Hiawatha and Minnehaha Hiawatha and Minnehaha Hiawatha and Minnehaha is a sculpture by Jacob Fjelde that has stood in Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis since the early twentieth century. Now a popular fixture of the park, its placement there was originally controversial. In 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a book-length poem entitled "The Song of Hiawatha". Longfellow never visited Minnesota, but he set his poem among the Ojibwe and Dakota of the region. The poem's story line was based on traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tales, as recorded, sometimes incorrectly, by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. "The Song of Hiawatha" was widely read and had significant cultural influence
Hiawatha Hiawatha Hiawatha (also known as Ayenwathaaa, Aiionwatha, or "Haiëñ'wa'tha" [ha.jẽʔ.waʔ.tha] in Onondaga) was a colonial American Indian leader and co-founder of the Iroquois Confederacy. He was a leader of the Onondaga people or the Mohawk people or both. According to some accounts, he was born an Onondaga but adopted into the Mohawk. Hiawatha was a follower of the Great Peacemaker (Deganawida), a Huron prophet and spiritual leader who proposed the unification of the Iroquois peoples, who shared common ancestry and similar languages, but he suffered from a severe speech impediment which hindered him from spreading his proposal. Hiawatha was a