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
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Wadsworth (1845–1921), Fanny (1847–1848), Alice Mary (1850–1928), Edith (1853–1915), and Anne Allegra (1855–1934). Their second-youngest daughter was Edith who married Richard Henry Dana III, son of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. who wrote "Two Years Before the Mast". Their daughter Fanny was born on April 7, 1847, and Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep administered ether to the mother as the first obstetric anesthetic in the United States. Longfellow published his epic poem "Evangeline" for the first time a few months later on November 1, 1847. His literary income was increasing considerably; in 1840, he had made $219 from his work, but 1850