The Song of Hiawatha from the poem. The most famous was the 1937 Silly Symphony "Little Hiawatha," whose hero is a small boy whose pants keep falling down. The 1941 Warner Bros. cartoon "Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt" features Bugs Bunny and a pint-sized version of Hiawatha in quest of rabbit stew. The 1944 MGM cartoon "Big Heel-watha," directed by Tex Avery, follows the overweight title character's effort to win the hand of the chief's daughter by catching Screwy Squirrel. The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that features Native American characters. The
The Song of Hiawatha poem closes with the approach of a birch canoe to Hiawatha's village, containing "the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face." Hiawatha welcomes him joyously; and the "Black-Robe chief" brings word of Jesus Christ. Hiawatha and the chiefs accept the Christian message. Hiawatha bids farewell to Nokomis, the warriors, and the young men, giving them this charge: "But my guests I leave behind me/ Listen to their words of wisdom,/ Listen to the truth they tell you." Having endorsed the Christian missionaries, he launches his canoe for the last time westward toward the sunset and departs forever. The story of Hiawatha was