Hiawatha

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For other uses of the name Hiawatha, see Hiawatha (disambiguation).

Hiawatha (also known as Ayenwatha or Ha-yo-went'-ha) who lived around 1550, was variously a leader of the Onondaga and Mohawk nations of Native Americans. Hiawatha was a follower of The Great Peacemaker, a prophet and shaman 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).

[edit] The Song of Hiawatha

Statue of Hiawatha carrying Minnehaha (based on Longfellow's story)

Hiawatha is also the name of the legendary hero of the Ojibwa as described in Longfellow's famous epic poem, The Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow said that he based his poem on Schoolcraft's Algic Researches and History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. Schoolcraft in turn seems to have based his "Hiawatha" primarily on the Algonquian trickster-figure Nanabozho. There is none, or only faint resemblance between Longfellow's hero and the life-stories of Hiawatha and The Great Peacemaker; see Longfellow's Hiawatha vs. the historical Iroquois Hiawatha. The Song of Hiawatha unfolds a legend of Hiawatha and his mate, Minnehaha.