Hiawatha and Minnehaha and recited parts of Longfellow's poem as part of the program. Fjelde's Hiawatha and Minnehaha sculpture soon became a visitor attraction in the park, and postcards depicting it were widely available. As of 2011, the sculpture remains in its location along Minnehaha Creek and is one of Fjelde's best-known works. 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
The Song of Hiawatha "Vision of Columbus" (1787) (rewritten and entitled "The Columbiad" in 1807), were considered derivative. Longfellow provided something entirely new, a vision of the continent's pre-European civilisation in a metre adapted from a Finnish, non-Indo-European source. Soon after the poem's publication, composers competed to set it to music. One of the first to tackle the poem was Emile Karst, whose cantata "Hiawatha" (1858) freely adapted and arranged texts of the poem. It was followed by Robert Stoepel's "Hiawatha: An Indian Symphony", a work in 14 movements that combined narration, solo arias, descriptive choruses and programmatic orchestral interludes. The composer consulted with