By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee of the novel is 19-year-old Maud Slivenowicz, whose major source of knowledge is "Reader's Digest". Her mother, Evangeline, has five children by five different deadbeat fathers. Without a regular income, the Slivenowicz family dream of becoming movie stars, and at the end of the book it seems one of Maud's brothers might actually be given a role in a television commercial. The title of the book relates to a famous line in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha". By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee (1996) is a satirical novel by Tama
The Song of Hiawatha the poem, Longfellow cites Schoolcraft as a source for a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenyawagon, and Hiawatha.Longfellow's notes make no reference to the Iroquois or the Iroquois League or to any historical personage. However, according to ethnographer Horatio Hale (1817–1896), there was a longstanding confusion between the Iroquois leader Hiawatha and the Iroquois deity "Aronhiawagon" because of