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
Paul Revere over 40 years after Revere's death, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made the midnight ride the subject of his poem "Paul Revere's Ride" which opens: Longfellow's poem is not historically accurate, but the inaccuracies were deliberate. Longfellow had researched the historical event, using such works as George Bancroft's "History of the United States", but he changed the facts for poetic effect. The poem was one of a series in which he sought to create American legends; earlier examples include "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855) and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" (1858). Longfellow was successful in creating a legend: Revere's stature rose significantly