They Don't Love You Like I Love You

“Hiawatha’s Departure” (The Song of Hiawatha XXI) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855)

The Songs of Hiawatha (1855), a poem cycle by popular 19th-century poet and educator Longfellow tells the story of the Ojibway hero Hiawatha. In the last song of the cycle, “Hiawatha’s Departure,” the hero urges his people to accept European missionaries since they have been sent by the “Master of Life” from “the land of light and morning.” Thus, he accepts his way of life has ended and leaves his tribe to travel west. Though at the time of its publication, the poem cycle was considered sympathetic to Native Americans, contemporary readings point out how Longfellow exoticized Native Americans and whitewashed white crimes against them (In “Hiawatha’s Departure,’ Hiawatha describes the incoming missionaries as kind, sympathetic figures and the encounter of missionaries and Native Americans as pleasant). Reading the poem along with that of Diaz illustrates exactly the process of cultural colonization to which “They Don’t Love You …” alludes.

“River” by Sherwin Bitsui (2003)

This strong poem by Diaz’s contemporary Native American (Navajo) poet, Bitsui, uses a river as a metaphor for the violence of white settlers against Native Americans. Like Diaz does in many poems of Postcolonial Love Poem, Bitsui uses the river – a powerful motif in Native tradition – as a symbol of the body and life itself.