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
Kalevala dogs, wolves and cats. The story deviates from the full "Kalevala", presumably, to make the story more appropriate for children. The "Kalevala" also inspired the American Disney cartoonist Don Rosa to draw a Donald Duck story based on "The Kalevala", called "The Quest for Kalevala". The comic was released in the year of the 150th anniversary of "The Kalevala"'s publication. Franz Anton Schiefner's translation of the "Kalevala" was one inspiration for Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, which is written in a similar trochaic tetrameter. Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's Estonian national epic "Kalevipoeg" was inspired by "The Kalevala". Both Väinämöinen