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 (Coleridge-Taylor) one person who was accommodated was Sir Arthur Sullivan, who said (according to Coleridge-Taylor’s daughter Avril): "I'm always an ill man now, my boy, but I'm coming to hear your music tonight even if I have to be carried." Sullivan's high opinion of the cantata is privately confirmed by the entry he made in his diary later that night, one of the very few in which he referred at all to a contemporary composer: "Dined at home and went to Roy. Coll. Music Concert to hear Coleridge-Taylor's "Hiawatha." Much impressed by the lad's genius. He is a "composer", not a