Note 664 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)
Reading edition
The Ojibwa god Manabozho (described in Schoolcraft's Algic Researches) by some inadvertence got the name 'Hiawatha,' and so appears in Longfellow's poem. The real Hiawatha was a distinguished Iroquois statesman (supposed to be of the fifteenth century), the founder of the Iroquois League, honored as a patriot, but never worshiped as a god. See H. Hale, Iroquois Book of Rites, Index, s.v. Hiawatha; Beauchamp, in Journal of American Folklore, October, 1891.