The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his love for Minnehaha, a Dakota woman. Events in the story are set in the Pictured Rocks area on the south shore of Lake Superior. Longfellow's poem, though based on native oral traditions surrounding the figure of Manabozho, represents not a work of transmission but an original work of American Romantic literature. Longfellow's sources for the legends and ethnography
Hiawatha and Minnehaha by Edmonia Lewis and best-selling poem “The Song of Hiawatha” (1855) about the Ojibwa warrior, Hiawatha's tragic story with his lover from a rival tribe, Minnehaha (Dakota). There are three busts of Hiawatha in existence and four of the Minnehaha busts. In addition to paying tribute to her heritage, Lewis also took agency by utilizing concepts of the Noble Savage in these works, idealizing and fantasizing the form and dress of the two fictional characters. Unlike other images of this theme and time, Lewis subversively focused not on their naked flesh, which historically attracted male collectors, but on decorating their bodies in clothing,