Hiawatha, Kansas Hiawatha, Kansas Hiawatha (Ioway: "Hári Wáta" pronounced ) is the largest city and county seat of Brown County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,172. Hiawatha was founded in 1857, making it one of the oldest towns in the state. John M. Coe, John P. Wheller, and Thomas J. Drummond were instrumental in organizing the city, and the site was staked out February 17, 1857. B.L. Rider reportedly was responsible for naming Hiawatha, taking the young Indian's name from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "The Song of Hiawatha". Hiawatha became the Brown County Seat in
The Song of Hiawatha of Longfellow's poem nevertheless led to the name "Hiawatha" becoming attached to a number of locales and enterprises in areas more historically associated with the Ojibwe than the Iroquois. The poem was published on November 10, 1855, by Ticknor and Fields and was an immediate success. In 1857, Longfellow calculated that it had sold 50,000 copies. Longfellow chose to set "The Song of Hiawatha" at the Pictured Rocks, one of the locations along the south shore of Lake Superior favored by narrators of the Manabozho stories. The "Song" presents a legend of Hiawatha and his lover "Minnehaha" in 22 chapters