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 Song of Hiawatha (Coleridge-Taylor) Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Boston, Washington and Chicago. His final tour was in 1910. His last composition, written in 1912, the year of his death, was the "Hiawatha Ballet Music", Op. 82, based on "The Song of Hiawatha". "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Coleridge-Taylor had no conception of how successful it would become, as he had sold it outright for the sum of 15 guineas. After his death in 1912, the fact that he and his family received no royalties from what was one of the most successful and popular works written in the previous 50 years, led