Minneapolis–Saint Paul Grand Excursion, a trip into the Upper Midwest sponsored by the Rock Island Railroad, brought more than a thousand curious travelers into the area by rail and steamboat in 1854. The next year, in 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published "The Song of Hiawatha", an epic poem based on the Ojibwe legends of Hiawatha. A number of natural area landmarks were included in the story, such as Lake Minnetonka and Minnehaha Falls. Tourists inspired by the coverage of the Grand Excursion in eastern newspapers and those who read Longfellow's story flocked to the area in the following decades. At one time,
The Iliad or the Poem of Force Iliad", Weil's essay "remains the twentieth century's most beloved, tortured, and profound responses to the world's greatest and most disturbing poem." Simone Petrement, a friend of Weil, wrote that the essay showed a new light in which the "Iliad" could be viewed. Whereas previously the "Iliad" had often been regarded as a stirring tale of heroic deeds, after the essay it could be seen as an accurate and compassionate depiction of how both victors and victims are harmed by the use of force. The essay contains several extracts from the epic which Weil translated herself from the original Greek; Petrement