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
Alice Mary Longfellow in Ontario, Canada in recognition of her father's favorable representation of the tribe in "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855). She and her surviving siblings were made honorary members. She and her two sisters traveled to New Kensington and attended a pageant based on the book performed by members of the Garden River First Nation. Alice Longfellow was the last of the poet's children to remain in the family home; she did little to alter it, with the exception of modernizing bathrooms and installing an elevator. The Longfellow House Trust was created by the surviving children of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and