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 incomplete. For example, the Ojibway words for "blueberry" are "miin (plural: miinan)" for the berries and "miinagaawanzh (plural: miinagaawanzhiig)" for the bush upon which the berries grow. Longfellow uses "Meenah'ga," which appears to be a partial form for the bush, but he uses the word to mean the berry. Critics believe such mistakes are likely attributable to Schoolcraft (who was often careless about details) or to what always happens when someone who does not understand the nuances of a language and its grammar tries to use select words out of context. "The Song of Hiawatha" was written in trochaic tetrameter,