Hiawatha, Kansas 1858, and the first school opened in 1870. The main street was designated Oregon Street after the Oregon Trail. Parallel streets north of it were named after Indian tribes north of the Trail, and streets south carried tribal names of those south of the Trail. Hiawatha is named after a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called "The Song of Hiawatha". In the poem is legendary Onondaga and Mohawk Indian leader Hiawatha. Adjacent to the former Ioway-Sac reservation and the present-day Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, Hiawatha is called "Hári Wáta" in Ioway, meaning "I am looking far away". This
The Song of Hiawatha a few changes) stories previously published in his "Algic Researches" and other works. Schoolcraft dedicated the book to Longfellow, whose work he praised highly. The U.S. Forest Service has said that both the historical and poetic figures are the sources of the name for the Hiawatha National Forest. Longfellow cites the Indian words he used as from the works by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. The majority of the words were Ojibwa, with a few from the Dakota, Cree and Onondaga languages. Though the majority of the Native American words included in the text accurately reflect pronunciation and definitions, some words appear