HIAWATHA

[Native American] "He who makes rivers". Iroquois tradition holds that Hiawatha lived about 1570 and that he was instrumental in bringing about the confederation of the five Iroquois tribes known as 'the Five Nations'. This confederation served for their mutual protection against the stronger Algonquin people. He was the inspiration for the poem Song of Hiawatha (1855) by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.