The Song of Hiawatha

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And they painted on the grave-posts

On the graves yet unforgotten,

Each his own ancestral Totem,

Each the symbol of his household;

Figures of the Bear and Reindeer,

Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver,

Each inverted as a token

That the owner was departed,

That the chief who bore the symbol

Lay beneath in dust and ashes.