The Song of Hiawatha

The Song of Hiawatha

The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made Hiawatha famous in his poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855). But Longfellow confused Hiawatha, an Onondaga chief, with Nanabozha, a hero of the Chippewa, or Ojibwa, culture.

In his poem, Longfellow captured the humanity and nobility he saw in American Indians. The poem focuses on an Indian hero named Hiawatha, whose life, like that of his people, is full of triumphs and tragedies. The poem ends with the death of Hiawatha's wife, Minnehaha, the coming of the white man, and his own symbolic departure into the sunset in his canoe. In the poem, Longfellow presented the Indians' mythology, which he had read about in the writings of the experts of the day.

Excerpt adapted from the "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" article, The World Book Encyclopedia © 1999