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
Hiawatha (sculpture) Hiawatha (sculpture) Hiawath is a 19th century sculpture executed in marble by American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The work, which depicts the Iroquois leader Hiawatha, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpted his interpretation of the famed Iroquois leader between 1872 and 1874. He was inspired to create the work by "The Song of Hiawatha", an 1855 epic poem by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow's poem was well received by American audiences, and the epic work resulted in a rekindling of interest in Hiawatha and the waxing days of the Iroquois Confederacy. The poem is