The Song of Hiawatha 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 epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem, though based on native oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, represents not a work of transmission but an original work of American Romantic literature. Longfellow's sources for the legends and ethnography
Hiawatha (1913 film) cast smeared with bronze paint" was a target for ridicule. Laemmle's story ended with Hiawatha and Minnehaha happily embracing, but Moore's "Hiawatha" follows Longfellow's poem in which Minnehaha dies and Hiawatha welcomes the arrival of the missionary, who converts the Indians to the Christian faith. In 1910, Laemmle followed up his 1909 version of "Hiawatha" with the sequel, "The Death of Minnehaha". "Hiawatha" opened at New York City's Berkeley theater where it achieved "splendid sales", according to the "Moving Picture News". Moore distributed "Hiawatha" selling the film by states rights to 12 states. A review in "Moving Picture World" praised