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
Richard and Jane Manoogian Mackinac Art Museum in American frontier history could be criticized by a later generation as racist, Schoolcraft had a strong interest in the Ojibwa religion, mythology, and culture. Schoolcraft energetically collected local Ojibwa stories and tales, many of which his mixed-race wife Jane Johnston Schoolcraft told him or translated for him. All of his books were published under his name, with little credit to her or her family. The Massachusetts poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow studied Schoolcraft's works for themes and inspiration for his epic poem, "The Song of Hiawatha". To Americans of European ancestry, this Romantic poem and its title character were authentic