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Hiawatha and Minnehaha

Minneapolis, Italy

Hiawatha and Minnehaha

Hiawatha and Minnehaha is a sculpture by Jacob Fjelde that has stood in Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis since the early twentieth century. Now a popular fixture of the park, its placement there was originally controversial. In 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a book-length poem entitled The

Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow never visited Minnesota, but he set his poem among the Ojibwe and Dakota of the region. The poem's story line was based on traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tales, as recorded, sometimes incorrectly, by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. The Song of Hiawatha was widely read and had significant cultural influence in the United States through the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Accomplished Norwegian sculptor Jacob Fjelde immigrated to Minnesota in 1887, following family members to the area. He established a studio in Minneapolis and began receiving public and private commissions. One commission was to create a sculpture for the Minnesota Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Fjelde chose to create Hiawatha and Minnehaha, a plaster sculpture illustrating a particular section of Longfellow's poem, The Song of Hiawatha...

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