Hiawatha
Five Nations founder
Hiawatha is a legendary Native American leader, traditionally credited with founding the Iroquois Confederacy alongside the prophet Deganawida.
The name became widely known through Longfellow's 1855 poem *The Song of Hiawatha*, which conflated Iroquois and Ojibwe traditions into a romanticized narrative: By the shores of Gitche Gumee.
The poem's trochaic meter became so iconic it's often parodied.
Metrical literary composition
- MinnehahaLaughing water in Sioux
- romanticismEmotional, imaginative worldview
- narrativeAccount of events
- verseMetered poetic passage
meter · stanza · Victorian · ballad · epic · pastoral · mythology · idealization
Autonomous entities united loosely
- peacemakerConflict resolution agent
- Six NationsIroquois tribal confederacy
- OnondagaIroquois confederacy's central nation
- MohawkIroquoian nation from Northeast
Seneca · Cayuga · Oneida · sachem · wampum · council · matrilineal · clan
Culture passed by speech
- legendUnverified traditional tale
- folkloreInherited cultural narratives
- tricksterCunning deceiver in myth
- mythologyBody of traditional tales
Great Lakes · creation story · culture hero · ancestors · spiritual · wisdom · tales · tribal
poem
Metrical literary composition
- MinnehahaLaughing water in Sioux
- romanticismEmotional, imaginative worldview
- narrativeAccount of events
verse · meter · stanza · Victorian · ballad · epic · pastoral · mythology · idealization · American literature
confederation
Autonomous entities united loosely
- peacemakerConflict resolution agent
- Six NationsIroquois tribal confederacy
- OnondagaIroquois confederacy's central nation
Mohawk · Seneca · Cayuga · Oneida · sachem · wampum · council · matrilineal · clan · consensus
oral tradition
Culture passed by speech
- legendUnverified traditional tale
- folkloreInherited cultural narratives
- tricksterCunning deceiver in myth
mythology · Great Lakes · creation story · culture hero · ancestors · spiritual · wisdom · tales · tribal · totems
- LongfellowEvangeline, Excelsior, Christus, The Lighthouse, Hyperion
- trainstrains, train, locomotive, locomotives, steam locomotive
- civilizationempires, empire, civilizations, dynasty, kingdoms
- PoemsThe Raven, Ozymandias, Invictus, Paradise Lost, Beowulf
- American PoetryWalt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes
- epicsIliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, epic poem, Beowulf
HiawathaCrazy Horse
Lakota war leader
warlord · warmonger · warrior chief · war leader · Sitting Bull
Hiawathacolonizer
One who occupies foreign land
conquistador · Andrew Jackson · subjugator · Hernán Cortés · destroyer
HiawathaCochise
Apache military leader
Sitting Bull · savage · hostile · renegade