hiawatha

     

Hiawatha (also known as Ayenwatha or Haiëñ'wa'tha; Ononaga) who lived (depending on the version of the story) in the 1100s, 1400s, or 1500s, was variously a leader of the Onondaga and Mohawk nations of Native Americans. Hiawatha was a follower of The Great Peacemaker, a prophet and spiritual leader who was credited as the founder of the Iroquois confederacy, (referred to as Haudenosaunee by the people). If The Great Peacemaker was the man of ideas, Hiawatha was the politician who actually put the plan into practice. Hiawatha was a skilled and charismatic orator, and was instrumental in persuading the Iroquois peoples, the Senecas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Cayugas, and Mohawks, a group of Native North Americans who shared similar languages, to accept The Great Peacemaker's vision and band together to become the Five Nations of the Iroquois confederacy. (Later, in 1721, the Tuscarora nation joined the Iroquois confederacy, and they became the Six Nations).

Trivia about hiawatha

  • In Longfellow's epic, he was raised by his grandmother Nokomis, daughter of the moon
  • He married Minnehaha, the "Loveliest of Dacotah Women"
  • Much of this Longfellow poem takes place "by the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining big-sea-water"
  • This hero went "Forth upon the Gitche Gumee...with his fishing-line of cedar" to catch a sturgeon
  • In a Longfellow poem, Minnehaha marries this Indian hero
  • The name of this Indian, said to have united the 5 Iroquois nations, is featured in a "song" by Longfellow
  • Longfellow used Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's books on North American Indian tribes as a source for this poem
  • The minneola is the best-known variety of the tangelo; Minnehaha is his best gal in a Longfellow poem
  • Part I of Longfellow's "Song of" this man is entitled "The Peace Pipe"
  • The 9th sect. of this Longfellow poem begins, "On the shores of Gitche Gumee, of the shining Big-Sea-Water"
  • This Onondaga chief who helped unite the Iroquois was celebrated by Longfellow
  • This Longfellow chief is the subject of an outdoor pageant each July & August in Pipestone, Minn.
  • Longfellow took the name of this fictional Indian from a 15th century Iroquois chief
  • Traditionally, the Iroquois League was founded by Dekanawidah & this chief whose name Longfellow borrowed

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