Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway 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 usual productions of 1903, which rarely exceeded three minutes. The film's subtitle was "The Passion Play
The Song of Hiawatha revival performances continue. The initial work was followed by two additional oratorios which were equally popular: "The Death of Minnehaha" (Op. 30, No. 2), based on canto 20, and "Hiawatha's Departure" (Op. 30, No. 4), based on cantos 21–2. More popular settings of the poem followed publication of the poem. The first was Charles Crozat Converse's "The Death of Minnehaha", published in Boston around 1856. The hand-colored lithograph on the cover of the printed song, by John Henry Bufford, is now much sought after. The next popular tune, originally titled "Hiawatha (A Summer Idyl)", was not inspired by the poem.