Bear Creek Township near Petoskey in Emmet County, Michigan — The American Midwest (Great Lakes)

Hiawatha Pageant

Photographed by J. J. Prats, September 24, 2023

1. Hiawatha Pageant Marker, Side One

Inscription.
From 1905 to 1915, summer resorters came here to experience “The Indian Play Hiawatha.” Canadian Louis O. Armstrong worked with Ojibwa from the Garden River Reserve in Ontario, to create the pageant. It had been presented in several places, including Europe, when the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railway sponsored moving it to this location to attract tourists. Waganakising Odawa from this area joined the Canadian First Nation actors in dramatizing the narration of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1855 poem “The Song of Hiawatha.” The play romanticized Native American life as it provided income for Native actors. Hiawatha Pageants were also held on the Bear River, in Harbor Springs and in Petoskey into the mid-1950s. Other public views of native culture during this time came through pow wows and naming ceremonies.

The pageant that began here in 1905 was based on an Anishnaabek story, though Hiawatha is an Iroquois name. It brought a grandstand, a hotel, an Indian-themed workshop and tea room, and the name Wa-ya-ga-mug to Round Lake. Water separated the audience from the stage; the backdrop was the woods, with tepees more appropriate

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to the American West than the Great Lakes. At evening pageants, “all the lovely colors from the great bonfires, stage settings and costumes were reflected in the water.” The play ended with Hiawatha standing in a canoe drifting across the water to the words:

Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved.
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest Wind, Keewaydin,
… To the land of the Hereafter.

Erected 2015 by Michigan Historical Commission - Michigan Historical Center. (Marker Number 736.)

Topics. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Arts, Letters, Music • Entertainment • Indigenous Peoples and Communities. A significant historical year for this entry is 1905.

Location. 45° 24.339′ N, 84° 52.823′ W. Marker is near Petoskey, Michigan, in Emmet County. It is in Bear Creek Township. It can be reached from Hiawatha Trail 0.2 miles north of Barney Road. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 4173 Hiawatha Trail, Petoskey MI 49770, United States of America. Touch for directions.

Regionally, this marker is in Northern

Hiawatha Pageant Marker, Side Two image. Click for full size.

Photographed by J. J. Prats, September 24, 2023

2. Hiawatha Pageant Marker, Side Two

Michigan Lower Peninsula,

on the Straits of Mackinac,

and in one of the Lake Michigan Shore counties. It is also in the American Midwest

and on the Great Lakes.

Globally, it is in North America,

the Great North Woods,

the Western Hemisphere,

the Western World,

and the Anglosphere.

Historically, it finds itself in what was once the Viceroyalty of New France

and also the Northwest Territory.

Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within 3 miles of this marker, measured as the crow flies: Horace McKee Huffman, Jr. ~ 1914-1996 (a few steps from this marker); Round Lake (within shouting distance of this marker); Passenger Pigeons (approx. 2.1 miles away); State Board of Fish Commissioners / State Game and Fish Warden (approx. 2.1 miles away); Fish and Rails (approx. 2.1 miles away); Luring Visitors (approx. 2.1 miles away); Welcome to Oden State Fish Hatchery (approx. 2.2 miles away); Stafford's Bay View Inn (approx. 2.7 miles away). Touch for a list and map of all markers in Petoskey.

Also see . . .
1. Railroad Era for Walloon Lake (And Its Many Railroad Connections to Hiawatha Play at Waya-Ga-Mug).

Hiawatha Pageant Marker image. Click for full size.

Photographed by J. J. Prats, September 24, 2023

3. Hiawatha Pageant Marker

The pavement between the marker and the viewing platform was the Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, now the Petoskey to Mackinaw bike and hiking trail. Rail shuttles from resorts around the lake would bring vacationers to and from the performances.

Page on Karla Howard Buckmaster’s Waloon Lake Wanderings. Excerpt:

The Hiawatha play performed at Round Lake or Wa-Ya-Ga-Mug Lake, was extremely well attended with the dummy trains [one or two car shuttles pulled by small steam locomotives] running to and fro daily during the Summer performances. The November 1905 Acetylene Journal article ... written by L.O. Armstrong, the railroad agent who was promoting the Hiawatha play, told of the acetylene lighting illuminating the staging area. The grandstand for viewing the Hiawatha play, shown in the photo ... was described as standing “two hundred feet long and is two stories, the lower one of which consists of boxes and serves as a porch to the upper stand. There is accommodation for 2,500 people.” This is the same play with grandstand that James C. Whitfield, Sr., wrote of attending ...

“It was about that early time, too, that my folks took me over (from Walloon Lake) to a place on the Conway line of the GR&I called ‘Wa-yag-amug’. It was on the shore of Round Lake and was where the Indian pageant was put on, every afternoon in the summer. The entire cast was composed of local Indians
(Public Domain) in the Little Traverse Historical Society collection via Walloon Lake Wanderings website, circa 1909

4. Pageant Location
The two-level grandstand for the audience is in the distance. The play was performed in the treed foreground, and on the water.
and they enacted the Longfellow poem, ‘HIAWATHA’. We took the early afternoon train to Petoskey, then changed to the one for Conway and were let off at a special stop designated as ‘WA-YAG-AMUG’. We traipsed down to the lake and into a small pavilion built partly over the water of an inlet of the lake.

“The ‘stage’ consisted of the natural woods and shore of the opposite side of the inlet. An Indian teepee was set up there and all the trappings of the Indian village and beside a couple of real birch bark canoes, pulled up on the beach. The only white man in the presentation was George Franklin of Petoskey who read parts of Longfellow's poem hidden behind a rock on one side.

The play started and continued as the Indians moved about on the stage and ended as the villain of the poem was chased by the villagers and as he climbed to the top of the rock from where he jumped off into a pool of water and a stuffed beaver skin was floated up in his place. Then Hiawatha was supposed to die and that Indian stepped into a canoe beached in the lake itself, and holding a paddle straight up he was towed by an underwater rope to a spot on the
illustration by Harrison Fisher (Public Domain) in the 1906 Bobbs-Merrill edition The Song of Hiawatha, 1906

5. Hiawatha and Minnehaha
An illustration titled “Thus it was they journeyed homeward” from a book of Longfellow’s epic poem.
farther shore where he stepped into the woods.

It was quite well done and I was thrilled, but what interested me most was the home made birch bark canoes in the play, and I kept thinking how wonderful it would be if I could make myself one.”
— James C. Whitfield, Sr.

(Submitted on October 2, 2023.)

2. The Song of Hiawatha. Epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Excerpt from Chapter 3:

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O’er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset.

Fiercely the red sun descending
Burned his way along the heavens,
Set the sky on fire behind him,
As war-parties, when retreating,
Burn the prairies on their war-trail;

And the moon, the Night-sun, eastward,
Suddenly starting from his ambush,
Followed fast those bloody footprints,
Followed in that fiery war-trail,
With its glare upon his features.

And Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
Spake these words to Hiawatha:
“Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather,
Megissogwon,
illustration by Harrison Fisher (Public Domain) in the 1906 Bobbs-Merrill edition The Song of Hiawatha, 1906

6. The Song of Hiawatha Finale
An illustration titled “Sailed into the fiery sunset” from a book of Longfellow’s epic poem.
the Magician,
Manito of Wealth and Wampum,
Guarded by his fiery serpents,
Guarded by the black pitch-water.

(Submitted on October 3, 2023.)

Credits. This page was last revised on May 27, 2024. It was originally submitted on October 2, 2023, by J. J. Prats of Powell, Ohio. This page has been viewed 819 times since then and 82 times this year. Photos: 1, 2. submitted on October 2, 2023, by J. J. Prats of Powell, Ohio. 3, 4. submitted on October 3, 2023, by J. J. Prats of Powell, Ohio. 5, 6. submitted on January 15, 2024, by J. J. Prats of Powell, Ohio.