Directed by Kurt Neumann, with stars Vincent Edwards and Yvette Dugay, it became the final feature produced by the low-budget Monogram Pictures, a mainstay of Hollywood's Poverty Row.

[4] Hiawatha's original production planning schedule, in early 1950, was reported by Time magazine in September to have been put on hold due to the main character being a proponent of pacifism and speaking dialog "too close, for current U.S. taste, to the Communist 'peace' line".

[5] At the same time, the Los Angeles newspaper Illustrated Daily News, whose publisher, Manchester Boddy, was in the midst of an ultimately losing campaign for nomination as a strongly anti-Communist candidate in the California United States Senate election, published an interview with Monogram Pictures president Steve Broidy who stated that, "because of the tremendous influence that the motion picture industry exerts internationally, producers are being extremely cautious in preventing any subject matter to reach the screen which might possibly be interpreted as Communistic propaganda to even the slightest degree.

[6] Describing it as a "[M]odest, respectful little Indian tale...lousy with Red Commie propaganda", Mavis details how "then-contemporary 1950s politics lie not so subtly beneath the so-called biographical surface, with the real Hiawatha's purported role as a peacemaker and tribe-uniter used as a framework for some thinly veiled jabs at American military might" and goes on to point out "how clearly screenwriter Strawn (with an assist by Dan Ullman) grafts Red-tinged Daily Worker pacifist carps about American muscle onto Hiawatha's efforts to unite his fellow tribesmen".

Assigning 2 stars (out of 5), The Motion Picture Guide stated that "Edwards is cast as the title character in this family version of the classic Longfellow poem" and ultimately described it as "[a]n entertaining film for kids that masks its theme in a flurry of arrows and romance."