Hiawatha, Kansas Hiawatha, Kansas Hiawatha (Ioway: "Hári Wáta" pronounced ) is the largest city and county seat of Brown County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 3,172. Hiawatha was founded in 1857, making it one of the oldest towns in the state. John M. Coe, John P. Wheller, and Thomas J. Drummond were instrumental in organizing the city, and the site was staked out February 17, 1857. B.L. Rider reportedly was responsible for naming Hiawatha, taking the young Indian's name from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "The Song of Hiawatha". Hiawatha became the Brown County Seat in
The Hiawatha Story Historical Society presented an "Award of Merit" to Scribbins for "The Hiawatha Story". "The Hiawatha Story" was first published by Kalmbach Publishing in 1970. The dust jacket featured a watercolor by Gil Reid, art director at Kalmbach, called "Roaring Through Rondout", depicting a Milwaukee Road class A passing through Rondout, Illinois, at speed. In 2007 the University of Minnesota Press published a reprint of "The Hiawatha Story" as part of its Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage series. In place of Reid's watercolor is a nighttime photograph of a Skytop Lounge. The Hiawatha Story The Hiawatha Story is a 1970 non-fiction book on