Minnehaha Minnehaha Minnehaha is a fictional Native American woman documented in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha". She is the lover of the titular protagonist Hiawatha and comes to a tragic end. The name, often said to mean "laughing water", literally translates to "waterfall" or "rapid water" in Dakota. The figure of Minnehaha inspired later art works such as paintings, sculpture and music. "The Death of Minnehaha" is a frequent subject for paintings. Minnehaha Falls and her death scene inspired themes in the 'New World' symphony by Antonín Dvořák. Longfellow's poem was set in a cantata trilogy,
The Song of Hiawatha trochees, everybody writes trochaics, talks trochaics, and think [sic] in trochees: ... The "New York Times" review of "The Song of Hiawatha" was scathing. The anonymous reviewer judged that the poem "is entitled to commendation" for "embalming pleasantly enough the monstrous traditions of an uninteresting, and, one may almost say, a justly exterminated race. As a poem, it deserves no place" because there "is no romance about the Indian." He complains that Hiawatha's deeds of magical strength pall by comparison to the feats of Hercules and to "Finn Mac Cool, that big stupid Celtic mammoth." The reviewer writes that "Grotesque,