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Astride a motionless stallion, a Native American man raises his arms to the sky to call on the Creator, or Great Spirit. His braids drape over his bare chest, and he wears regalia from not one Indigenous community, but many – the headdress imitates Lakota featherwork, and the necklace resembles Diné (Navajo) squash blossom jewelry. The styles of the loincloth and moccasins are not from any recognizable community. Many viewers in the early 20th century, and even today, have seen these objects as markers of "authenticity," but they are an invention, a white fantasy of Native culture. And while Appeal to the Great Spirit represents an Indigenous theme, its appearance is bound to traditions of European figurative and equestrian sculpture.
The artist, Cyrus Edwin Dallin (1861-1944), is best known for his portrait busts, monuments to historical luminaries, and Native American equestrian figures. He showed an early interest in art, modeling the clay from mines near Springville, Utah, where he grew up. Although this region became nearly synonymous with Mormon settlers, it is the homeland of the Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone peoples [1]. Dallin’s childhood interactions with Ute people and his witnessing of Native life on reservations would inspire his later and most successful sculptures of Indigenous equestrians. He went on to study academic sculpture in Boston with Truman Bartlett, one of the few sculpture instructors then available in the city. Dallin continued his training in Paris, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West touring show was enormously popular, sparking an interest that would inform his artistic practice. After returning to the U.S. in the early 1890s, he lived and worked between Boston and Salt Lake City. In 1900, Dallin opened a studio in Arlington, MA, and began teaching at the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design). Over the course of his forty-year teaching career, he became known as "Cyrus the Great" among his students. Several of his works were produced as public sculptures, including A Signal of Peace (1890) in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and The Medicine Man (1901) in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. Here in Massachusetts, his notable works include Massasoit (1920) in Plymouth and Paul Revere (modeled 1899, erected 1940) in Boston’s North End, as well as the MFA’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909), widely considered to be his most famous sculpture [2].
Most of Dallin’s Native American sculptures were not made on commission but were drawn from his own imagination. After creating three sculptures of single Indigenous figures, Dallin envisioned Appeal to the Great Spirit as a multi-figural group [3]. His original version shows the subject with outstretched arms flanked by two other men. One stands with his arms crossed, and the other holds a tomahawk, similar in pose to his composition for a related relief, Passing of the Red Man (1910). While Dallin was working on Appeal, fellow sculptor Daniel Chester French visited his studio and reportedly suggested focusing upon the single mounted figure. Dallin’s model for the sculpture remains unidentified; he may have used several. Charles Foreman (Cherokee) from Lincoln, MA may have posed, but other sources claim that it was Joseph Baum, the physical education director at Harvard University, or Antonio Corsi, a popular Italian model who worked for many prominent artists including John Singer Sargent. There is also speculation about the identity of the horse, either Prince, a Kentucky thoroughbred, or Major, a carriage horse in Lincoln.
Appeal to the Great Spirit, like Dallin’s earlier Indigenous figures, was envisioned for a public park. After the plaster version was displayed in Paris, where it won a medal at the 1909 Salon, Boston’s Improvement League and local artists launched a fundraiser to purchase the sculpture for Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, the open green space that meanders from the Boston Common to Franklin Park and passes along the Fenway behind the Museum of Fine Arts. In the spring of 1912, the statue was temporarily installed in front of the MFA to win public support and contributions. Peter Chardon Brooks, local collector and philanthropist, donated the remaining funds, stipulating that the sculpture enter the MFA’s collection. Although the Museum’s leaders were interested in supporting Dallin, then a local contemporary artist, they did not plan for Appeal to the Great Spirit to remain in front of the building permanently [4]. Nonetheless, it has stood there ever since.
Appeal to the Great Spirit has become an icon of the MFA. It may be the most reproduced work of art from the Museum’s collection, integrally associated with public memories and reproduced endlessly in photographs, on postcards, on record labels, and in advertisements. Many viewers, both historically and today, celebrate Dallin’s sculpture as a dignified and even uplifting Native figure. Dallin himself likely believed that his art honored and benefitted Indigenous peoples, just as his later activism did. He became involved in Indigenous rights causes and served as the chairman of the Massachusetts Branch of the Eastern Association of Indian Affairs in the early 1920s. In this position, Dallin worked on the "New Indian Policy," which became the framework for the Department of the Interior’s Indian Reorganization Act, or the Indian New Deal. The policy included plans to foster Native artists, promoting their contributions to the art world and their representation of genuine "Americanism." Dallin was also known throughout the Boston area as an advocate for Native Arts and Crafts exhibits [5].
Even though Dallin worked with Indigenous peoples here in New England, he relied on stereotypes to make and sell his work. While many public sculptures commemorate specific military heroes or events, the figure in Appeal to the Great Spirit is anonymous and unarmed. Alone, apart from any community, and wearing an amalgamation of regalia, he does not represent actual Indigenous peoples living in the early 20th century. Any references to the Massachusett tribe, the original people from the land on which this sculpture stands, are notably absent. Instead, the figure embodies the myth of Native people as a "vanishing race," doomed to perish in the face of modernity. Seen as a beautiful sculpture by some, it represents a painful erasure for others. As the stewards of this work of art, we now reckon with this complicated history.
Layla Bermeo and Tess Lukey (Aquinnah Wampanoag), September 2020
NOTES
[1] We Shall Remain: A Native History of America and Utah, Paiute, Ute, Northern Shoshone, Goshute and Navajo (Salt Lake City: PBS Utah and KUED Productions, 2009), DVD.
[2] For an overview of Dallin’s biography and works in the MFA’s collection, see Janet A. Headley "Dallin, Cyrus," Grove Art Online (May 26, 2010) and American Figurative Sculpture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, ed. Kathryn Greenthal, Paula M. Kozol, and Jan Seidler Ramirez (Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1986), 268-278.
[3] Emily C. Burns, "Political Contestation in Cyrus Dallin’s American Indian Monuments," Archives of American Art Journal 57, no. 1 (2018): 9-15. Dallin’s Indigenous equestrian figures include Signal of Peace (1890), Medicine Man (1899), Protest of the Sioux (1904), and Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909). Signal of Peace, Medicine Man, and Appeal to the Great Spirit were produced as permanent public sculptures. After Protest of the Sioux was exhibited at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, the plaster sculpture was purchased by the North St. Louis Businessmen’s Association. It was not cast in bronze, but instead given a bronze-colored patina and installed in a park near the Mississippi River, where it disintegrated in the elements within a few years.
[4] "Report of the Committee on Statutes in Front of the Museum," 1913, Museum of Fine Arts Archives, Trustees files for Appeal to the Great Spirit. "The Committee report that in their opinion a statue or monument of some sort at the place where the Dallin Statue now stands is very desirable, but they feel that the placing of the Dallin Statue there is not for the best advantage, either of the statue or of the Museum."
[5] Heather Leavell, "New Research Sheds Light on Cyrus Dallin’s Activism for Native Rights," The Scout: Cyrus Dallin Art Museum Newsletter (July/August 2018).
View: 3/4 proper left
Appeal to the Great Spirit
Cyrus E. Dallin (American, 1861–1944)
1909
Place of Creation: Arlington or Boston, Massachusetts; Place of Manufacture: Paris, France
Medium/Technique
Bronze, green patina
Dimensions
309.88 x 111.12 x 260.35 cm (122 x 43 3/4 x 102 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Peter C. Brooks and others
Accession Number13.380
CollectionsAmericas
ClassificationsSculpture
Astride a motionless stallion, a Native American man raises his arms to the sky to call on the Creator, or Great Spirit. His braids drape over his bare chest, and he wears regalia from not one Indigenous community, but many – the headdress imitates Lakota featherwork, and the necklace resembles Diné (Navajo) squash blossom jewelry. The styles of the loincloth and moccasins are not from any recognizable community. Many viewers in the early 20th century, and even today, have seen these objects as markers of "authenticity," but they are an invention, a white fantasy of Native culture. And while Appeal to the Great Spirit represents an Indigenous theme, its appearance is bound to traditions of European figurative and equestrian sculpture.
The artist, Cyrus Edwin Dallin (1861-1944), is best known for his portrait busts, monuments to historical luminaries, and Native American equestrian figures. He showed an early interest in art, modeling the clay from mines near Springville, Utah, where he grew up. Although this region became nearly synonymous with Mormon settlers, it is the homeland of the Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone peoples [1]. Dallin’s childhood interactions with Ute people and his witnessing of Native life on reservations would inspire his later and most successful sculptures of Indigenous equestrians. He went on to study academic sculpture in Boston with Truman Bartlett, one of the few sculpture instructors then available in the city. Dallin continued his training in Paris, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West touring show was enormously popular, sparking an interest that would inform his artistic practice. After returning to the U.S. in the early 1890s, he lived and worked between Boston and Salt Lake City. In 1900, Dallin opened a studio in Arlington, MA, and began teaching at the Massachusetts Normal Art School (now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design). Over the course of his forty-year teaching career, he became known as "Cyrus the Great" among his students. Several of his works were produced as public sculptures, including A Signal of Peace (1890) in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and The Medicine Man (1901) in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park. Here in Massachusetts, his notable works include Massasoit (1920) in Plymouth and Paul Revere (modeled 1899, erected 1940) in Boston’s North End, as well as the MFA’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909), widely considered to be his most famous sculpture [2].
Most of Dallin’s Native American sculptures were not made on commission but were drawn from his own imagination. After creating three sculptures of single Indigenous figures, Dallin envisioned Appeal to the Great Spirit as a multi-figural group [3]. His original version shows the subject with outstretched arms flanked by two other men. One stands with his arms crossed, and the other holds a tomahawk, similar in pose to his composition for a related relief, Passing of the Red Man (1910). While Dallin was working on Appeal, fellow sculptor Daniel Chester French visited his studio and reportedly suggested focusing upon the single mounted figure. Dallin’s model for the sculpture remains unidentified; he may have used several. Charles Foreman (Cherokee) from Lincoln, MA may have posed, but other sources claim that it was Joseph Baum, the physical education director at Harvard University, or Antonio Corsi, a popular Italian model who worked for many prominent artists including John Singer Sargent. There is also speculation about the identity of the horse, either Prince, a Kentucky thoroughbred, or Major, a carriage horse in Lincoln.
Appeal to the Great Spirit, like Dallin’s earlier Indigenous figures, was envisioned for a public park. After the plaster version was displayed in Paris, where it won a medal at the 1909 Salon, Boston’s Improvement League and local artists launched a fundraiser to purchase the sculpture for Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace, the open green space that meanders from the Boston Common to Franklin Park and passes along the Fenway behind the Museum of Fine Arts. In the spring of 1912, the statue was temporarily installed in front of the MFA to win public support and contributions. Peter Chardon Brooks, local collector and philanthropist, donated the remaining funds, stipulating that the sculpture enter the MFA’s collection. Although the Museum’s leaders were interested in supporting Dallin, then a local contemporary artist, they did not plan for Appeal to the Great Spirit to remain in front of the building permanently [4]. Nonetheless, it has stood there ever since.
Appeal to the Great Spirit has become an icon of the MFA. It may be the most reproduced work of art from the Museum’s collection, integrally associated with public memories and reproduced endlessly in photographs, on postcards, on record labels, and in advertisements. Many viewers, both historically and today, celebrate Dallin’s sculpture as a dignified and even uplifting Native figure. Dallin himself likely believed that his art honored and benefitted Indigenous peoples, just as his later activism did. He became involved in Indigenous rights causes and served as the chairman of the Massachusetts Branch of the Eastern Association of Indian Affairs in the early 1920s. In this position, Dallin worked on the "New Indian Policy," which became the framework for the Department of the Interior’s Indian Reorganization Act, or the Indian New Deal. The policy included plans to foster Native artists, promoting their contributions to the art world and their representation of genuine "Americanism." Dallin was also known throughout the Boston area as an advocate for Native Arts and Crafts exhibits [5].
Even though Dallin worked with Indigenous peoples here in New England, he relied on stereotypes to make and sell his work. While many public sculptures commemorate specific military heroes or events, the figure in Appeal to the Great Spirit is anonymous and unarmed. Alone, apart from any community, and wearing an amalgamation of regalia, he does not represent actual Indigenous peoples living in the early 20th century. Any references to the Massachusett tribe, the original people from the land on which this sculpture stands, are notably absent. Instead, the figure embodies the myth of Native people as a "vanishing race," doomed to perish in the face of modernity. Seen as a beautiful sculpture by some, it represents a painful erasure for others. As the stewards of this work of art, we now reckon with this complicated history.
Layla Bermeo and Tess Lukey (Aquinnah Wampanoag), September 2020
NOTES
[1] We Shall Remain: A Native History of America and Utah, Paiute, Ute, Northern Shoshone, Goshute and Navajo (Salt Lake City: PBS Utah and KUED Productions, 2009), DVD.
[2] For an overview of Dallin’s biography and works in the MFA’s collection, see Janet A. Headley "Dallin, Cyrus," Grove Art Online (May 26, 2010) and American Figurative Sculpture in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, ed. Kathryn Greenthal, Paula M. Kozol, and Jan Seidler Ramirez (Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1986), 268-278.
[3] Emily C. Burns, "Political Contestation in Cyrus Dallin’s American Indian Monuments," Archives of American Art Journal 57, no. 1 (2018): 9-15. Dallin’s Indigenous equestrian figures include Signal of Peace (1890), Medicine Man (1899), Protest of the Sioux (1904), and Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909). Signal of Peace, Medicine Man, and Appeal to the Great Spirit were produced as permanent public sculptures. After Protest of the Sioux was exhibited at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, the plaster sculpture was purchased by the North St. Louis Businessmen’s Association. It was not cast in bronze, but instead given a bronze-colored patina and installed in a park near the Mississippi River, where it disintegrated in the elements within a few years.
[4] "Report of the Committee on Statutes in Front of the Museum," 1913, Museum of Fine Arts Archives, Trustees files for Appeal to the Great Spirit. "The Committee report that in their opinion a statue or monument of some sort at the place where the Dallin Statue now stands is very desirable, but they feel that the placing of the Dallin Statue there is not for the best advantage, either of the statue or of the Museum."
[5] Heather Leavell, "New Research Sheds Light on Cyrus Dallin’s Activism for Native Rights," The Scout: Cyrus Dallin Art Museum Newsletter (July/August 2018).
Signed
Signed on base at right side: "C. E. Dallin 1908. [copyright symbol]"
Marks
Foundry mark on base at left side: "JABOEUF & ROUARD. FONDEURS. PARIS"
Provenance1909, cast in Paris; 1911, brought to the United States by the artist [see note 1]; 1913, sold by the artist to the MFA. (Accession Date: January 2, 1913)
NOTES:
[1] The artist exhibited this at the 1911 winter exhibition of the National Academy of Design and lent it to the MFA in 1912. It was purchased the next year by subscription, largely through a gift by Peter C. Brooks.
NOTES:
[1] The artist exhibited this at the 1911 winter exhibition of the National Academy of Design and lent it to the MFA in 1912. It was purchased the next year by subscription, largely through a gift by Peter C. Brooks.