Minnehaha Minnehaha Minnehaha is a fictional Native American woman documented in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha". She is the lover of the titular protagonist Hiawatha and comes to a tragic end. The name, often said to mean "laughing water", literally translates to "waterfall" or "rapid water" in Dakota. The figure of Minnehaha inspired later art works such as paintings, sculpture and music. "The Death of Minnehaha" is a frequent subject for paintings. Minnehaha Falls and her death scene inspired themes in the 'New World' symphony by Antonín Dvořák. Longfellow's poem was set in a cantata trilogy,
The Song of Hiawatha an artistic production, Longfellow ... omitted all that aspect of the Manabozho saga which considers the culture hero as a trickster," this despite the fact that Schoolcraft had already diligently avoided what he himself called "vulgarisms." In his book on the development of the image of the Indian in American thought and literature, Pearce wrote about "The Song of Hiawatha": Apparently no connection, apart from name, exists between Longfellow's hero and the sixteenth-century Iroquois chief Hiawatha who co-founded the Iroquois League. Longfellow took the name from works by Schoolcraft, whom he acknowledged as his main source. In his notes to