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 Much later, Mary Montgomery Koppel (b.1982) incorporated Ojibwe flute music for her setting of "The death of Minnehaha" (2013) for two voices with piano and flute accompaniment. The most celebrated setting of Longfellow's story was the cantata trilogy, "The Song of Hiawatha" (1898–1900), by the Sierra Leone-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The first part, "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" (Op. 30, No. 1), based on cantos 11–12 of the poem, was particularly famous for well over 50 years, receiving thousands of performances in the UK, the USA, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Though it slipped from popularity in the late 20th century,