According to the poem, From the full moon fell Nokomis/Fell the beautiful Nokomis. She bears a daughter, Wenonah. Despite Nokomis' warnings, Wenonah allows herself to be seduced by the West-Wind,
Mudjekeewis, Till she bore a son in sorrow/Bore a son of love and sorrow/Thus was born my Hiawatha.
Abandoned by the heartless Mudjekeewis, Wenonah dies in childbirth, leaving Hiawatha to be raised by Nokomis. The wrinkled old Nokomis/Nursed the little Hiawatha and educates him.
In the
Ojibwe language, nookomis means "my grandmother,"[1] thus portraying Nokomis of the poem and the aadizookaan (Ojibwe traditional stories) from a more personal point of view, akin to the traditional Ojibwa narrative styles.
Camp Nokomis, all girls sleepaway camp run by the Merrimack Valley
YMCA. Camp Lawrence is the boys camp that is on the same island and run by the same YMCA.
Nokomis,
Escambia County, Florida, a community in northwest Florida adjoining
Nokomis, Escambia County, Alabama. While not a census designated place, the name reference is in local use.
Nokomis Park, part of Larose Forest in
Limoges, Ontario, Limoges Village, Prescott-Russell counties, Ontario
In fiction
Nokomis is also a character in Richard Adams' fantasy novel Maia. She has a son called Anda Nokomis.
Vessels
USS Nokomis (YT-142) was a fleet tug that was in the Yard Craft Dock of the Navy Yard at the beginning of the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. She provided assistance to other ships and survived the attack.