Appeal to the Great Spirit

Cyrus Edwin Dallin

1913; cast ca. 1916 · Bronze · The American Wing

"Appeal to the Great Spirit" presents a Native man on horseback wearing a feathered headdress, his head raised and arms outspread in communion with a divine power. More than 400 authorized bronze statuettes were cast in three different sizes, testament to the popularity of sculptures depicting prevailing Euro-American visions of a "vanishing race." Today, such objects represent the complicated, painful legacies surrounding falsehoods about the decline and erasure of Indigenous peoples.

Artist

Cyrus Edwin Dallin

Date

1913; cast ca. 1916

Medium

Bronze

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Purchase, Morris K. Jesup Fund and Jonathan L. Cohen and Allison B. Morrow Gift, 2013