The Song of Hiawatha between the original stories, as "reshaped by Schoolcraft," and the episodes in the poem are but superficial, and Longfellow omits important details essential to Ojibwe narrative construction, characterization, and theme. This is the case even with "Hiawatha’s Fishing," the episode closest to its source. Some important parts of the poem were more or less Longfellow's invention from fragments or his imagination. "The courtship of Hiawatha and Minnehaha, the least 'Indian' of any of the events in "Hiawatha", has come for many readers to stand as the typical American Indian tale." Also, "in exercising the function of selecting incidents to make
The Song of Hiawatha a few changes) stories previously published in his "Algic Researches" and other works. Schoolcraft dedicated the book to Longfellow, whose work he praised highly. The U.S. Forest Service has said that both the historical and poetic figures are the sources of the name for the Hiawatha National Forest. Longfellow cites the Indian words he used as from the works by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. The majority of the words were Ojibwa, with a few from the Dakota, Cree and Onondaga languages. Though the majority of the Native American words included in the text accurately reflect pronunciation and definitions, some words appear