The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem, though based on native oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, represents not a work of transmission but an original work of American Romantic literature. Longfellow's sources for the legends and ethnography
Paul Revere over 40 years after Revere's death, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made the midnight ride the subject of his poem "Paul Revere's Ride" which opens: Longfellow's poem is not historically accurate, but the inaccuracies were deliberate. Longfellow had researched the historical event, using such works as George Bancroft's "History of the United States", but he changed the facts for poetic effect. The poem was one of a series in which he sought to create American legends; earlier examples include "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855) and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858). Longfellow was successful in creating a legend: Revere's stature rose significantly