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
The Song of Hiawatha incomplete. For example, the Ojibway words for "blueberry" are "miin (plural: miinan)" for the berries and "miinagaawanzh (plural: miinagaawanzhiig)" for the bush upon which the berries grow. Longfellow uses "Meenah'ga," which appears to be a partial form for the bush, but he uses the word to mean the berry. Critics believe such mistakes are likely attributable to Schoolcraft (who was often careless about details) or to what always happens when someone who does not understand the nuances of a language and its grammar tries to use select words out of context. "The Song of Hiawatha" was written in trochaic tetrameter,