Susan Thalmann, age 14, of Lowell, Mass., for her question:

WHO WAS HIAWATHA?

Hiawatha is the Indian hero of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem "The Song of Hiawatha." There really was an Indian named Hiawatha but it is difficult to separate his actual life from the many stories about him.

The real Hiawatha was a Mohawk Indian chief who founded the Iroquois Confederacy in New York state. His name and title were hereditary in the Tortoise clan of the Mohawk tribe.

It is thought that the first Hiawatha lived about 1570 in central New York. He was a social reformer, interested in ending war and promoting universal peace among Indian tribes.

Longfellow collected stories about various Chippewa Indian heroes and gods and put these stories in his poem. The poem tells of Hiawatha's childhood and his contest with the West Wind, his father.

Longfellow wrote the famous poem in 1855.

A striking bronze statue of Hiawatha and his Indian bride stands at the top of Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, Minn.