Ojibwe of the key trade languages of the Great Lakes and the northern Great Plains. The popularity of the epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha", written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1855, publicized the Ojibwe culture. The epic contains many toponyms that originate from Ojibwe words. According to Ojibwe oral history and from recordings in birch bark scrolls, the Ojibwe originated from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the Atlantic coast of what is now Quebec. They traded widely across the continent for thousands of years as they migrated, and knew of the canoe routes to move north, west
The Song of Hiawatha a few changes) stories previously published in his "Algic Researches" and other works. Schoolcraft dedicated the book to Longfellow, whose work he praised highly. The U.S. Forest Service has said that both the historical and poetic figures are the sources of the name for the Hiawatha National Forest. Longfellow cites the Indian words he used as from the works by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. The majority of the words were Ojibwa, with a few from the Dakota, Cree and Onondaga languages. Though the majority of the Native American words included in the text accurately reflect pronunciation and definitions, some words appear