This will be the first screening of this footage since 1910.

(Happy 100th Anniversary, Katharine!)

Nancy Watrous (Chicago Film Archives), Judith Miller (Valparaiso University) and Andy Uhrich (NYU MIAP)

Tell the Story of A Pictorial Story of Hiawatha (1904, Katharine Ertz-Bowden and Charles Bowden)

ABSTRACT

              From 1904 through 1910 the Bowdens travelled the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits with their performance of A Pictorial Story of Hiawatha. Projecting both moving pictures and stereopticon slides, the Bowdens presented a mix of travelogue, history lesson, and poetry reading based around the live performance of Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha by Ojibwe actors in Desbarats, Ontario. Katharine designed and performed the lecture while Charles photographed the images and ran the projectors. Katharine worked for decades as the librarian and archivist at Valparaiso University and her films and slides have been under the care of the University Archives since the teens. This presentation will be the first screening of the footage since 1910.

A Pictorial Story of Hiawatha (1904; silent with live narration [text missing]; approximately 1775’ likely on 20 separate rolls of film [extant 710’ on 7 rolls], 16 fps, b&w, 35mm; 139 hand-colored and b&w stereopticon slides [97 extant]

The moving pictures were likely shot by Charles Bowden though the possibility exists that some of the rolls of film were appropriated from the Charles Urban Trading Company’s 1903 film Hiawatha: Messiah of the Ojibways, shot the same month as the Bowden footage. The slides are a mixture of photos taken by Bowden and commercially available photographs by Andrew E. Young, a photographer from Sault Sainte Marie, MI, and the Detroit Photographic Company.

Credits:

Author/lecturer: Katharine Ertz-Bowden

Cinematographer/photographer/projectionist: Charles Leonard Bowden

        Based on the poem Song of Hiawatha (1855) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the 1903 version of the pageant Hiawatha or Nanabozho: The Musical Indian Play with libretto and direction by Louis Oliver Armstrong, music by Frederick Russell Burton, and acted by members of the Garden River Ojibwe.

Cast:

Hiawatha: Tekumegezhik “Tom” Showano

Minnehaha: Margaret Waubunosa

Nokomis: Mrs. Sagageweosay

Pau Puk Keewis: possibly Sose Akurranaron

Chiabos: undetermined

Iagoo: undetermined

Arrowmaker: undetermined

Black Robe: possibly Frederick Frost, the Anglican priest at Garden River

Resources:

Ertz-Bowden, Katharine. A Pictorial Story of Hiawatha. 1903. 8 pages. In the Redpath Chautauqua Collection at the University of Iowa’s Special Collections.

Two articles from the Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan Evening News reporting the Bowdens’ shooting film in summer 1903: “Great Ad for the Soo: Moving Pictures of the Locks, Rapids and Indian Play,” Aug. 4, 1903, and “Picture of the Northwest: C. L. Bowden Caught Her with the Bioscope Yesterday,” Sept. 11, 1903.

Example of the many articles from the years they were performing A Pictorial Story of Hiawatha: “Over Twenty-Four Thousand Pictures: Shown in the Pictorial Production of ‘Hiawatha,’” Bismarck Daily Tribune, March 22, 1903, 3.

From a series of articles that recalled famous Indianans (i.e., Hoosiers): “Role Played by Bowdens is Recalled," Vidette Messenger, Sept. 8, 1956, 1-2.

For information about the preservation process, head to the Chicago Film Archives' preservation page, located at http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/preservation.html

Holdings:

The original film rolls and stereopticon slides are held by Valparaiso University, Christopher Center Library’s University Archives.

This project is a collaboration between VU’s Christopher Center Library and the Chicago Film Archives. Colorlab generously donated the lab work to preserve the film.