Minnehaha Minnehaha Minnehaha is a fictional Native American woman documented in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha". She is the lover of the titular protagonist Hiawatha and comes to a tragic end. The name, often said to mean "laughing water", literally translates to "waterfall" or "rapid water" in Dakota. The figure of Minnehaha inspired later art works such as paintings, sculpture and music. "The Death of Minnehaha" is a frequent subject for paintings. Minnehaha Falls and her death scene inspired themes in the 'New World' symphony by Antonín Dvořák. Longfellow's poem was set in a cantata trilogy,
The Song of Hiawatha the time, and the mutilated score was not revised and recorded until 2009. The other instance was the poem's connection with Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" (1893). In an article published in the "New York Herald" on December 15, 1893, he said that the second movement of his work was a "sketch or study for a later work, either a cantata or opera ... which will be based upon Longfellow's "Hiawatha"" (with which he was familiar in Czech translation), and that the third movement scherzo was "suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where