All About the Trochees
In the "Form and Meter" section, you can find out about how Longfellow used a specific meter called "trochaic tetrameter" to write this poem. Longfellow chose this meter because he felt that it did a good job of reflecting the natural rhythms of Native American speech. Here's an example of trochaic tetrameter, which uses a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one:
With the Gods of the Dacotahs
Drawn and painted on its curtains
And so tall the doorway, hardly
Hiawatha stooped to enter (158-161)
This isn't to say that Longfellow used trochees as a calling card his whole career. But at this point in his life, it's fair to say that Longfellow was considered the king of the trochees in American literature. (We wonder if that would come with a sweet crown and robe.)
One critic even went so far as to write: "The madness of the hour takes the metrical shape of trochees, everybody writes trochaics, talks trochaics, and think in trochees." Critics basically accused Longfellow of helping to ruin English poetry by making trochees so popular. For decades after, people would write parodies of Hiawatha and make fun of Longfellow by making their trochees sound increasingly silly and exaggerated.