Hiawatha
Hiawatha (also known as Ha-yo-went'-ha) who lived around 1550, was variously a leader of the Onondaga or Mohawk nations of Native Americans.
Hiawatha was a follower of Deganawidah, a prophet and shaman who was credited as the founder of the Iroquois confederacy. If Deganawidah was the idea man, 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, Onondogas, Oneidas, Cayugas, and Mohawks, a group of Native Americans who shared a common language, to accept Deganawidah'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).
Hiawatha was the hero of the poem Song of Hiawatha, published in 1855 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow's poem confounds the life stories of Hiawatha and Deganawidah, and also draws on tales of the Algonquian trickster-figure Manabozho. The poem is also recited (in part) in Mike Oldfield's work Incantations.
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Referenced By
4-6-4 | Abrahamic | Abrahamic faith | Abrahamic faiths | Abrahamic religion | Abrahamic religions | Abrahamic tradition | American Folklore | American poetry | Babe the Blue Ox | Bugs Bunny | Desert monotheism | Folklore of the United States | Iroquois | Iroquois Confederation | List of poems | Mosaic religions | Narrative poetry | Paul Bunyan | Poetry of the United States | Song of Hiawatha | Symphony No. 9 (Dvorak) | United States poetry
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