Hiawatha and Minnehaha by Edmonia Lewis Hiawatha and Minnehaha by Edmonia Lewis Hiawatha and Minnehaha are 1868 sculptures by Edmonia Lewis. They are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on view in gallery 759. African-American, Haitian and Chippewa (Ojibwa) artist, Lewis, developed her neoclassical style of marble sculpture while working in Rome. Lewis was an admirer of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry, and in 1869 Longfellow visited her studio where he posed for one of her portraits which was shortly afterward acquired by Harvard University. Often working in themes that intersected her identity, Lewis focused a series of marble sculptures based on Longfellow’s much-referenced
Hiawatha (1952 film) member. The war is averted and Hiawatha learns that he is actually the long-missing son of the Dakotah chief. "Hiawatha"'s original production planning schedule, in early 1950, was reported by "Time" magazine in September to have been put on hold due to the main character being a proponent of pacifism and speaking dialog "too close, for current U.S. taste, to the Communist 'peace' line". At the same time, the Los Angeles newspaper "Illustrated Daily News", whose publisher, Manchester Boddy, was in the midst of an ultimately losing campaign for nomination as a strongly anti-Communist candidate in the California United States