Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway of America" and was largely a photographed stage play with Longfellow's words spoken in a natural surrounding. Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway is a 1903 dramatic short film shot in Canada directed by the American pioneering cinematographer and director Joe Rosenthal, based on the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem, "The Song of Hiawatha", made in Desbarats, Ontario, with a cast of Ojibway First Nations people. According to the "Canadian Journal of Film Studies", it was the first dramatic narrative film to be shot in Canada. At 15 minutes, "Hiawatha" was considerably longer than
The Song of Hiawatha performance in 1894. Dvořák's student Rubin Goldmark followed with a "Hiawatha Overture" in 1896 and in 1901 there were performances of Hugo Kaun's symphonic poems "Minnehaha" and "Hiawatha". There were also additional settings of Longfellow's words. Arthur Foote's "The Farewell of Hiawatha" (Op.11, 1886) was dedicated to the Apollo Club of Boston, the male voice group that gave its first performance. In 1897 Frederick Russell Burton (1861 — 1909) completed his dramatic cantata "Hiawatha". At the same time he wrote "Hiawatha's Death Song", subtitled 'Song of the Ojibways', which set native words followed by an English translation by another writer.