Hiawatha (1952 film) Hiawatha (1952 film) Hiawatha is a 1952 American film based on the 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, centering on Native Americans in pre-Columbian times. Directed by Kurt Neumann, with stars Vincent Edwards and Yvette Dugay, it became the final feature produced by the low-budget Monogram Pictures, a mainstay of Hollywood's Poverty Row. Hiawatha, a member of the Ojibway tribe, is on a peace mission to the Dakotah tribe. He meets and falls in love with Minnehaha. The romance is obstructed by a threatened war between the two tribes, instigated by a hot-headed Ojibway tribe
The Song of Hiawatha the Indians dance". African-American melodies also appeared in the symphony, thanks to his student Harry Burleigh, who used to sing him songs from the plantations which Dvořák noted down. The fact that Burleigh’s grandmother was part Indian has been suggested to explain why Dvořák came to equate or confuse Indian with African American music in his pronouncements to the press. Among later orchestral treatments of the Hiawatha theme by American composers there was Louis Coerne's 4-part symphonic suite, each section of which was prefaced by a quotation from the poem. This had a Munich premiere in 1893 and a Boston