two, with massive virtue,

From her ancestors oppressed.”

Drew she then the massive salary

As her students became debt-slaves.

Ran she then for public office,

With her resume of virtue,

And she won but still some noticed

That her story didn’t add up.

Yet lived she in Massachusetts

Where the palatable lie is

Infinitely preferable

To the truth, hard and unvarnished,

Just provided that the students

And the professoriate loony

Can still feel their wondrous virtue,

Signaling it to the whole world.

 

Part the Second

 

Never ended then the questions

And the snickers from the knowing.

While the President, he pointed,

Laughing loudly, too, and sneering

At the worse-than-dumb presumption

That this white bitch was an Indian.

Then had she an idea brilliant;

“I shall take a DNA test,

Which will prove beyond a shadow

That my family’s half-remembered

Poorly researched anecdotals

Were still true and I am truly

Of the blood of Great Sequoyah.”

Then took she the DNA test

And released the answers given

To the fawning lefty papers

Globe and New York Times and WaPo

Whereupon those selfsame papers

Wrapped themselves in shrouds of virtue

Saying loudly, each and every,

That this proved beyond a single

Little nagging doubt forever

That our professorial injun

And our senatorial redskin

Was exactly what she had said,

And, in truth, a real live Indian.

Then the libertarian dummies,

Hating Trump beyond all reason

Loudly echoed just that feeling

Because even like the papers

The illiterate motherfuckers

Never realized that there is no

Possible test that could prove that

Anyone in any position

Was indeed a fucking injun.

Part the Third

 

“Opps,” she said, when it was pointed

Out, in every nook and crannie,

That the test so widely vaunted,

Not just failed to prove her truthful,

But made her and all the others

Look most stupid and dishonest,

And the best that she could hope for

Was that she might be an Inca.

“Oops,” said she, again, as soon as

She came to the understanding

That her highest aspirations

Had just disappeared in thin smoke,

And she’d given ammunition

In the form of sundry jokings

To whoever might oppose her

From the now to the forever.

Worse and worse it now did turn out

Or, more truly, was more noticed,

That her family’s sole connection

To the people called “Cherokee”

Was her multi-great grandfather who,

In manner most SS-like

Herded men, women, and children

Of the people called, “Cherokee,”

To the concentration camp whence

They were marched to Oklahoma

On the rout of which they perished

Men and women, little children,

In huge numbers all uncounted,

Buried by the trail unmarked

With their spirits long now fuming

That this white bitch with no linkage

Except that of crime and murder

Should still profit from their suff’ring.

Then the spirits laughed,

“Hahaha.”

https://accordingtohoyt.com/2018/10/18/the-song-of-lieawatha-by-tom-kratman/

 

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