The Wasp — 1879 — page 153: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a four-panel comic adaptation of Longfellow's famous poem "The Song of Hiawatha," presented as political satire. The panels depict the poem's narrative through caricatured Victorian-era figures rather than Native Americans, with each panel accompanied by verse excerpts. The satire appears to mock both the romantic idealization of Native Americans in literature and contemporary American Indian policy. Panel captions reference broken treaties, stolen land, and forced removal—treating the poem's noble narrative as hollow against actual historical atrocities. The juxtaposition of genteel Victorian figures performing "Hiawatha" against text describing violence and dispossession creates sharp ironic commentary on American hypocrisy regarding indigenous peoples and broken government promises.