Hiawatha, Kansas 1858, and the first school opened in 1870. The main street was designated Oregon Street after the Oregon Trail. Parallel streets north of it were named after Indian tribes north of the Trail, and streets south carried tribal names of those south of the Trail. Hiawatha is named after a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called "The Song of Hiawatha". In the poem is legendary Onondaga and Mohawk Indian leader Hiawatha. Adjacent to the former Ioway-Sac reservation and the present-day Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, Hiawatha is called "Hári Wáta" in Ioway, meaning "I am looking far away". This
The Song of Hiawatha 1855, "The New York Times " carried an item on "Longfellow's New Poem", quoting an article from another periodical which said that it "is very original, and has the simplicity and charm of a Saga... it is the very antipodes [sic] of Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Maud," which is... morbid, irreligious, and painful." In October of that year, the "New York Times" noted that "Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" is nearly printed, and will soon appear." By November its column, "Gossip: What has been most Talked About during the Week," observed that "The madness of the hour takes the metrical shape of