On This Date in Minnesota History: December 6

December 6, 1914 – With Minnehaha Falls dwindled to a silvery cascade in preparation for its winter’s rest and the gorge enveloped in a cloudy Dec. mist, the “laughing waters” were visited today for the first time by Mrs. Richard Henry Dana of Cambridge, Mass., daughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author of the Indian sentiment poem, “Hiawatha.”

She made the trip to the falls by automobile with her husband, president of the National Civil Service Reform League; her son, Edmund T. Dana, instructor in philosophy at the University of Minnesota and Mr. and Mrs. T. H. Winter of Minneapolis. The Danas left Minneapolis this evening.

Longfellow never saw Minnehaha Falls, but wrote the love story of Hiawatha and Minnehaha from knowledge of the Minnesota Ojibway Indians gained from Henry Schoolcraft, the explorer and historian.

The Minneapolis Morning Tribune; “Daughter of Longfellow Visits Laughing Waters Immortalized by Poem”; Dec. 7, 1914; p. 1.

Frozen Minnehaha Falls

https://www.minneapolisparks.org/_asset/ytd6wv/minnehaha_falls_frozen.jpg

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