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Hiawatha
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Statue of Hiawatha, Ironwood, Mich.
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Hiawatha

legendary Onondaga chief
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History

Hiawatha, (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.