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
Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. (August 18, 1854, Portland, Maine – February 16, 1934, Portland) was an American architect and nephew of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Jr. was the son of Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow Sr. (1814-1901), a U.S. Coast Survey topographer, and the former Elizabeth Clapp Porter. After graduating from Harvard University in 1876, he studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then worked as senior draftsman in Henry Hobson Richardson's office. After Richardson's death in 1886, Longfellow teamed up with Frank Ellis Alden (1859-1908) and