Richard Calmit Adams was a historian and poet from Delaware who researched the topic of Indian life. It is believed that he also worked in the court in Washington D.C. but devoted a huge part of his life to literature and built a writing career. His poem “A Delaware Indian Legend” is known as the rhymed reflection of American history in the context of their interpretation in the semi-fictional form. The poem can be processed as the artwork for the semantic and linguistic analysis of the text and used to explain its connection with the real events that took place in the United States of America in the past periods.
The main theme of the poem is the life of Indian tribes in Delaware which face various troubles and fight with the numerous enemies inside and outside of their society. The legend tells the long story of Indian life in different time intervals. The author literally means that the Indian race had a saturated background of their all-round development in the previous centuries and makes the poetic narrative similar to the verbal connection with the reader in order to describe its realism. As the poem is a legend due to the specifications of the genre it tells the story of significant events that really happened. In the very beginning, Richard Calmit Adams starts with the mentioning that long ago Indians were a happy and powerful race which appreciated its traditions and believed in the prosperous future (Adams 4). And in the end, the author speaks to Christ and asks him rhetorical questions if he was satisfied with what happened to the Indian tribes because of Christian people who came to conquer the territories.
The figurative meaning of the poem “A Delaware Indian Legend” lies in the field of understanding how the described events match with the real history of the United States of America. The words contain symbolism because they do not directly name the real historically recorded developments, except for the name of William Penn who was the founder of the colony. The author often uses the Indian god called Manitou as the figure who has powers to affect the lives of humans. The semantic meaning of the words in the poem also includes the well-told plot which explains to the reader how Native Indians firstly struggled from wars between the tribes. Later when “people of strange dress”, meaning white people, came in large canoes to the Indians they received a factor that intrigued them and at the same time improved the disunity between the tribes. Some of them believed the new travelers and some did not but in the end all of the Indians still had to fight for their freedom. As the history of America shows, the Indians lost that war and had to move to reservations where they lived in control of the officers. The poem wonders if it was fair to allow all of these incidents happen in real life when the divine power was able to stop the aggressive colonization campaign.
From the linguistic point of view, the author tries to use stylistically rich language in the description of historic events, including similes, motifs, rhymes, and metaphors to the text. For example, he uses similes “as his child”, “like him came” and others. Richard Calmit Adams creates the background for feeling what Native Indians felt when they were repressed by the conquerors through the poetic narrative in the legend. He also uses enjambment to make the rhythm of the verse measured.
All in all, the poem “A Delaware Indian Legend” explains the view of Native Americans on the history of their community. With the help of depicting tribal perception of the events, Richard Calmit Adams acquaints the reader with the deep analysis of the past time periods which included both prosperous and decay life portrayal to show the dynamic of the changes on the American continent. He used various linguistic constructions to make his poetic work sound more convincing.
- Adams, Richard Calmit. Delaware Indian Legend and the Story of Their Troubles. 6th ed., Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2012, pp. 1-80.
- Adams, Richard Calmit. Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing. Syracuse University Press, 2000, pp. 1-168.
