Ojibwe of the key trade languages of the Great Lakes and the northern Great Plains. The popularity of the epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha", written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1855, publicized the Ojibwe culture. The epic contains many toponyms that originate from Ojibwe words. According to Ojibwe oral history and from recordings in birch bark scrolls, the Ojibwe originated from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the Atlantic coast of what is now Quebec. They traded widely across the continent for thousands of years as they migrated, and knew of the canoe routes to move north, west
Hiawatha and Minnehaha by Edmonia Lewis and best-selling poem “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855) about the Ojibwa warrior, Hiawatha's tragic story with his lover from a rival tribe, Minnehaha (Dakota). There are three busts of Hiawatha in existence and four of the Minnehaha busts. In addition to paying tribute to her heritage, Lewis also took agency by utilizing concepts of the Noble Savage in these works, idealizing and fantasizing the form and dress of the two fictional characters. Unlike other images of this theme and time, Lewis subversively focused not on their naked flesh, which historically attracted male collectors, but on decorating their bodies in clothing,