Hiawatha

/huy'euh woth"euh, -waw"theuh, hee'euh-/, n.

the central figure of The Song of Hiawatha (1855), a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: named after a legendary Indian chief, fl. c1570.

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(Ojibwa; "He Makes Rivers")

Legendary chief (с 1450) of the Onondaga people of the northwestern U.S. He is regarded by tradition as the founder of the Iroquois Confederacy.

His story is told in Henry W. Longfellow's popular poem Song of Hiawatha (1855), though Longfellow perpetuated an error of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's that placed Hiawatha in a Midwestern tribe.

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▪ legendary Mohawk chief

      (Ojibwa: “He Makes Rivers”), a legendary chief (c. 1450) of the Onondaga tribe of North American Indians, to whom Indian tradition attributes the formation of what became known as the Iroquois Confederacy. In his miraculous character, Hiawatha was the incarnation of human progress and civilization. He taught agriculture, navigation, medicine, and the arts, conquering by his magic all the powers of nature that war against man. The story of Hiawatha is told in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha (1855), a long poem, written in the metre of the Finnish Kalevala, that enjoyed wide popularity.

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