Hiawatha (1952 film) Hiawatha (1952 film) Hiawatha is a 1952 American film based on the 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, centering on Native Americans in pre-Columbian times. Directed by Kurt Neumann, with stars Vincent Edwards and Yvette Dugay, it became the final feature produced by the low-budget Monogram Pictures, a mainstay of Hollywood's Poverty Row. Hiawatha, a member of the Ojibway tribe, is on a peace mission to the Dakotah tribe. He meets and falls in love with Minnehaha. The romance is obstructed by a threatened war between the two tribes, instigated by a hot-headed Ojibway tribe
The Song of Hiawatha Longfellow, who approved the work before its premiere in 1859, but despite early success it was soon forgotten. An equally ambitious project was the 5-part instrumental symphony by Ellsworth Phelps in 1878. The poem also influenced two composers of European origin who spent a few years in the USA but did not choose to settle there. The first of these was Frederick Delius, who completed his tone poem "Hiawatha" in 1888 and inscribed on the title page the passage beginning “Ye who love the haunts of Nature” from near the start of the poem. The work was not performed at