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Heroic-sized bronze sculpture depicting a wedding ceremony between a white cowboy and an Indigenous woman. The local Chamber of Commerce’s dedication plaque describes the statue as “the symbolic wedding uniting Miss Indian Territory and Mr. Cowboy Oklahoma.” This “wedding” between a Native American woman wearing a simple floor-length gown with short sleeves and her hair in two long braids and a young man dressed in a suit and tie, holding his cowboy hat behind his back--“symbolized the twin territories coming into the union as one state.” It depicts the merging of the diverse indigenous and emigrant tribes of Indian Territory and the white settlers who staked claims to their lands to be a happy union.It was common for postwar pioneer monuments to portray young married couples or nuclear families looking forward to a bright future. A more recent monument in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, portrays a white husband, Native wife, and young son. Both monuments suggest that white settlement on Indigenous homelands--and on lands taken from tribes recently relocated to "Indian Territory" from lands further east--produced a unified multicultural society. Yet the consistent portrayal of Native women entering patriarchal unions with white men also can be interpreted as reflecting white cultural dominance. None of the more than 200 pioneer monuments in the United States depict the marital union of a Native man with a white woman.

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Bronze monument erected in 1977 to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of the state of Oklahoma. It depicts a white cowboy marrying an Indigenous woman. It portrayed the melding of white settlement with the former Indian Territory achieved at statehood.

Statehood

Settler-themed public monuments stretching from Texas to Minnesota along I-35

On the eve of World War I, a reported $81,000 was raised in Germany to erect a monument to German settlers in Texas. Interest apparently waned once the United States went to war with Germany in 1917. Not until 1936 did efforts to erect a German pioneer monument gain traction in New Braunfels.Dozens of other western communities had erected monuments to their early settlers by the mid-1930s, including several that overcame the hardships of the Great Depression to do so. It appears that New Braunfels' monument was inspired by statewide efforts to mark the centennial of Texas' brief independence.The predominately German town of New Braunfels erected a monument specifically to honor the German immigrants who settled the town in the late 19th century. Hugo Villa’s German Pioneers of Texas depicts a seated woman with a book resting in her lap and her arm around her young son; her husband stands behind her, gesturing forward.The New Braunfels monument was supported by $2,000 from the state of Texas, but apparently did not receive any support from abroad, despite earlier fundraising efforts and a formal invitation for officials of New Braunfels-on-the-Lahn, Germany, to attend its unveiling.

Monument honoring German immigrants who settled in Texas in the late 19th century. Fundraising for the monument began in the 1910s but got derailed by World War I. The monument was completed in 1936 amid a statewide celebration marking the centennial of Texas' independence.

German Pioneers of Texas monument

This comic monument in Austin, Texas, offers a subtle critique not only of traditional gender norms and pioneer commemoration, but of the highly traditional Texas Pioneer Woman monument that the Daughters of the Republic of Texas erected a few blocks away on the Texas State Capitol grounds. A small group of Austin residents calling themselves Capital Area Statues, Inc. (CAST), erected sculptor Patrick Oliphant's humorous bronze statue of Angelina Eberly. Oliphant’s Eberly monument provides a striking counterpoint to the traditional iconography embraced by Texas Pioneer Woman and so many other Pioneer Mother monuments. Oliphant created a lively and comedic depiction of barefooted innkeeper Angelina Eberly, whom an accompanying plaque describes as “a bold woman whose vigilance and short temper preserved Austin as the capitol of Texas.” In 1842, that plaque explains, Eberly discovered a military detachment sent by Sam Houston to relocate the capitol of independent Texas to his namesake city by stealing the government's archives. Eberly alerted the citizens of Austin by firing the town cannon, “blowing a hole in the Land Office building and rousing the populace.” While Eberly's actions directly challenged the Pioneer Mother ideal celebrated by dozens of western monuments erected since the 1920s, both the artist's portrayal and the accompanying plaque emphasized Eberly's “short temper” and clownish misdirection of that cannon, rather than her boldness and her important role in protecting Austin's role as capital city. Furthermore, by depicting a specific woman and event, it stopped short of offering an alternative view of the ideal Texas pioneer woman. The Eberly monument thus offered her as a strong female role model to Austin residents. But the work ultimately reinforced traditional Texas history-telling that emphasized the actions of white men like Sam Houston and glorified Texas’ brief independence. The work did not significantly challenge the traditional gender ideology enshrined nearby.

Innkeeper Angelina Eberly is credited with saving the Texas capital at Austin. In 1842 alerted citizen vigilantes about a group of Texas Rangers' efforts to move the state archives, which many feared would lead to relocating the republic's capital. Her warning cannon shot blew a hole in the wall of the General Land Office. This monument celebrates her contribution, but its comedic style also mocks the damage she wreaked during the so-called Archive War.

Angelina Eberly statue

In 1998, District VII of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas erected a statue “honoring the pioneer women of early Texas” on the statehouse lawn in Austin. The Texas Pioneer Woman almost smiles. Most pioneer mothers in public monuments wear wide-brimmed sunbonnets. In contrast, this one has removed her sunbonnet, which she holds sassily at her right hip. Her hair is tied up in a loose chignon that frames her face. The wind blows her long skirts. While Texas artist Linda Sioux Henley allowed her Texas Pioneer Woman to emerge from the blinders of her sunbonnet, the monument’s overall visual impact remains one of honoring white women’s sacrifices in settling the rough frontier and birthing the state whose domed capitol looms behind her.While most pioneer mothers in monuments stride purposely westward, Henley’s stands still. Like many pioneer mothers, she holds an infant. Rather than being tightly swaddled, Henley granted this baby personhood: crossed bare legs extend from its wrap, and it brings its fist to its mouth. But its unnatural leg arrangement and position extending above its mother’s shoulder repeat the unnatural poses that sculptors and public audiences alike critiqued since the 1920s.Artist Linda Sioux Henley is a San Antonio, Texas, native and member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. She traces her family background to Alamo defender Gordon C. Jennings and Cherokee heritage through her mother.

Commissioned by District VIII of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT). This pioneer mother was sculpted by DRT member Linda Sioux Henley. The Pioneer Woman's Statue Committee worked for 10 years to design and fundraise for the statue. According to The Kerrville Times, the statue "captured the brave proud spirit of the women who rocked the cradle and civilized the Republic of Texas." It was the only statue of a woman on the Texas Capitol grounds when it was dedicated in 1998.

Texas Pioneer Woman statue

Round Rock, Texas, traces its origins to a stream crossing on the Chisholm Trail, which was an important route for driving Texas longhorn cattle to central Kansas railroad towns en route to market from 1867 until 1884, when barbed-wire fences and cattle disease quarantine laws ended the long cattle drives. North of Austin, cowboys traveling on that infamous cattle trail often camped beside Brushy Creek. The Village of Brushy Creek was later renamed Round Rock in honor of the round limestone rock that marked the popular Brushy Creek crossing – a large chunk of which broke off in a 1907 flood.In the mid-1990s, the tourism committee of the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce turned to bronze public sculpture as a way to attract historical tourism, inspired by sculptor Robert Summers’ Texas-sized bronze art installation featuring three life-sized cowboys driving forty longhorn cattle in Dallas’ 4.2-acre Pioneer Plaza.Initial plans for a life-size statue of a cowboy and three steers crossing Brushy Creek near I-35 soon hit a snag. The chamber’s tourism committee worried that flooding in the creek could cause major damage to the proposed $100,000 statue. A revised plan placed the bronze cattle in a parklike setting with convenient adjacent landscaped parking likely to appeal to the outlet mall shoppers and suburban residents that Round Rock sought to attract. From there, plans for bronze work expanded dramatically. By September 1996, Chamber members envisioned a bronze cattle drive featuring some twenty steers, and perhaps a stagecoach and horses, that would rival Dallas’ Pioneer Plaza cattle herd installation and the wild horses surrounding Las Colinas’ fountain.Chambers operations manage and tourism director Michelle Rackley insisted that “The statues would not only pull tourists to the area, it would be a claim for Round Rock pride . . . This will be something original. It will be ours.”[1] But, like many other pioneer statues erected to attract tourists, the Round Rock installation borrowed heavily from other communities’ monuments.The Chamber commissioned local cowboy art sculptor Jim Thomas to erect a series of 150%-life-sized bronze statues of pioneer figures and livestock. Sponsored by local families, each of the statues in The Crossing honored specific individuals even as they depicted broader groups of cowboys, pioneer women and children, and Longhorn cattle.By 2008, Red Rock had installed a Pioneer Woman and Pioneer Boy and four longhorn steers. Although referred to under generic titles, Jim Thomas’ figures were intended to depict Harriet “Hattie” Cluck, the first woman to travel the Chisholm Trail, and her five-year-old son Emmett. Donor Sissy Peckham served as a face model for the 1,200-pound statue. The unusually styled depiction of a sunbonneted Pioneer Mother and her young son stand facing each other, leaning on matching walking sticks. She carries a small tote of foodstuffs, while her son shows off a frog he has caught in the streambed. Longhorn steers lounge nearby. Two of those steers commemorated Swedish and Mexican immigrants to the region.

Bronze public statuary installation intended to attract heritage tourism to Round Rock, Texas. Marks a stream crossing on the Chisholm Trail.

The Crossing

Bronze monument depicting Glen Rose's founding couple: Tejana Juana Cavasos and white American trader Charles Barnard. It was sculpted by local artist Robert Summers. The young woman is mounted on horseback; her suitor stands near her, holding a rope to guide her and her horse to safety.An interpretive plaque for this 2007 monument explains that Charles Barnard, a white New Englander came to the Republic of Texas in 1843 to establish American Indian trading posts. Barnard ransomed and then fell in love with Juana Cavasos, the daughter of a wealthy family, rescuing her from the Comanches who held her captive. That “spirited, intelligent young captive … proved to be … an outstanding mother, horsewoman, herbal doctor, and neighborhood midife.”The monument attempts to tell inclusive local history and celebrate strong women. Yet the story of Glen Rose’s “first family” actually serves to reinforce traditional racial and gender narratives: A white settler came to profit off local Indians. In the absence of white American women, he “bartered successfully” for and married the Mexican-born daughter of a large “Spanish” landholder, simultaneously saving her from barbarous Indian captivity--and gained access to a large Mexican land grant on which his African-American slaves labored.

Bronze monument depicting Glen Rose's founding couple: Tejana Juana Cavasos and white American trader Charles Barnard. Barnard supposedly ransomed Cavasos from Comanches who had taken her captive.

Barnards of the Brazos -- First Family of Glen Rose

In 1996, Grapevine, Texas, erected a pioneer family monument as the first of several public statues in its historic downtown area. First settled by whites in the mid-nineteenth century, Grapevine remained a small agricultural town outside Dallas and Fort Worth until after World War II. The nearby construction of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport transformed it into a bedroom community and tourist destination. Tax revenue from DFW helped fund the revitalization of the town’s historic downtown. According to travel writer Syd Kearney, “Residents in this little, tax-rich city make up the hometown image and ambience as they go along. … In Grapevine, if it cannot be restored, it is replicated.”[1] Local artist Mike Cunningham’s 1996 limestone sculpture of a pioneer man, woman, and infant is a centerpiece of Grapevine’s new historic district. Although Cunningham is primarily an abstract sculptor, his piece for Grapevine imitates the 1920s and 1930s Pioneer Mother Movement--except that, despite being called Walking to Texas, the characters in it stand still rather than striding purposely westward as does Ponca City's Pioneer Woman. Cunningham placed horse head fountains on the square base “represent[ing] the Four Directions and the spirit of the American Indians.”Inscription:Statue:This statue honors the early settlers who walked along side their wagons to Texas seeking the promise of a better life for themselves and their children. They established the first permanent settlement of Grapevine in 1884.William D. Tate, OratorDecember 2, 1996Michael Cunningham, SculptorJerald Austin, MasonMESA Design Group, ArchitectFountain:Grapevine SpringsIn August of 1843 General Sam Houston camped not far from here at Grapevine Springs to forge a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with the Indian Nations. This treaty would soon open North Texas to settlement. All the leaders of the Indian nation did not arrive until September 29, 1843 by which time Houston had left. The Treaty was later signed at Bird's Fort on September 29, 1843. The Indian nations were the Biloxi, Caddo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Delaware, Ez-e-nye, Keechye, 'Nardarka, Tahwahkarro, and Waco.

Limestone statue honoring early settlers of Grapevine, Texas. Stands in the middle of a horse head fountain honoring Native Americans of the region. Installed as part of revitalization of Grapevine's historic downtown.

Walking to Texas fountain

On May 7, 1935 James V. Allred, the Governor of Texas, signed House
Bill 11 as passed by the 44th Texas Legislature.[1]&nbsp;This
bill appropriated three million dollars to the Texas Centennial Celebration and
created The Texas Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebrations (also
known as the Texas Centennial Commission). This commission consisted of nine
members: The Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the House, three individuals who
were to be appointed by the Governor, two individuals to be appointed by the
Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the House.[2]&nbsp;Their
duties included supervising the appropriation distribution, administering local
celebrations, and erecting historical markers, monuments, and memorials.[2]&nbsp;A month later, on June 28, the 74th
Congress of the United States passed a joint resolution that allowed the United
States Government to participate in the Texas Centennial Exposition. The
resolution then created a commission known as “The United States Texas
Centennial Commission” that composed of the vice president, the secretary of state,
the secretary of agriculture, and the secretary of commerce.[3]&nbsp;Additionally, the resolution allocated three million dollars of Second New Deal
money from the United States Treasury to the Texas Centennial Exposition.[3]With the combined six million dollars, Texas placed numerous buildings, memorial museums,
statues, monuments, granite and bronze markers around Texas.[4]&nbsp;One of those statues was the Pioneer Woman located on the campus of Texas
Woman’s University. In 1936, the Texas Centennial Commission opened the
“Memorial to the Pioneer Woman” competition.[5]&nbsp; A selection committee appointed by the Centennial Commission
consisted of seven art professionals that selected William Zorach's model [6]&nbsp;depicting a pioneer woman,
her husband, and two children. However, this sculpture selection caused protests
from Texans across the state because the family depicted in the sculpture were
all nude. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas called it “the greatest insult
that could be offered to these women who believed and practiced the virtue of
modesty.”[5]&nbsp;The backlash and outrage led to the State Board of Control stepping in and ordering
the selection of a new sculpture. In 1937, the commission selected a new artist, Leo Friedlander based out
of New York. Friedlander submitted a model of a lone woman dressed in a long,
flowing gown, jacket and bonnet with only her feet bare. This was a drastic
change from the Zorach sculpture. After many suggested changes, the result was
the statue that is presently standing. Friedlander was required&nbsp;to work with a state approved architect to
construct the base of the statue. David Nelson, an architect from Dallas, was
selected to work with Friedlander. Nelson's original blueprint that consisted of
a reflection pool and walkways was rejected by the Board of Regents due to cost.[7]&nbsp;The alternative, a large base made from Georgia marble, was constructed by the
Llano Marble Company of Dallas, Texas. 

<div>Three years after the Governor’s proposal for this monument,&nbsp;about 3,500 people
attended the statue’s unveiling on December 6, 1938.[8]&nbsp;Pat.
M. Neff, the President of Baylor University at the time, was the main speaker
at the statue unveiling. Other individuals who received invitations to the
event were Governor James V. Allred, governor-elect W. Lee O’Daniel, and members
of the United States Texas Centennial Commission, including Vice President John
N. Garner, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Secretary of Interior Daniel C.
Roper, and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace.

<div>One of the most significant features is the
inscription on the base, written by the Dean of Women, Jessie H. Humphries. President
Hubbard selected Humphries to write the inscription “because of her extraordinary
good taste in everything that she writes.” Additionally, he selected Humphries
because he saw Humphries “as a modern pioneer in the field of education.”[9]&nbsp;The inscription reads: “Marking
a trail in a pathless wilderness pressing forward with unswerving courage she
met each untried situation with a resourcefulness equal to the need. With a glad
heart she brought to her frontier family her homelands cultural heritage. With
delicate spiritual sensitiveness she illuminated the dullness of routine and
the loneliness of isolation with beauty and with life abundant and with all she
lived with casual unawareness of her value to civilization. Such was the
pioneer woman. The unsung saint of the nations immortals.” 

<div>The Pioneer Woman statue is the only centennial
landmark with an inscription that is publicly attributed to a female author.
All other texts for markers were written by the Advisory Board of Historians.
The words of Dean Humphries garnered so much attention that even First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about the inscription in the daily column “My Day”. In
her August 13, 1942 column, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote “There we
have the secret which should be driven home to every woman. In countless homes
in this country today, there are women who are "casually unaware" of
the great accomplishments which are theirs. They will be recognized by history,
but today we forget them because they do their daily tasks so casually that
their heroism and the vital place which they fill in our world passes almost
unnoticed, and certainly unsung in the present.”[9]The
Pioneer Woman was erected to honor the historical achievements of women, and First
Lady Roosevelt “hoped the Centennial statue would remind modern
Texans of the unnoticed and unsung contributions women make to society every
day.”[10]

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In March of 1935, Governor Pat M. Neff proposed “a monument to pioneer mothers to be fashioned out of Texas granite, by Texas hands, and tower above every other Texas monument.”[11] After the first monument selection ended in controversy, a model by Leo Friedlander, a New York artist was selected. In 1938, Friedlander constructed a lone figure made of solid Georgia marble, standing at 15-feet tall. At the base of the monument, is an inscription created by TWU Associate Dean, Jessie Humphries. This inscription characterize the significance of this monument, that stands as a symbol for a University that has been a pioneer in women’s education. The monument has called Texas Woman’s University home for the last 80 years, she is known as the Pioneer Woman. 

Pioneer Woman Monument 

One of several works of public art located along the Legacy Trail, this statue depicts a seated frontier teacher dressed in a prairie-style gown gazing at a large book on her lap. A young girl reads with her, pointing to the book while gazing up at the teacher's face. A barefooted boy sits cross-legged on her other side, writing on a slate in his lap with a piece of chalk in his proper right hand. A wagon wheel stands behind them. The monument was dedicated July 3, 1999 "to the pioneers and educators of the State of Oklahoma."Dozens of monuments to pioneer women honor their role as educators preparing the next generation and carrying white American culture to the frontier. A similar scene of a woman reading with a young girl appears in marble bas relief in the Oregon State Library in Salem, Oregon. The better-known Pioneer Woman monument in Ponca City, Oklahoma, features a young mother walking westward, carrying a Bible with which to educate her young son and the peoples of the West.

Monument depicting a frontier schoolteacher accompanied by her students. It was dedicated "to the pioneers and educators of the State of Oklahoma" in 1999. Public monuments to pioneer women often honor them as teachers or informal educators of their own children.

Pioneer Classroom

This monument honoring Oklahoma settlers was dedicated on "89ers Day" in 1960. It was sculpted by Oklahoma City artist Leonard McMurry and donated by B. D. and Pauline Eddie. According to its dedicatory plaque, this statue of a man using a hatchet to drive a stake into the ground while his young son sits atop their horse commemorated the "strong men and women" who settled in the 1889 Land Run.The statue's focus on depicting a land run makes it typical of other, more recent Oklahoma monuments, and sets it apart from pioneer monuments erected across the United States from the 1880s to the present. Most pioneer monuments elsewhere in the US focus on women carrying American culture westward or families' persistence after they settled in the West. [1]"Land Runs" are a historical phenomenon closely associated with Oklahoma. When American settlers moved westward in the mid-19th century, Oklahoma was designated as "Indian Territory"--land set aside for Native Americans. Native groups pushed out of the eastern United States were relocated onto the homelands of Indigenous peoples within that Indian Territory.The 1889 Land Run focused on territory that previously had been set aside for Indian reservations. Lands held by Indigenous groups as well as emigrant tribes would be opened to white settlement in future land runs.In 1889, US President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed the nearly 2-million-acre "Unassigned Lands" open for settlement. The so-called Springer Amendment allowed settlement under the terms of the 1862 Homestead Act and denied earlier settlers traditional squatters' rights to claim the lands on which they had settled. An estimated 50,000 people rushed into the previously designated "Indian Territory" in hopes of claiming 160 acres of land. That land rush set the stage for the organization of Oklahoma Territory, and then the state of Oklahoma in 1907.[2]

Monument depicting the 1889 Land Run in which mostly white settlers rushed in to claim "Unassigned Lands" in what was then Indian Territory. This statue and several others that followed in northern Oklahoma focus on the excitement of the "land runs," which sets them apart from pioneer monuments elsewhere in the United States.

Pioneers of 1889

Located along the Bricktown Canal River Walk, the monument includes bronze sculptures of 24 horses and riders, two covered wagons, a buckboard, a sulky, dogs, and even a startled rabbit.&nbsp; All the statues are quite lifelike and they stretch for 365 feet along the river walk, making the entire monument one of the largest free-standing bronze sculptures on the globe.

A bronze soldier, standing off to the side, is depicted firing the canon which set the frontiersmen on their journey to stake their claim on a plot of land back in 1889.&nbsp; Other statues include a bronze rider reaching back for his hat, a pair of horses, pulling a buckboard, rearing up in fear just before entering the water, and a dog struggling to leap from the back of a covered wagon to join the race.&nbsp;

The monument was designed and created by native Oklahoman artist, Paul Moore, and is accessible 24 hours a day. However, daylight visits are highly recommended.

The Centennial Land Run Monument commemorates the transfer of land that had been promised to Native American tribes to the federal government, and the subsequent decision by the government to open those lands to white settlers. The first of three land rushes occurred in 1889 when Indian Territory became Oklahoma Territory and would-be settlers were invited to stake their claims simply by being the first to reach and thereby"claim" a section of land. The monument consists of 45 larger-than-life bronze statues, depicting the settlers in various action poses, frozen in time.  The first statue was placed in 2003 and the final one in 2015.

Centennial Land Run Monument

The statue is a reminder both of the active participation of women in Western history, as well as the devastating impact of the Dawes Severalty Act and the Homestead Act upon Native American tribes who had been granted the entirety of present-day Oklahoma by previous treaties. Oklahoma is unique in that settlers of mostly European origin claimed land that had been previously granted to Native tribes in a series of land runs. After Native American lands were consolidated under the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887, the remaining land was opened to settlers. The process of claiming land was organized in “land run” style, meaning at an appointed time, settlers entered the land, staked out their property, and claimed it as their own. Under the Homestead Act, if they lived on it for 5 years, built a home, and made improvements to the land (typically by farming), it became officially their land after filing their claim with government authorities.

This statue, entitled “Leaping Into History,” was dedicated in 2007 and commemorates Oklahoma settler Nanitta R. H. Daisey who was a participant in the first Oklahoma Land Run on April 22, 1889. Known at the time as "Kentucky Daisey," Nanitta Daisey made newspaper headlines across the country when she leaped from a train to beat others to claim a plot of land. Using stakes and her petticoat, she marked off this land just north of Edmond Station. This statue was erected in 2007 as one of the official Oklahoma Centennial Projects, commissioned as a statewide celebration of Oklahoma’s 100th birthday. Kentucky Daisey’s daring leap into the Unassigned Lands exemplifies the pioneer spirit and an exciting event at the founding of Oklahoma. the statue also serves as a reminder of the way lands that had been promised to Native peoples were later claimed by white settlers through the actions of the federal government.

Leaping Into History Monument 

Life-sized statue of a man dressed in wide-brimmed hat, work shirt and trousers, suspenders, and boots. He holds a pick-axe in his proper right hand. On his left stands a rifle. The statue was installed on a four-foot-tall base engraved "PIONEER MAN / Rich Muno / Sculptor / July 4, 1976." It was dedicated as part of US Bicentennial celebrations. It was re-dedicated in 2017.Sculptor Rich Muno (1939-2015) was born in Arapaho, Oklahoma. He developed a love of wood carving growing up on an Oklahoma farm. As an adult he worked as a curator and director at western-themed Oklahoma art museums: at the Thomas Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa for 5 years, followed by 20 years at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. Muno left then left the museum world to devote himself to sculpting and wood carving.Muno's portrayal of a single male settler is unusual for its time. Heroic sculptures of solo male pioneers were popular in the first two decades of the twentieth century. But beginning in the 1920s, western monuments tended to focus on frontier women, such as the well-known Pioneer Woman monument in Ponca City, Oklahoma. After World War II, pioneer monuments tended to depict young married couples or nuclear families. In 1977 the former territorial capital of Guthrie dedicated a monument commemorating Oklahoma statehood. It depicts a similarly attired male cowboy exchanging marriage vows with a young Indigenous woman, and was intended to represent the marriage of Indian Territory with white settlement.

Life-sized bronze sculpture by Rich Muno erected to commemorate the perseverance of Oklahoma homesteaders. Dedicated as part of local US Bicentennial celebration in 1976.

Pioneer Man

This monument commemorates the Broken Arrow city centennial in 2002. Tulsa, Oklahoma, native J. David Nunneley's design was selected from among 13 finalists because it captured many aspects of Broken Arrow's history and culture. The rooster in the boy's arms and the basket of peaches capture aspects of the local agricultural industry.Like other postwar pioneer family monuments, this statue features a young boy standing in front of his parents, prepared to lead them into the future. The Centennial Commemorative Statue Committee selected the piece because it “combined all the things that have made Broken Arrow a booming community—family, tradition, farming, heritage and hard work,” and even included a nod to the area’s Native American heritage.[1] But wedding a meek Indian maiden to a strong white farmer gives an illusion of equality, while actually depicting the white takeover of Native lands and cultures. The large book that the Native woman carries suggests her embrace of the twin blessings of Euro-American education and Christianity carried West by white pioneer women. Yet her knee-length fringed buckskin dress and moccasins and the two braids hanging down below her shoulders mark the limits of her assimilation. In contrast, her husband’s cowboy boots and hat demonstrate his hardy white masculinity. Rather than embracing one another in marital unity, they stand apart, their arms crossing behind the boy as each separately guides their young son forward.The statue's portrayal of the union of a white farmer and Native woman echoes a 1977 monument in front of the Oklahoma Territorial Museum in Guthrie. Statehood celebrates the marriage of Indian Territory and white settlers to create the state of Oklahoma.

2002 Broken Arrow city centennial monument portraying local history and culture. It emphasizes the mixing of Native American and white cultures and local agricultural industry. The portrayal of a husband, wife, and their young son echoes other postwar pioneer family monuments.

Pioneer Family and Rooster

Depicts a settler couple atop a wagon seat racing to claim land as part the 1893 Cherokee Strip land rush. The viewer can see the man holding the reins, but the horses and wagon are implied. The woman's sunbonnet has blown off her head and hangs down her back. The statue portrays action to capture the excitement of the rush to claim lands to which the Cherokee and other Native groups had been removed earlier in the 19th century.The monument was sculpted by Bill Bennett, who grew up in Perry. It was erected in 1993 to mark the centennial of the land rush. Enid, Newkirk, and Ponca City, Oklahoma, also erected monuments marking that centennial.

Centennial monument portraying the excitement of the 1893 Cherokee Strip land rush. It is one of several land run or state centennial monuments erected in Oklahoma in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Hopes and Dreams

To celebrate Oklahoma’s 2007 statehood centennial, Larry and Dolores McClure commissioned a bronze monument in honor and memory of their pioneer family. It was dedicated September 16, 2007 in front of Enid’s new Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center. It was sculpted by popular local artist Harold T. Holden.Harold T. "H" Holden grew up in Enid. "H" Holden sculpted a series of statues depicting the history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. Holden attended Oklahoma State University and the Texas Academy of Art in Houston. He was elected into membership in the Cowboy Artists of America in 2012.Holden's better-known Boomer (located in Stride Bank Center Plaza in Enid) portrays a man riding a galloping horse, rushing to stake his land claim. In contrast, The Homesteaders focuses on a white settler family. Like rural Kansas, Montana and Wyoming pioneer monuments of the 1980s, it emphasizes settlers’ hard work and persistence. Rather than emphasizing white men’s use of horse-drawn technology, however, Enid’s homesteaders labor with hand tools amid a presumably abundant harvest. Where 1950s pioneer family monuments’ emphasis on strapping young sons, The Homesteaders highlights feminine nurturance and the persistence of family ties: the mother holds her young daughter’s hand, who in turn grasps a rag doll. Although The Homesteaders suggests the hard work required to survive on the southern Plains, like other western-themed artworks that appear throughout Enid, it also reassures viewers that--despite the diverse Indian tribes that persisted in Oklahoma--white cultural traditions are here to stay.

One of several monuments erected to mark Oklahoma's statehood centennial in 2007. While most other centennial monuments focus on the excitement of Oklahoma land rushes, local artist Harold T. Holden sculpted a homesteading family to stand in front of the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center.

The Homesteaders

This public sculpture depicts a settler camped out with his horse to stake his land claim. A series of bronze reliefs and accompanying interpretive signs depict an Indigenous "Plainsman," "Chisholm" representing the "era of the cattle trails," a cowboy "Wrangler," an Oklahoma land rush "Boomer," and a "Pioneer" driving a horse-drawn plow and seeking to "prove up" his claim. There also is an oil worker "Dressing the Bit."The monument and accompanying relief plaques were sculpted by Harold T. "H" Holden, who grew up in Enid. Holden attended Oklahoma State University and the Texas Academy of Art in Houston. He was elected into membership in the Cowboy Artists of America in 2012.It is the fourth in a series of monuments that "H" was commissioned to sculpt to depict the history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. It is a companion to "Boomer," the first of the series located outside the Cherokee Strip Conference Center in Enid, which also is depicted in the "Boomer" plaque accompanying "Holding the Claim." Newkirk, Perry, and Ponca City, Oklahoma, also erected monuments marking the centennial of the settlement of the Cherokee Strip.

Sculpture depicting a land rush settler camping out with his horse to stake his land claim. Part of a series of sculptures by Harold T. "H" Holden depicting Cherokee Strip history.

Holding the Claim

Erected shortly before the centennial of the 1893 land run that opened this portion of Oklahoma to homesteading, Boomer depicts the Cherokee Strip land run as an explicitly masculine event. In contrast to Leonard McMurry’s 1959 Oklahoma City land run monument, which at a time of nationwide pioneer family commemoration presented land runs as an intergenerational project of laying down roots in the Oklahoma soil, Enid's 1987 Boomer depicts a solo man on horseback racing to stake his claim. The dramatic scene emphasizes the land runs as exciting adventures. A related monument in Enid's Government Springs Park depicts a boomer camped for the night on his claim.Sculpted by Harold T. "H" Holden, who grew up in Enid. It is the first in a series of monuments that "H" was commissioned to sculpt to depict the history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. Holden attended Oklahoma State University and the Texas Academy of Art in Houston. He was elected into membership in the Cowboy Artists of America in 2012.Boomer became a popular image and the official symbol of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. “H” adapted it to produce a commemorative US postage for the Cherokee Strip in 1993.

Bronze monument portraying an Oklahoma settler on horseback rushing to stake his land claim as part of the 1889 land run that opened the Cherokee Strip to white settlement. It is one of a series of monuments commemorating the settlement of the Cherokee Strip by sculptor Harold T. Holden.

Boomer

Residents of Ponca City--home of the famous Pioneer Woman statue and accompanying Pioneer Woman Museum--commissioned a heroic-sized monument to mark the centennial of the Cherokee Outlet land opening. Like other land rush monuments erected in the late 20th century, it depicts a highly masculine scene that counterbalances the Pioneer Woman's focus on women carrying cultural refinement to the frontier. Local artist Jo Saylor’s ten-foot-tall bronze statue of a white cowboy preparing to jump off his rearing horse to stake his claim depicted the masculine excitement of the land rush even more dramatically than Harold T. Holden's popular Boomer that had been installed in Enid, Oklahoma, a few years earlier. Ponca City’s Native American population vocally protested the erection of a statue commemorating white men staking claims to Indian lands. In Ponca City protests focused on the artist’s title for the work, This Land is Mine, which blatantly ignored prior indigenous and emigrant Indian claims to local lands. Around the same time, activists also protested David Manuel's statue titled The Promised Land that was donated to Portland, Oregon, to mark the sesquicentennial of the Oregon Trail.1In protesting Ponca City's This Land is Mine, Native communities chose to overlook the complex history of intertribal tensions in the former Indian Territory and to embrace a pan-Indian tactic to fighting white incursion into Native lands. The Ponca, who had been forcibly removed to the region in the mid-nineteenth-century (and who lent their name to the predominately white town) led public opposition to the Cherokee Outlet land run monument. Ponca tribal member Ed Little Cook was not satisfied by the deletion of the offensive title. Instead, he argued for removal of the statue because it celebrated the theft of Indian lands. The official tribal statement about the statue, penned by Ponca administrative assistant Sherman Bo Warrior, labeled the land runs a form of genocide. Members of the emigrant Cherokee and Ottawa soon joined the fight; tribes that lived in the area prior to forced relocations, including the Osage, who had the strongest historical claim to the area, as well as the Tonakawas, Kaws, Pawnees, and Otoe-Missourias, were far less vocal in protesting the land rush monument.2Vocal protest from the local Indian community persuaded the city to remove the offensive title, and to place the statue in a slightly less prominent location. More than 300 Native protestors sang, chanted and beat a ceremonial drum nearby as the monument was dedicated without an official title before a crowd of 3,500 in September 1993. Ponca City’s centennial committee chair declared flippantly in response to the protestors, “This is one of the greatest honors. I’ve never had background music.”3Racial tensions surrounding the centennial commemoration persisted long after the statue’s dedication. Frustrated with the many Ponca City residents who remained determined to celebrate their white pioneer forebears, the American Indian community chose to erect their own monument and memorial park in which to tell their perspective on local history. Two years after Ponca Isaiah Williams erected a white artist’s composite, peaceful Indian figure in Enid (discussed above), Poncas in Ponca City unveiled Southern Ute/Navajo Cowboy Artist of America Oreland C. Joe’s twenty-two-foot tall statue of Ponca Chief Standing Bear.4 Standing Bear fought for the Ponca people--and by extension all Native Americans--through the United States legal system. In a landmark 1879 civil rights case in U.S. District Court, Standing Bear argued successfully that Native Americans are defined as persons in relation to federal law and entitled to citizenship rights. Oreland Joe’s statue became the centerpiece of sixty-three-acre Standing Bear Park, Museum and Education Center, which seeks to educate visitors on the culture and history of Native Americans in Oklahoma. It also serves as a memorial to a former residential neighborhood that was razed after a Conoco oil leak contaminated its groundwater on that site.5Text of a plaque at the monument's base:<blockquote>CENTENNIAL MONUMENT</blockquote><blockquote>THIS MONUMENT HONORS THOSE WHO RODE ACROSS THE PRAIRIE TO CLAIM A PIECE OF FREE LAND. WHO KNOWS HOW LONG THE "STRIP" HAD BEEN THE SCENE OF NATIVE AMERICAN HUNTING PARTIES? FROM THE EARLY 1800'S IT WAS DESIGNATED AS AN OUTLET TO HUNTING GROUNDS IN THE WEST FOR THE CHEROKEE NATION. IN 1893, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PURCHASED THE OUTLET FROM THE CHEROKEES. THEN, AT HIGH NOON ON SEPTEMBER 16, 1893, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE SEEKING FREE LAND RACED ACROSS ITS BORDERS. ONE PARTICIPANT IS DEPICTED BY THIS BRONZE. HE REPRESENTS A YOUNG HOMETEADER SEEKING A SECURE FUTURE FOR HIS FAMILY.</blockquote><blockquote>THIS PARTICIPANT IN THE BIGGEST HORSE RACE IN HISTORY IS RUNNING FOR A FUTURE FOR HIS YOUNG FAMILY. AS HE JUMPS FROM HIS HORSE WITH STAKE IN HAND HE REALIZES THAT HE HAS FOUND IT.</blockquote>

Monument commemorating the centennial of the 1893 Cherokee Strip Land Run. The original title of the work, "This Land is Mine," was stripped from the work in response to protest from the local Native American community, who objected to the title's suggestion that white settlers were justified in taking Native lands.

Centennial Statue

About the Pioneer Woman Museum and StatueOklahoma oilman and future governor Ernest Whitworth Marland held a design competition in 1926 for a statue dedicated to pioneer women. Invited artists submitted twelve three-foot-tall bronze statues, which toured the country. Bryant Baker, an English immigrant who had served in the U.S. Army during the First World War, won by a wide margin with his design, which he entitled Confidence. A reported 40,000 attended its dedication on April 22, 1930, the anniversary of the first Oklahoma land run [1]. When, in the 1950s, an accompanying museum was planned, architect Rand Elliott fronted the building with a copper awning to echo the statue's sunbonnet. Stamped through the copper are the words I see no boundaries [1; 2].Opened in 1958, the Pioneer Woman Museum is dedicated to women who have contributed to Oklahoma's development. In addition to displays of everyday household items used by pioneer women, the museum features an exhibit dedicated to women journalists and a Walk of Fame showcasing Oklahoma women who broke new ground [1; 2]. Some of the women in the Walk of Fame include historian Angie Debo, whose groundbreaking works on Western history were some of the first to address the mistreatment of Native Americans by the U.S. government; civil rights activist and educator Clara Luper; journalist and Oklahoma first lady Elva Shartel Ferguson; and aviator and NASA trainee Gerrie Cobb [3]. Craft demonstrations and special exhibits are also held in the facility, which was expanded in 1998 [2].

Opened in 1958, the Pioneer Woman Museum is dedicated to women who have contributed to Oklahoma's development. In addition to displays of everyday household items used by pioneer women, the museum features an exhibit dedicated to women journalists and a Walk of Fame showcasing Oklahoma women who broke new ground. Craft demonstrations and special exhibits are also held in the facility. The museum sits adjacent to the 30-foot bronze Pioneer Woman statue unveiled in 1930.

Pioneer Woman Museum

Sculpted by Newkirk native Bernadette Carman, Land of Hope portrays a pioneer man and woman gazing out over their new land claim. A claim stake stands at their feet. Dedicated in 1994 to celebrate the centennial of the 1893 Cherokee Strip land run."Land Runs" are a historical phenomenon closely associated with Oklahoma. When American settlers moved westward in the mid-19th century, Oklahoma was designated as "Indian Territory"--land set aside for Native Americans. Native groups pushed out of the eastern United States were relocated onto the homelands of Indigenous peoples within that Indian Territory. Portions of those land were then taken by the US federal government and opened to homesteading, primarily by white Americans.The 1893 Cherokee Outlet Opening was the fourth and largest land run in Oklahoma. Economic pressures during the so-called Panic of 1893 combined with poor planning and enforcement made it even more chaotic than previous Oklahoma land runs. The 1893 run produced widespread suffering and several deaths.[1]The Cherokee Outlet was one of three areas that the Cherokee people acquired under the Treaty of New Echota that guided their removal from the southeastern United States. But large portions of those recently granted Cherokee lands were taken under the 1866 Reconstruction Treaties. The federal government relocated smaller Native tribes onto the eastern third of the Cherokee Outlet. Construction of railroads through Cherokee lands encouraged cattlemen and homesteaders to occupy the region.[2] For the past half century, Oklahomans have erected monuments that celebrate the excitement of settlers rushing in to stake a land claim on former Native lands. Perry, Ponca City, and Enid, Oklahoma, also erected monuments marking the 1893 land run centennial.[3] While Newkirk's includes a land claim stake, it focuses less on the rush onto the land. Instead, it echoes pioneer monuments elsewhere in the United States that depict young couples or families gazing hopefully out over their newly claimed lands.[4]

Bronze monument commemorating the centennial of the 1893 Cherokee Strip Land Run. In contrast to other Oklahoma land run monuments that focused on homeseekers rushing in to stake their claim, local artist Bernadette Carman portrayed a couple gazing out over their chosen homestead.

Land of Hope

Erected in 2007 at the Oklahoma state centennial in front of the 1993 Woods County Centennial Wall. That brick wall and plaza were installed by the Cherokee Outlet Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) to mark the 100th anniversary of the Cherokee Outlet "Land Run of 1893." For the state centennial in 2007, local artist Calvin L. Graybill (and husband of Cherokee Outlet DAR Chapter Regent Verna Graybill) designed statues of a pioneer man and woman. Most pioneer monuments featuring both a man and woman depict them in heroic size and standing close together as a couple or as part of a family. In contrast, Graybill treated each separately, and the two 3-foot-tall statues stand about 10 feet apart on separate brick plinths. The Alva statues also are more subdued than other land run monuments in Enid and Ponca City that emphasize excitement and movement. Yet like many other pioneer monuments, it depicts the man as the actor, and the woman as his helpmeet. The Alva man looks down as he pounds a claim stake into the ground; the woman gazes out at their land claim as she holds a claim stake with a flag attached to it.

Statues placed in front of the 1993 Woods County Centennial Wall to mark the centennial of Oklahoma statehood in 2007. Local artist Calvin L. Graybill sculpted a man and woman staking their land claim. In contrast to other Oklahoma pioneer monuments erected around the same time, Graybill portrayed each figure separately on its own base.

Pioneer Man and Woman statues

This sunbonneted pioneer mother carrying a Bible and satchel and leading her young son by the hand echoes Bryant Baker's famous "Pioneer Woman" for Ponca City, Oklahoma. It was sculpted by Dorothy L. Koelling in 1989, and dedicated on the Wichita riverfront in 1994. According to the dedication plaque, it "symbolizes the hardhip and dreams of early Wichita pioneers." It was given in memory of Eva M. and Will G. Price to recognize "their devotion and inspiration to the cultural and business life of Wichita." The statue stands in front of the civic center, near statues of a Native American man holding a peace pipe, Lebanese immigrant Farris George Jabara, and a group of children at play representing America's future.

Hardship and Dreams statue

This styled nude statue was intended to honor early white
Kansas settler women when it was placed in Wichita amid the nation’s
bicentennial celebration in 1976. The city council commissioned the statue for
a new pocket park under construction behind the former city hall (now the
Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum) and Carnegie library.&nbsp; 

Local artist Richard Bergen described his work as “an
abstracted nude figure of a pioneer woman preparing herself for a cool dip in a
Kansas stream.” Demonstrating more empathy for western settlers than historical
knowledge, Bergen explained that “When you’ve been walking across the plains on
a hot, windy, dusty day and you come to a river … [y]ou’d probably strip off
your clothes and jump in. That’s what I think the pioneers probably did, too.” Although
Heritage Woman was highly stylized,
the artist claimed that “It has a classical feeling to it.”1&nbsp;The Wichita Heritage Square advisory committee unanimously approved the Bergen
sculpture, which the chair called “very effective and just right for the
setting”; the director of Wichita’s Community Arts raved that he “love[d]
it.&nbsp; No question, she is a stunning
person.”2&nbsp;They appeared to embrace the juxtaposition of
a nude figure representing a pioneer woman, and of a hot, dusty settler for a
Victorian-style urban park. Perhaps because the artist chose to name the
sculpture after its site in Heritage Square Park rather than explicitly
identifying the nude figure as a pioneer woman, the broader public seemed to
share the arts community’s appreciation. The citizens of Wichita apparently
viewed Bergen’s Heritage Woman within
a long-established fine arts tradition of nude female forms. &nbsp;In contrast to the outrage expressed in Denton,
Texas, in the 1930s and Salem, Oregon, in the 1950s, newspaper coverage of
Wichita’s Heritage Woman did not
reveal any protests to her nudity.&nbsp;
Instead, local residents appeared to embrace the work’s merging of
classical and contemporary aesthetic for their new Victorian-inspired urban
park, and overlooked the artist’s conception of a nude pioneer woman revealing
herself in downtown Wichita.

Yet
Wichitans’ acceptance of the nude pioneer woman appear to have declined over
time. In April 2005, vandals damaged the sculpture’s hands, requiring $5,000
worth of repairs.&nbsp; Shortly after the city
returned the statue to its plinth in Heritage Park in fall 2006, it was
assaulted a second time, knocking it off its base, breaking it in half at the
waist and cracking the bronze skin, causing another $20,000 in damages. Vandals
attacked it a third time in early 2013, again removing it from its base and
breaking it in half. This time repairs kept the statue out of the public eye
for four years. City leaders hope that the installation of a tall iron fence
around Heritage Park will protect the statue from further damage. Historical
society staff suspect that the statue’s nudity inspired these repeated attacks
on Heritage Woman.&nbsp;<div><div>

</div>

</div>

This styled nude statue was intended to honor early white Kansas settler women when it was placed in Wichita amid the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976. Wichitans accepted the statue at that time, but some appear to have become concerned with her nudity. Since 2005 the statue has been seriously vandalized three times.

Heritage Woman statue

A plaque set on footings displays a relief of a pioneer's homestead, with inscriptions above and below it. A log cabin, well, and covered wagon are in the foreground. A male pioneer works a plow nearby. Two trees and a fence are in the background. The plaque is set in front of a boulder. Plaque text:IN MEMORY OFTHE PIONEERS WHO FOUNDED TOPEKA/DECEMBER 5TH 1854THE SIGNERS OF THE ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT WERE/(list of signers in 3 columns)DEDICATED 1931BY/SHAWNEE COUNTY OLD SETTLERS SOCIETYJOHN E DOANE PRES. W.H. CORBETT SECY. Similar bronze relief plaques--typically applied directly to granite boulders--were placed to mark overland trails throughout the American West in the 1920s and 1930s.

1931 relief of a frontier farm, with a log cabin, covered wagon, and a pioneer plowing by unknown artist. Copper or bronze plaque set on iron footings cast by Deggingers Foundry attached to boulder. Dedicated in 1931 by Shawnee County Old Settlers Society. Originally mounted on the archway entrance of the "Old Settlers Memorial Grounds" in Gage Park.

The Pioneers Who Founded Topeka

History of Pioneer Women (Memorial Significance)Aside from the statue’s innate beauty and inspirational significance, the Pioneer Women Memorial holds a profound meaning that covers the pioneering mother over the course of the 19th century. After the Louisiana Purchase, and especially after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, many men and their families began settling in the area. According to “Stories From Greenwood Pioneer Women” for the Kansas City Star in 1916, there were very few single men first settling Kansas, and similar to the need for oxen and the prairie schooners, these early settlers wouldn’t have been able to establish themselves in the area without the help of women.For example, a drought ravished the area in 1860 and nearly caused starvation in thousands of settlers throughout the state. One story concerned the Willis family who settled in Greenwood County near Wichita. After building a modest farmhouse outside of Eureka, the family found themselves without food. It was Mrs. Willis who brought pumpkin and melon seeds from Illinois, which yielded the only crop in 1860 and saved her family. In addition to starvation, pioneer families fought against prairie fires, stereotypes regarding attacking Native American tribes, and sickness. In building a suitable farm, women worked side-by-side with their mates to turn the soil, plant the crops, the engage in other chores that were traditionally only suitable for men. While working the earth, the women also cooked, cleaned, made clothes, helped build and maintain the house, gathered water, dealt with rodents and marauding animals, raised and nursed children, canned fruits and vegetables, washed laundry on a rub board, ironed with a heavy cast iron, and conducted many, many other tasks. Lastly, women also became the principal caregivers, treated the sick, set broken bones, amputated limbs, and delivered babies.1 In essence, many single men couldn’t have survived the harsh life of a pioneer without a wife, and thus the Pioneer Women Memorial pays tribute to this essential role of the woman in the establishment of Kansas.  History of the MemorialThe Pioneer Women Memorial was conceived and donated by the Kansas Pioneer Women’s Association. This association consisted of women who came to Kansas as pioneers or as daughters of early settlers. The project began in 1927 with a massive fundraising drive, and anyone who donated a dollar could receive membership. Kansas Pioneer Women's Memorial Association first-vice-chair Lilla Day Monroe initially pursued a Kansas pioneer mother monument out of a belief in women's equality. But that did not mean that the association wanted a sculpture that depicted a woman acting like a man. The male-dominated memorial commission selected Bryant Baker's design featuring a sunbonneted pioneer woman holding a scythe. That design closely resembled Baker's famous Pioneer Woman for Ponca City, Oklahoma. But Kansans did not want their monument to remind viewers that Kansas settler women needed to help their husbands with field labor. They urged the sculptor to replace the scythe with a gun. Baker apparently refused. By 1935, Baker's model was on display in the capitol rotunda, but the memorial association awarded a $10,000 contract for the monument to famed American artist and former Kansan Robert Merrill Gage, instead.In the 1920s and 1930s, Americans often imagined pioneer women holding rifles. Twenty-five public sculptures of pioneer women unaccompanied by men were put up in the US during those decades. Fifteen of those 25 include rifles, including Merrill Gage's 1920 Daughters of Old Westport memorial in the Kansas City area. But none of those pioneer women appear prepared to fire their weapons, even in self-defense. Instead, artists included rifles to emphasize these women's need for protection in the supposedly untamed West.A few protested Gage’s depiction of a “pioneer lady holding a gun,” claiming that their mothers never hunted for game or fought Indians.2 But the Topeka Capital’s editors defended Gage, insisting that pioneer women had to be ready to defend her home if necessary in their husbands’ absence. They believed that nineteenth-century women were supposed to be the moral defenders of the home. While pioneer men struck boldly into the savage wilderness to build new homes and communities, pioneer women were supposed to sit within those rough cabins protecting their civility.The Kansas Pioneer Women’s Association constructed the monument with the help of Merrell Gage, who also built the seated Lincoln statue on the Kansas Capitol grounds. It was dedicated on Mother’s Day on May 11th, 1937.3

Located on the southwest quadrant of the stunning Kansas State Capitol’s grounds, the Pioneer Women Memorial pays an essential tribute to an often overlooked facet of westward expansion in the United States: the woman, mother, and pioneer. 
Women pioneers were central to the success of westward settlement, and without these courageous women, many who held several roles in both traveling caravans and small settlements, newfound communities west of the Mississippi would have encountered eventual destruction and abandonment. 

The sculpture on the capitol grounds features the image of a pioneer woman, who is said to represent the artistic embodiment of all Kansas pioneer women. Aside her on the marble pedestal includes a dog by one of her feet, a pre-teen son by the other foot, a baby cradled in her arm, and a large rifle sitting across her lap. According to the statue’s inscription, the symbolic pioneer mother is too well-fed to be a pioneer woman, but it nonetheless represents the hardships, struggles, and ideals these women met settling into the Kansas territory. 

Sculpted by acclaimed Topeka resident, Robert Merrill Gage, the Pioneer Women Memorial was dedicated on May 11, 1937, the Mother’s Day of that year. 

Pioneer Mother Memorial

Monument to early white pioneers in Kansas. Sculpted by Frederick Hibbard, it depicts a white man working with a shovel. Physician and real estate speculator Simeon Bell purchased this sculpture, originally called "The Corn Planter," at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. He donated it to the University of Kansas in hopes that it would help future generations understand the challenges that early Kansas settlers faced. It remained in storage until 1916, when it became the first work of statuary installed on that campus. It has been moved several times as the campus has changed.

The Pioneer statue

This bronze sculpture is dedicated to all of the children whose lives were lost due to the harsh conditions on the overland journeys westward. A pioneer boy, a girl and their dog run through an arch. A rainbow floats above them and doves fly overhead. Rocks in the fountain beneath them represent the streams that children crossed on the overland trail. The sculpture was dedicated on Old Settlers Day, September 7, 2000, by the Johnson County Old Settlers Association.This work was was sculpted by Kansas City artist Kwan Wu. Sculptor Kwan Wu was born and trained in China, but since immigrating to the United States and settling in the Kansas City area he has sculpted two major works depicting the western trails for Olathe, Kansas. The other is "Going West on the Old Santa Fe Trail." Dedication plaque text:Perhaps the greatest test of the pioneers’ spirit was the loss of children like Asa Smith to the harsh and unforgiving elements of the frontier. His tiny marker stands today at the intersection of K-10 and K-7 Highways. It is joined by this sculpture created in loving memory of every child lost along the trails as families faced the unknown, blazing our nation’s westward growth.

This bronze sculpture is dedicated to all of the children whose lives were lost due to the harsh conditions on the overland journeys westward. A pioneer boy, a girl and their dog run through an arch. It was sculpted by Kansas City artist Kwan Wu. Rocks in the fountain beneath them represent the streams that children crossed on the overland trail. Sculptor Kwan Wu was born and trained in China, but since immigrating to the United States and settling in the Kansas City area he has sculpted two major works depicting the western trails for Olathe, Kansas.

Children of the Trails sculpture

Statue of pioneer family marks the junction of the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails. It depicts a man in frontier clothing kneeling in prayer. He holds a Bible in one hand, and his other hand rests on a walking plow. His wife stands beside him with her head bowed in prayer. She cradles their young son in one arm and rests the other hand on her husband's shoulder. This statue became a centerpoint of MidAmerica Nazarene University when erected in the campus Prayer Circle in 1994.

Harvest Prayer statue

To mark its 150th
anniversary, the town of Olathe constructed a 10,000-square-foot Heritage
Center to accompany the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm historic site and erected
a sixty-foot-long bronze stagecoach relief by local artist Kwan Wu.

The sculpture is 60 feet long
and 15 feet tall. It features full scale bronze relief of stagecoach and
passengers against a concrete backdrop. Stand-alone figures of horses, a woman
and young boy emerge from the relief.

Sculptor Kwan Wu was
born, raised, and trained in China. He immigrated to the United States in 1988, settling in the Kansas City area. He became a U.S. citizen in 1997.

The stagecoach sculpture reflects the ethnic diversity of the 19th-century American West. Wu’s stagecoach scene is
far more diverse than most pioneer monuments. Wu relied on historic photographs and photos of reproduction clothing and a stagecoach as he sculpted the scene. Fifteen characters represent men,
women, and children of different ethnicities traveling on the stagecoach. A Latino man and African-American couple sit on the roof of the crowded stagecoach.&nbsp;A Native
American woman and her dog wave farewell to the travelers while birds fly overhead.

The sculpture was funded
by private donations to mark Olathe’s 150th anniversary. It was dedicated
August 14, 2008.

“We wanted to give
something significant that the city could be proud of,” said Marlene Natoli, a
co-chair of Olathe’s Sequicentennial Committee. The sculpture “doesn’t let the
city forget where it came from.”1

The sculpture was
originally planned as part of the construction of a 10,000-square-foot, $3
million Heritage Center next to the Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop and Farm. That
plan was set aside when funds ran short. But Wu had already designed the
sculpture, which was taken up by the town’s sesquicentennial committee. Local philanthropist
Maron Moore contributed half of the $400,000 budget. The anniversary committee
raised the other half. 

The artist used local
residents as models. Donor Maron Moore sits in the front window of the
stagecoach. Sesquicentennial Committee co-chair Mike Haskins and Mahaffie employees provided faces for several other characters.&nbsp;

This stagecoach sculpture designed by local Chinese-born artist Kwan Wu, reflects the ethnic diversity of the 19th-century American West. The sculpture was funded by private donations to mark Olathe’s 150th anniversary.

Going West on the Old Santa Fe Trail

This park was created as a
sesquicentennial project for the town of Shawnee in 2006. It commemorates
Shawnee’s place on the mid-19th-century Santa Fe, Oregon, and
California wagon trails and Fort Leavenworth Military Road. It features two
sculptures by local artist Charles Goslin depicting that history. 

Goslin’s original wagon train
sculpture was reproduced in life size for this park. Most of the work is a stone
relief of covered wagons driven by men and boys. At the front is a freestanding
bronze oxen team. A bronze pioneer mother accompanies the relief.

Near the wagon train installation
stands a limestone and bronze portrait of wagon master Richard “Dick” Williams.
Williams first came to Johnson County in the 1850s as a government surveyor. He
then worked as a “wagonmaster” escorting wagon trains from Kansas City to Santa
Fe, New Mexico, and other destinations in the western United States.

Some Shawnee residents questioned
spending close to $1 million on the 2.2 acre park and stone and bronze
sculptures. The park is a narrow wedge of land in a commercial district that
was once a used car lot.

Park created the town of Shawnee's 150th anniversary in 2006. It commemorates Shawnee’s place on the mid-19th-century Santa Fe, Oregon, and California wagon trails and Fort Leavenworth Military Road. It features two sculptures by local artist Charles Goslin depicting that history.

Pioneer Crossing Park

In the 1920s, Kansas City joined other prominent western American cities in erecting monuments to pioneers, with a special emphasis on pioneer women who were depicted as mothers who helped convert the wildness of what was viewed as frontier with civilization, stability, and familial values. After World War II, larger cities moved away from this trend while smaller communities in the West, including suburbs, turned to local artists who continued to create monuments to pioneers as part of their effort to claim a unique history. Those local artists increasingly depicted nuclear families rather than solo white women. Residents of Prairie Village, Kansas selected this sculpture of a strong father, a submissive mother, and a young baby, for the town’s new shopping center. Real estate developer J. C. Nichols Co. sponsored a contest at the Kansas City Art Institute for an original sculpture for its new Prairie Village Shopping Center. Six students entered, and Prairiie Village residents voted for their favorite. The winning design was “Homesteaders” by Anna Belle Campbell. It took nearly a year for Campbell and her friend—and later husband—Joe Cartwright to complete the 12-foot-tall statue. It was cast in stone and marble by Ornamental Casterworks in Kansas City. The completed sculpture was dedicated in June 1952. The sculptor knew little about frontier clothing and wagon wheels when she designed the “Homesteaders” statue. But her interest in local history persisted, and she later became the curator at the National Frontier Trails Center in nearby Independence, Missouri. When Highwoods Properties purchased the J. C. Nichols Company in 1999, the statue was donated to the city of Prairie Village. It was placed on a fountain to mark the city’s entrance in 2002.

Dedicated in 1952, this statue was purchased by J. C. Nichols Company and originally placed at the entrance to the Prairie Village Shopping Center as part of an effort to build a connection between the postwar Kansas City suburb and the area's pioneer history. The statue was later moved and placed within a fountain at the entrance to the town in 2002.

The Homesteaders statue

This statue sculpted by L. E. “Gus”
Shafer is a larger-than-life depiction of a wagon train leader. It is one of several monuments in the Kansas City area that commemorate the region's connections to the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails during the mid-19th century.The artist used
his own face as a model for this sculpture. The bronze statue stands on a large limestone rock. It
was a gift from Catherine and Miller Nichols, their four daughters, and the
artist. &nbsp;It was dedicated on September 8,
1973.

A plaque accompanying the statue reads:

<blockquote>"God slumbers in the rock He
breaths in the plant He dreams in the animal He awakens in man. – An Indian
proverb." </blockquote>

Other nearby bronze plaques
recount the history of the Santa Fe Trail and the Civil War Battle of Westport
that happened nearby.

Bronze sculpture of a wagon train leader sculpted by Gus Shafer. It is one of several monuments in the Kansas City area that commemorate the region's connections to the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails during the mid-19th century.



Wagon Master statue

Westport business leaders wanted commemorate the town's
connections to the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, and its claim to being the
birthplace of Kansas City. After several failed attempts and smaller markers,
they finally put up this statue in 1986. The tribute to John C. McCoy, Alexander Majors, and Jim Bridger is the
culmination of 75 years of pioneer commemoration efforts by Westport business
leaders and residents.

Westport is extremely proud of its role in white westward
expansion. It was established by fur trader John Calvin McCoy in 1833. Westport
served as an eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail, which carried American
freight to Mexico, during the 1830s. Westport then served as an outfitting
location for the Oregon and California trails in the 1840s and 1850s. Its
population peaked in 1858 at about 2,000. McCoy, along with thirteen investors, also founded the Town of Kansas at
a nearby riverboat landing site. After the Civil War, that town grew
dramatically, changing its name to Kansas City. By 1897 Kansas City had annexed
the village of Westport that it had eclipsed. But throughout the 20th century, Westport
residents insisted that Westport should receive credit as Kansas City’s
birthplace.

To mark the 1912 centennial of the Santa Fe Trail, a group
of Westport businessmen formed the Westport Improvement Association. The
Improvement Association sought to install a monument to that trail in Westport,
Missouri. The men worked with the Kansas City Historical Society, the Daughters
of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the Confederacy, other
genealogical organizations, and the National Old Trails Road Association to raise
money for a Pioneer Monument Fund. Together these voluntary organizations hosted
a Santa Fe Trail and Battle of Westport Reunion and Carnival. They envisioned a
life-sized stone sculpture including five yoke of oxen and a “prairie schooner with
wagon-master and bull-whackers and the faithful dog in the rear.”1 They
planned to install it at the site of the City Hall of Westport, which stood on
the Santa Fe Trail route.

That life-sized stone monument to commercial traffic on the
Santa Fe Trail never came to be. Instead, the Daughters of Old Westport took up
the project, transforming it into a memorial to pioneer mothers. The 1920
bronze plaque was placed on a large boulder in the historic downtown area.

When businessman Howard Vanderslice commissioned a Pioneer Mother monument for Kansas City
a few years later, Westport leaders argued that it should instead be placed in
Westport. The artist and donor insisted that the larger-than-life bronze
sculpture of a pioneer mother on horseback, her husband, a mountain man guide,
and pack horse be placed in Penn Valley Park overlooking downtown Kansas City, instead.

In 1950, as Kansas City prepared to celebrate its
centennial, Westport formed its own historical organization. That new Westport
Historical Society placed an ox-yoke marker on a traffic island to mark the
location of the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trail.

To mark Westport’s 150th anniversary, village merchants
led by advertising agent Tom Tupper once again sought to claim Kansas City’s bronze
Pioneer Mother statue in 1984. The
Westport Tomorrow organization argued that the famous statue had been ignored
by Kansas City residents for decades in the vast Penn Valley Park. Tupper
declared that the “gigantic statue” was only viewed “by about 16 people a year--if
they can find it.”2&nbsp;Westport businessmen argued that it would be
more visible in their Heritage Park. They sought to move it in memory of a
Westport resident and civic volunteer who had been among the 114 killed when
the skywalk of Kansas City’s Hyatt Regency hotel collapsed near the Pioneer Mother monument in 1981. Tupper suggested
that private donations to that victim’s memorial fund should cover the
estimated $50,000 cost to move the statue. Westport’s business and political
leaders endorsed the plan, but the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board of
Commissioners voted unanimously to leave the statue in Penn Valley Park.

Many Westport residents believed a new monument would
attract visitors to the district’s shops and restaurants. Historian and
Westport Historical Society archivist Fred L. Lee insisted that “The eventual
goal of that statuary is to promote tourism.”3 But what form should
Westport’s new statue take?

Residents expressed competing visions for a new sculpture on
the former trolley island. A small group seeking to commemorate prominent
artist and former Westport resident Thomas Hart Benton raised $100,000 in
private donations to place a Benton statue in that location. But Westport
Historical Society members and other local western heritage societies remained
committed to commemorating Westport’s mid-19th-century heyday. Kansas City Park
Board President L. P. Cookingham, who was also a historical society member, finally
brokered a compromise. He recommended a different location for the Benton
statue, which cleared a path for erecting a monument to Westport founder John
C. McCoy and Westport’s frontier past on the triangular traffic island.

The pioneer statue by Kansas City artist Thomas L. Beard declared
Westport’s centrality to United States westward expansion by commemorating
famous businessmen with ties to the area. The pioneer statue featured three
prominent white businessmen with connections to mid-19th-century Westport: fur
trader and Westport founder John C. McCoy, Westport businessman and co-founder
of the Pony Express Alexander Majors, and western merchant and mountain man Jim
Bridger, who retired to Westport in the 1850s.&nbsp;


Bridger’s fringed buckskin coat and rifle mark him as a
rugged frontiersman. An accompanying plaque identifies him as “an Indian
fighter, fur trapper and trader, guide to the Far West, U.S. Army scout and
explorer.” He sits slightly behind McCoy, listening intently to the fur
trader-turned-businessman. In contrast, Majors’ upright posture, long coat and
the top hat identify him as a successful businessman, but his informal work
shirt reminds viewers of his earlier years hauling freight on the Santa Fe
Trail. He gazes off into the distance, indicating his focus on future
opportunities further west. Central character John C. McCoy is dressed formally
in a three-piece suit. His identifying plaque calls the surveyor “the father of
Kansas City” and declares “But always, he was a realtor and a builder.” Although
the three men were contemporaries, Thomas Beard’s sculpture teaches that
Bridger and Majors prepared the way for McCoy, just as white frontiersmen and
traders—and the village of Westport—paved the road to urban development in
Kansas City and throughout the West.

This 1986 tribute to John C. McCoy, Alexander Majors, and Jim Bridger is the culmination of 75 years of pioneer commemoration efforts by Westport business leaders and residents.

Pioneer Square Monument

To mark the 1912 centennial of the Santa Fe Trail, a group
of Westport businessmen formed the Westport Improvement Association. The
Improvement Association sought to install a monument to that trail in Westport,
Missouri. The men worked with the Kansas City Historical Society, the Daughters
of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the Confederacy, other
genealogical organizations, and the National Old Trails Road Association to raise
money for a Pioneer Monument Fund. Together these voluntary organizations hosted
a Santa Fe Trail and Battle of Westport Reunion and Carnival. They envisioned a
life-sized stone sculpture including five yoke of oxen and a “prairie schooner with
wagon-master and bull-whackers and the faithful dog in the rear.”1 They planned to install it at the site of the City Hall of Westport,
which stood on the Santa Fe Trail route.

Plans for a stone sculpture depicting commercial traffic
over the Santa Fe Trail soon faded. But while the other organizations involved
in the centennial event soon turned toward other projects, the Daughters of Old
Westport were determined to erect a pioneer monument in their community. &nbsp;

The Daughters of Old Westport was a group of neighborhood
women descended from the earliest settlers of the town. They ran a doll booth
to raise money for a carnival at the Westport reunion. Their $181 in profit became
the start of an eight-year fundraising campaign. 

Instead of a life-sized stone sculpture, the Daughters of
Old Westport settled on a more modest design. It was&nbsp;similar to those erected by the
Daughters of the American Revolution in this era. The Westport women installed
two bronze bas relief plaques on a large boulder, which they placed in the
heart of Westport’s historic business district.

Instead of celebrating the men who hauled goods between
Missouri and New Mexico, the Daughters of Old Westport commemorated the first
women who settled in their town. Sculptor
Merrell Gage’s central bas relief depicts a white mother with her two young
children. She holds a rifle to defend her children against wild animals and the
Native Americans these white settlers displaced. Text in the upper right corner
dedicates it “To the Pioneer Mother.” 

On the back of
the boulder, an accompanying dedication plaque features a male trapper and
American Indian reminiscent of those that appeared in earlier pioneer monuments
elsewhere in the American West. The Daughters of Old Westport Memorial was one
of the first monuments to pioneer women erected in the United States. Dozens
more would follow later in the 1920s.

Westport businessmen wanted to put up a life-sized stone wagon train to mark the centennial of the Santa Fe Trail. Instead, local women raised the funds for this 1920 tribute "To the Pioneer Mother." It was one of the first pioneer mother monuments erected in the United States.

Daughters of Old Westport Memorial

Sculptor Cyrus Dallin was strongly influenced by the art and culture of Native American tribes in his native state of Utah. Prior to creating this statue, he created several other works that sought to capture the dignity and unique cultures of those tribes. In 1912, city leaders tried to raise funds to purchase a similar sculpture by Dallin. That statue, titled "Appeal to the Great Spirit," was on display at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and citizens of Boston raised the $12,000 needed to keep the statue in their city before fundraising efforts in Kansas City could reach the required amount. Kansas City's Margaret Coburn had written letters in support of acquiring Coburn's statue in 1912, and she once again led efforts to acquire The Scout in 1916. Working with her father, banker James Coburn, they invited Cyrus Dallin to dinner and told them their hope to bring the Scout to Kansas City as a way of improving their odds of raising funds. Dallin approved the idea, and the statue was first displayed at 15th and Paseo, then a prominent location. The statue was then moved to Penn Valley Park, an idea that Margaret Coburn had back in 1912. In August 1916, Chief Little Bull, the son of the famous Sioux leader Sitting Bull, visited Kansas City and commented favorably about the authenticity of the artist's design. Dallin spent many years sketching Native Americans prior to making the statue, including many who were part of Buffalo Bill's touring show. Many residents of Kansas City supported the effort to raise funds, but after several months, the Chamber of Commerce still had less than half of the needed amount. News that the Smithsonian was considering purchasing the statue inspired Ida Nelson, wife of publisher William Rockhill Nelson, to donate $1000 to the effort if the community could raise the remaining amount in two months. Two days later, the fundraising effort had reached its goal thanks to efforts by school children who collected dimes and nickels alongside larger donations from organizations and leading philanthropists. After the successful fundraising effort to purchase this statue, it quickly became one of the symbols of the city. City National Bank and Trust (UMB Bank today) added the Scout to its logo in the Great Depression. When a National Hockey League franchise was awarded to the city, the team was known as the Kansas City Scouts during their short tenure in the mid-1970s.The statue has remained close to its original location over the past century, being placed between Penn Valley Park's lake and Summit Street. In 1921, the statue was moved around three hundred feet south, making its vantage point another 25 feet higher and offering a better view of the growing city. Although its base has changed, the statue has been vandalized and repaired numerous times. The first instance of vandalism occurred sometime in 1917, shortly after the statue made its Kansas City debut. The Kansas City Star reported the news that the arrow and bow had been stolen and placed the action in historical context: "Perhaps he [the vandal] thought the Sioux could not completely typify the American Indian until he bore the scars of the white man’s vandalism,' the 1917 article editorialized.Acts of vandalism occurred throughout the 1920s, and despite efforts to discourage people from carving their initials into the side of the horse, this became a regular occurrence. By the 1930s, many considered moving the statue from the park to City Hall to prevent vandalism. The Parks Department regularly replaced missing portions of the statue, and there were numerous debates about moving the sculpture to a well-trafficked part of the city. In 1960, R. Crosby Kemper funded the construction of the stone pedestal base. The eight-foot base placed the bronze portion of the statue beyond the reach of ordinary vandals. As a visitor in the modern era will attest, the vandalism of the Scout's first decades has continued, with graffiti at the base being removed by the Parks Department at regular intervals.

Sculptor Cyrus Dallin displayed this sixteen-foot bronze statue of a mounted Sioux Indian at San Francisco's 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. The sculpture was awarded the gold medal, leading to a cross-country tour of temporary installations that included Kansas City in 1916. In response to the statue's popularity, local newspaper editorials called for action, noting that the touring statue was for sale with a listed price of $15,000. Seventeen area organizations led efforts to raise funds, and local teachers worked with area school children to collect small donations, including nickels and dimes. Collectively, the efforts raised the needed funds to purchase and permanently display the sculpture. The effort was successful, with area residents contributing enough to purchase the statue and place it in Penn Valley Park. The Scout has been one of the symbols of Kansas City since its public dedication in 1922.

The Scout

Prominent western American artist Alexander Phimister
Proctor sculpted this larger-than-life bronze grouping. It was one of the
most prominent works of the Pioneer Mother Movement (1925-1940). But public
interest in the statue soon waned. Today, it is largely ignored by Kansas City
residents. Yet the city refuses to give the statue to the village of Westport, which claims to be Kansas City's birthplace. 

For many years, Phimister Proctor wanted to create a
monument to female pioneers. That desire remained unformed until 1922, when he
viewed WHD Koerner’s Madonna of the
Prairie. Koerner’s instantly popular illustration
portrayed the beautiful young heroine of Emerson Hough’s popular novel&nbsp;The
Covered Wagon seated on a wagon box with the opening of the wagon cover
forming a halo around her face. Like Koerner, Proctor was determined not to
show a pioneer woman “plodding westward in a calico dress,” as many
pioneer monuments of that era did. Instead, Proctor depicted “another, no less
heroic side."1&nbsp;Proctor
placed his Prairie Madonna on horseback. She rides side-saddle with her baby in
her lap and her sunbonnet hanging down her back. Her buckskin-clad husband, a
grizzled mountain man guide, and a pack mule accompany her.&nbsp; 

Proctor drew on ancient scripture, Renaissance
imagery, mid-19th-century painting, and early 20th-century
illustration in his sculpture. Proctor adapted maternal imagery from George
Caleb Bingham’s famous 1851 painting Daniel
Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap. Bingham’s famous
painting used the Renaissance image of Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt to
show American westward migration. The painter placed the Madonna on horseback at
the top of the grouping’s triangular shape. Proctor adapted this pyramidal
structure in his sculpture. By so doing, Proctor likened Pioneer Mothers to the
Virgin Mary. This emphasized the Pioneer Mother’s role in bringing white civilization
to supposedly savage Indian lands. To show his Prairie Madonna’s self-sacrifice
in migrating westward, Proctor encircled his larger-than-life bronze grouping
with a text from the Book of Ruth: “Whither thou goest I will go.&nbsp;Thy people shall be my people and thy God my
God.” Despite these varied cultural influences, Proctor was convinced that his
monument authentically depicted the spirit of frontier women who followed their
pioneer husbands westward.

Phimister Proctor prided himself on the authenticity
of his western-themed sculptures.&nbsp; Like
other leading western artists like Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell,
Proctor clung to a fantasy of authenticity. Yet their work was heavily
influenced by mythology and historical memory.&nbsp;
For example, to work on the Kansas City Pioneer Mother, Proctor moved his family from Palo Alto to southern
California. Proctor he was “[c]ertain that western characters would be easier
to find in Hollywood than anywhere else”2—even
though authentic frontier conditions persisted in the northern Great Plains at
the time.&nbsp; In Hollywood, Proctor soon
selected “an old bewhiskered gentleman” to pose for the westering family’s
trapper guide who had recently completed work as a body double for Ernest
Torrence in the film adaptation of The
Covered Wagon.&nbsp;Similarly, the young woman Proctor chose to
represent the pioneer mother in the Kansas City monument wore a costume of
questionable historical accuracy sewn by the artist’s wife. The model sat on a side-saddle given to the
artist by a woman who claimed--rather unconvincingly--to have ridden across the
Plains on it as a bride in 1852.

Kansas City businessman Howard Vanderslice sought to
honor his own mother and other pioneers by commissioning the pioneer woman
memorial that Proctor envisioned. The $250,000 cost ($3.4 million in 2015
dollars) was so exorbitant that Vanderslice kept it out of the newspapers.

The nearby village of Westport claimed to having
birthed Kansas City.&nbsp;Westport residents
believed that Proctor’s statue belonged in their community, instead. Westport business leaders and the Daughters of Old Westport urged Kansas City’s
Park Board to place the massive sculptural group on a tiny trolley island at
the heart of Westport’s business district that had been the site of their
original town. They insisted that Westport site's location on the old Santa Fe
Trail (which was built for commercial traffic to Hispanic New Mexico, rather
than Yankee overland migration) made it the most suitable location for
Proctor's sculpture of a westering Yankee family.&nbsp;In the end, though, the artist’s and donor’s preference for the statue to stand
on a hilltop in Kansas City’s Penn Valley Park prevailed.

Newspaper coverage of the monument was extremely
enthusiastic.&nbsp; Several local residents agreed
that “’This is the only kind of statuary worth a d--n.”3&nbsp;Nearly 30,000 reportedly attended its 1927
dedication.&nbsp;Like
Pioneer Mother monuments in other western cities, though, interest in the
statue quickly waned. 

By the 1980s, residents and city leaders had chosen
to forget the statue that glorified westward expansion and depicted women as
meekly submitting to their husbands. But Westport merchants once again sought
to claim Proctor’s statue for their business district.&nbsp; Advertiser Tom Tupper declared that the
“gigantic statue” was only viewed “by about 16 people a year--if they can find
it.”4&nbsp;Instead, the Westport businessmen proposed to
move it to Heritage Park to commemorate Westport’s 150th anniversary.
They argued it would also commemorate a Westport resident and civic volunteer
who was among the 114 killed when the skywalk of Kansas City’s Hyatt Regency
hotel collapsed near Proctor’s Pioneer
Mother monument in 1981. Tupper suggested that private donations to that
victim’s memorial fund should cover the estimated $50,000 cost to move the
statue. Westport’s business and political leaders endorsed the plan. But the
Kansas City Parks and Recreation Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to
leave the statue where Proctor had placed it a half-century earlier,
overlooking downtown Kansas City.

The Kansas City park board was determined to keep the
statue, but not to maintain it. By 2007, the Kansas City Star decried the “embarrassing weedy mess” that
surrounded the “icon of KC's frontier past,” opining that it “should be a place
for peaceful contemplation and beauty.”5 Tellingly, city officials only
discovered the neglect of the statue while surveying potential light-rail
routes through the park. Local residents who visit the park regularly remain
unaware of its existence.

1927 statue by famed western artist A. Phimister Proctor. Modeled after artist's own mother to honor women who migrated West on the overland trails in the mid-19th century. The monument was celebrated at its dedication, but soon forgotten. The nearby village of Westport sought to claim the statue in the 1980s. Westport claims to be the birthplace of Kansas City.

Pioneer Mother statue (Kansas City, MO)

A
Pioneer Woman statue by Mexican
sculptor Juan Lombardo-Rivera was placed in the courtyard of the National
Frontier Trails Museum when it opened in 1990. In 2013 that sculpture was
stolen from the museum. The thieves took apart the statue and tried to sell it
for scrap. It was replaced by this statue by local artist Charles Goslin in
2016. The new sculpture closely resembles the original statue, but with some
important differences.

A
Pioneer Woman statue by Mexican
sculptor Juan Lombardo-Rivera was placed in the courtyard of the National
Frontier Trails Museum when it opened in 1990. It symbolized the hope and grit
of women who migrated west along the overland trails in the mid-19th
century. It also honored women who pioneered in other ways, breaking gender
barriers in recent decades. 

Lombardo-Rivera’s
statue was modeled after a local teenager, Theresa Brown. The life-sized bronze
statue depicted a woman wearing a blue dress and sunbonnet. She carried a baby
in one arm and a bucket in the other.

At
the time, some on the statue fundraising committee feared that the blue patina
that the Mexican artist applied to the statue was too vivid. But once it was
installed in the courtyard, Independence residents soon warmed to the work. 

In
2013 vandals stole the $35,000 Pioneer
Woman statue, broke it to pieces and tried to sell it for scrap metal worth
about $600. The Kansas City recycler recognized the bronze pieces as artwork and
refused to accept them for recycling. The three vandals were caught and
convicted. Two were sent to prison, and one was given probation. The remains of
the Lombardo-Rivera statue were not recovered. But a smaller model of the
original statue remains inside the museum.

The
city of Independence raised nearly $40,000 in private donations to replace the
statue. The selection committee chose a new Pioneer
Woman sculpture by local artist Charles Goslin that closely resembles the
stolen statue. Both sculptors depicted determined young women gazing into the
distance, with the wind blowing their long prairie-style dresses. The new statue was installed in January 2017.

Nonetheless,
minor differences between the two sculptures reveal changing gender ideals. The
new statue emphasizes the frontier mother’s nurturing role over her labor. Instead
of carrying an empty bucket, the new Pioneer
Woman cradles her baby with both arms. Whereas Lombardo-Rivera’s tiny
infant faced out toward the viewer, Goslin depicted a somewhat older child
gazing up at its mother’s face.&nbsp; The
Mexican artist celebrated women’s hard work, wearing rolled-up sleeves and
carrying a bucket. In contrast, the local artist’s new version keeps her arms covered
in long sleeves. She does not hold any tools or do any productive work. 

Charles
Goslin’s design for the 2016&nbsp;Pioneer Woman
closely resembles another bronze pioneer mother and child that Goslin
sculpted a decade earlier for a life-sized sculpture to accompany a stone wagon train relief in Pioneer Crossing Park in nearby Shawnee, Kansas. (Today, both Independence, Missouri, and Shawnee,
Kansas, are suburbs of Kansas City.) Both Goslin pioneer mothers wear long dresses
and carry young children as they walk westward. But the Shawnee pioneer woman
also wears a child gazes forward, echoing its mother’s westward focus, rather
than gazing up at her face. Goslin added blue patina to the Shawnee woman and child,
as Juan Lombardo-Rivera did with the first Independence monument. That Goslin
chose not to apply any color to the new bronze pioneer mother for Independence suggests
that the local artist sought to avoid a controversy like that surrounding the
earlier version. Or perhaps Goslin felt a patina was not necessary to make the
statue stand out in its new, more secure location near the entrance to the
National Frontier Trails Museum.

A "Pioneer Woman" statue by Mexican sculptor Juan Lombardo-Rivera was placed in the courtyard of the National Frontier Trails Museum when it opened in 1990. In 2013 that sculpture was stolen from the museum. The thieves took apart the statue and tried to sell it for scrap. It was replaced by this statue by local artist Charles Goslin in 2016.

Pioneer Woman statue (National Frontier Trails Museum)

Avard Tennyson Fairbanks sculpted the Old Oregon Trail medallion in 1924 while teaching art at the University of Oregon. It depicts the hardships that the artist's ancestors and nearly 500,000 others experienced while traveling westward on the overland trail by covered wagon in the mid-19th century.One 1852 migrant, Ezra Meeker, traveled back eastward along the trail in 1906 to seek the preservation of the Oregon Trail route. His efforts inspired Avard Fairbanks to sculpt a covered wagon drawn by oxen on the trail. In 1923 the Old Oregon Trail Association (OOTA) commissioned Fairbanks to design the organization's logo. That design was then cast as this 36-inch bronze medallion.The medallion depicts a man driving the team of oxen that pull the covered wagon over rocky terrain. His wife rides inside the wagon, holding their infant child. Fairbanks placed a pioneer mother and baby inside the wagon at the top and center of the design to commemorate his grandmother. But Fairbanks' depiction of the trail experience was shaped as much by popular culture at the time of its sculpting as by historical reality. In fact, women and children typically walked along beside the wagons to spare their teams, particularly on rough terrain.Fairbanks' depiction of trail life appears to have been influenced by W.H.D. Koerner's famous 1921 illustration Madonna of the Prairie. Koerner’s illustration was used as the cover image for Emerson Hough’s popular novel The Covered Wagon. Koerner’s instantly popular illustration portrayed the beautiful young heroine seated on a wagon box with the opening of the wagon cover forming a halo around her face. Koerner’s illustrations inspired the costuming for a silent film adaptation of Hough’s novel, which became the first western “epic” film. In the year before The Covered Wagon movie was released, only fifty identifiable western films had been made; in the year following its release, 150 westerns were made – and the industry maintained that level of production until it was eclipsed by television in the 1950s. Adaptations of Koerner’s covered wagon imagery pervaded the massive advertising for the movie. This gave Madonna of the Prairie a significant role in shaping public perceptions of settler women. It also appears to have shaped Avard Fairbanks’ conception of pioneer women in this medallion and in other pioneer monuments that he sculpted over the next 50 years.The OOTA originally planned to use Fairbanks' Fairbanks’ design to mark the Oregon Trail route from Independence, Missouri, to Seaside, Oregon. An Old Oregon Trail medallion was soon cast in bronze and installed in historic Broadway Bridge in Seaside, near a Fairbanks medallion depicting the Lewis and Clark Salt Works. A copy of that medallion was placed in this Oregon Trail monument in Baker City, Oregon, the hometown of OOTA founder Walter Meacham. Fairbanks also reproduced the scene, renamed The Pioneer Mothers, for installation on the reverse of his 1928 Pioneer Mother statue for Vancouver, Washington.Fairbanks' covered wagon design also was selected to print on a series of metal signs marking the Oregon Trail route. The states of Oregon and Idaho both ordered copies of the markers. But these smaller highway signs were not durable enough for highway use, and apparently were never installed.In more recent years, Fairbanks' descendants have recast Old Oregon Trail for various sites along the Oregon Trail. The artist’s son, David Fairbanks, donated this casting of the medallion to the Independence-based Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA). Two decades later, the OCTA and Jackson County, Missouri, installed the medallion on the lawn of the Historic Truman Courthouse on June 7, 2016. It was placed on the reverse of a stone marker first installed in 1948 marking the starting point of the Oregon Trail. The medallion's dedication ceremony also honored the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.

Avard Fairbanks sculpted this covered wagon scene in 1924. Plans to use Fairbanks' image to mark the route of the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Seaside, Oregon, floundered in the 1920s, resulting in only two markers in Oregon. But in the 21st century, Fairbanks' descendants have worked to erect additional castings of the bronze medallion, including this one in the jumping-off point of Independence. The medallion was installed on a stone marker first installed in 1948.

Old Oregon Trail medallion (Independence, Missouri)

These two statues make up a bronze scene depicting a spring near a Native American trail used by both Native people and white settlers. "Stella at the Spring" depicts a young pioneer woman carrying a bucket. She looks toward "A Young Native American." He crouches on a rock overlooking the spring, extending his left hand. Both pieces sculpted by Mischell Riley. "A Young Native American" was dedicated in 2000. "Stella at the Spring" was dedicated in 2001. The scene was commissioned by the Advisory Committee of the Roger T. Sermon Fund for the Roger T. Sermon Community Center grounds. Near this installation stand a pioneer cabin and a "Trail of Death" memorial marking the Potawatomi (Neshnabe) people from their homelands in northern Indiana to this area in 1838.

Two sculptures by Mischell Riley -- one depicting a young Native American man, and the other a young pioneer woman -- stand in front of the Roger T. Sermon Community Center. Nearby, a pioneer cabin and historical marker mark the location of an old spring used by both indigenous peoples and settlers. A Trail of Death memorial commemorates the forced removal of the Potawatomi (Neshnabe) people to this area in 1838.

Stella at the Spring and A Young Native American

Francois' uncle, Auguste Chouteau, departed Fort Chartres, Illinois, in 1764 at age fourteen and traversed the Missouri River. He, along with thirty men, stopped in modern-day St. Louis. Chouteau later partnered with John Jacob Astor to create what became the American Fur Company. The American Fur Company matured into the largest and most successful fur company in the nation. Indeed, when Astor retired from the business in 1834, he invested his money in land and buildings in New York, becoming the wealthiest person in the United States. (His great-grandson, John Jacob Astor IV, one of the richest people in the world in his life, died during the famous sinking of the Titanic.) Meanwhile, though not nearly as wealthy, Auguste Chouteau went on to serve as a Justice of the Peace, become a bank president, build a fort, serve as a militia colonel, and work as one of three commissioners to make treaties with the Native Americans who had fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. Meanwhile, Francois' father, and Auguste's brother, Jean Pierre Chouteau, established several trading posts in the Indian country, including on the upper Osage River in southwestern Missouri. Soon after the Louisiana Purchase, he moved permanently to St. Louis, where he died in 1849. However, Francois and his two brothers, Frederick and Cyprien, received a license to trade with Native Americans west of the Missouri River. Consequently, they also established trading posts. In 1819, Francois Chouteau and his cousin established a temporary trading post for the American Fur Company on the Randolph Bluffs along the Missouri River in western Missouri. Francois and his wife, Bérénice, along with Cyprien, moved the post a few miles (located near the north end of present-day Grand Avenue), which became the area's first permanent European-American settlement in 1821. Francois, Cyprien, and several trappers partnered to create a fur business in 1825. The fur company focused on western trading routes; Francois Chouteau traveled throughout the Kansas Territory, trading with various Native American nations. Meanwhile, Francois' brothers, Frederick and Cyprian, also built trading houses about five miles north of today's Kansas City, where they traded with the Shawnee and Delaware Indians. A little later, another post was established farther up the river. Additionally, Frederick Chouteau was married four times, twice to Native American women.By 1828, Francois and Bérénice ostensibly established a permanent residency in the area that would become Kansas City. They built a home on the bluffs above the Missouri River and actively participated in developing the town, which existed mainly as a French community. Indeed, in 1835, a resident constructed a log cabin church attended by several members of the Chouteau family so that it became known as Chouteau's Church." François Chouteau earned the nickname "Founder of Kansas City," but he died at the young age of forty-one. His widow, Bérénice, remained active in the church, community, and family trading business, garnering her the name "Mother of Kansas City." While Francois and Bérénice enjoyed an arguably affectionate relationship with the local Indian population, the overall presence of settlers marked the end of Native Americans living in Missouri. For instance, an 1808 treaty required the Osage, the most powerful tribe throughout today's Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, to give up most of their land in the southern Missouri Territory. (Although, unlike many Native American nations, the Osage made money in the process and gained access to Oklahoma lands that possessed oil, which benefited them economically during the twentieth century.) By the 1830s, the white population pushed the vast majority of Native Americans out of Missouri. So, while the genesis of Kansas City dates back to the fur-trading relationship, Native Americans in the area can point to it as the end of their time in Missouri. Still, the Kansas City artist Kwan Wu's sculptures serve as a memory of the many interactions between the Chouteau family and countless Native Americans. Moreover, it speaks to a meaningful aspect of American history: the fur trade. But, more than just trade, the Chouteau family and local Native Americans interacted with each other in numerous ways. For example, when a significant cholera outbreak occurred in 1827, Berenice sewed shrouds for both white settlers and Native Americans that died (including using her wedding gown as fabric); she also lost two of her children during the outbreak. In the process, she established strong bonds with the Seminole, Osage, and other nearby tribes. When completed, the fountain will involve water flowing over limestone river rocks with mist jets providing a gentle fog over the "river." Three statues are portrayed as traders sitting atop a Missouri River bluff while another Native American trapper stalks his prey. Shortly after the statue of "The Osage Woman" was installed in 2021, it was stolen and disassembled; the thieves attempted to sell it for scrap. The statue pieces were recovered. A conservator in Reading, Kansas, welded the pieces back together, and "The Osage Woman" was reinstalled the following year.

Development of the François Chouteau &amp; Native American Heritage Fountain coincided with the 2021 Kansas City bicentennial. Francois and many members of the Chouteau family were early French traders and trappers who operated west of St. Louis during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Francois established a trading post and residency in what would become modern-day Kansas City, and his wife became known by some as "the Mother of Kansas City." The fountain and park commemorate Native Americans who predated the French trader along with the new arrivals of European descent. While the fountain was designed to celebrate Native peoples and settlers alike, it is important to note that the arrival of European settlers set in place a series of events that culminated with tens of thousands of Native Americans in Missouri and eastern Kansas being in a position where they were forced from the area. Starting with treaties and missions in the 1830s, the establishment of the Town of Kansas, the eventual creation of Kansas Territory and the growth of Kansas City, the arrival of French traders started a process that had occurred in St. Louis and other former "frontier" communities. At the same time, it appears the Chouteau family enjoyed a friendly relationship with Native Americans based on trade.

François Chouteau & Native American Heritage Fountain

Sculpture by Veryl Goodnight depicts a woman in calico dress standing in front of wagon wheel. Emphasizes frontier women's persistence. Accompanied by the text of a poem by the same title written by the sculptor. The final lines of the poem about young women on the trails westard declare, "There was absolutely/No Turning Back."

No Turning Back statue

In 1935, the Lincoln (Nebraska) Woman’s Club installed Ellis Luis Burman’s rendition of The Pioneer Woman in a public park. That year the club's study program selected the related theme of the Pioneer Woman. The statue had been commissioned a decade earlier at the height of the Pioneer Mother movement.Burman's Pioneer Woman clasps a pocketbook and handkerchief, which makes her look more like a 1930s clubwoman than an 1850s pioneer woman. Like Leo Friedlander’s conservative statue for Denton, Texas, Burman's statue stripped his frontier woman of the accompanying children that were so typical of 1920s pioneer mother monuments. Rather than emphasizing maternalism, these pioneer women appeared virginal. Abandoning the darker hue of bronze, these utilized white materials to further emphasize their subjects’ purity and their whiteness.Apparently not all Lincoln residents appreciated this statue that merged pioneer woman purity with the cultural refinement of a 1930s clubwoman. As of April 2009, someone had drawn a mustache in black marker onto the white statue.Sculptor Ellis Luis Burman worked for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program that put artists to work during the Great Depression. Burman produced several statues for Lincoln-area parks, including the pioneer woman, Rebecca at the Well in the sunken garden, the Statue of Liberty, and a soldier for Antelope Park and Smoke Signal depicting a Native American man for Pioneers Park. A group of Omaha, Winnebago, Sioux, and Ponca peoples camped at the park to witness the latter statue's dedication.

1935 monument donated by the Lincoln (Nebraska) Woman’s Club. One of several statues in Lincoln-area parks sculpted by Ellis Luis Burman, who was employed by the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Design combines elements of other Pioneer Mother Movement monuments and the style of refined women's club members in that era.

The Pioneer Woman statue (Lincoln, NE)

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), a colonial heritage organization, was actively involved in marking western migration routes in the early 20th century. Many of those markers consisted of bronze plaques mounted on large boulders. Most featured only brief historical narratives of the sites that they marked. But several also included bas relief artwork on those bronze plaques. This one marks the end of the Mormon Trail through Iowa.Artist Paul Fjelde depicted a man and his son driving an ox team that draws a covered wagon. This imagery was typical of DAR and other overland trail monuments in the 1910s and 1920s. The armed man on horseback echoes contemporaneous monuments to solo pioneer men conquering the wilderness.The mounted, armed man who dominates Fjelde’s relief emphasizes the arrival of white American power to an untamed wilderness, a common theme in several prominent male pioneer sculptures erected around the time of World War I. This bronze relief was part of the DAR’s efforts to link all western trails to white settlement of the West and the building of the American nation, indicating that the exclusive DAR was willing to include migration along the Mormon Trail—if not exactly the LDS faithful—within their broad conception of the westward march of white civilization.Council Bluffs--then known as Kanesville--was a major jumping-off point for the Mormon, Oregon, and California trails in the 1840s and 1850s. Overlanders stopped at Kanesville/Council Bluffs to outfit themselves for the overland journey.The Iowa DAR also erected a bronze historical marker mounted on a boulder to mark the site of the Handcart Brigade Camp in Coralville in 1936.

One of many historical markers erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution and other female heritage organizations in the early 20th century. While most featured only descriptive text, this is one of several that included bas relief sculpture to illustrate local history. Artist Paul Fjelde depicted a man and his son driving a covered wagon.

Mormon Trail Memorial

Spirit of Nebraska's Wilderness is the work of sculptor Kent Ullber, N.A., F.N.S.S., of Corpus Christi, Texas. Consisting of 67 bronze and stainless steel works, Ullberg's creation occupies First National Bank's property on all four corners of the 16th and Dodge intersection, in addition to more works on 15th Street.Among the features of Spirit of Nebraska's Wilderness are three buffalo bulls, each standing eight feet tall and weighing more than 1,400 pounds. They stand alongside several yearling bulls and two cows with their calves, in addition to a large water feature with eight-foot-long bronze Canadian Geese taking flight. These geese are attached to a variety of structures - including 18-foot bronze trees, a traffic signal, a building corner, a light post and two other poles. The geese display culminates with several stainless steel geese suspended within the glass atrium of the First National Bank headquarters, simulating their flight from past into the modern-day world.

These two urban parks feature several bronze sculptures, most notably, a wagon train heading west and statues of bison and geese. The wagon appears to have caused a number of environmental changes to the area, as bison flee from the wagon. The stampeded also leads a flock of geese to take flight. The park includes more than 100 individual bronze pieces throughout several city blocks. The ingenious feature of the statues are the way they actually connect several city park spaces from 14th and Capitol to 16th and Dodge together with one another. 

Pioneer Courage and Spirit of Nebraska's Wilderness Park

The two years after the murder of the founder and prophet of the Mormon Church Joseph Smith Nauvoo, Illinois was a dangerous place for the Mormons, full of violence and hostilities against them. The events that followed the assassination led to greater conflict between the Mormons and the anti-Mormons. After assuming the leadership role and taking account of the growing anti-Mormon sentiment, Brigham Young decided the Mormons needed to settle in a place that would be uncontested by other settlers of European descent. By 1846 the Mormons had been driven away from multiple states and forced to abandon their lives in Nauvoo, Illinois. Having left Illinois in late summer, they could not complete the trek without first stepping to spend the winter in camps in Iowa and Nebraska near the Missouri River. They received permission from the U.S. government to camp in present-day Nebraska during a period when it had been "given" to area tribes. Young’s party stopped just after crossing the Missouri river and set camp overlooking the river in what they called Winter Quarters. Winter Quarters served as a temporary headquarters for Brigham Young and many other pioneers as they prepared for the journey ahead and waited out the approaching winter. At was at this time when Young claims to have received direct revelation from God, a cornerstone of the Mormon faith, and shared these within the sacred LDS text known as the Doctrine and Covenants. From the perspective of the pioneers and current members of the church, modern-day revelation helped members see their journey westward as part of a test, believing that their difficult circumstances would lead to greater rewards on earth or heaven.Although Winter Quarter was a temporary settlement they constructed numerous buildings for use during their stay among them the Florence Mill, which was used to grind their mill and is one of the original buildings that can be found still standing today. For most, conditions in the camp became dire with exposure, illness, and malnutrition leading to tremendous suffering. Many of those who were ill and or died of diseases like malaria. Of the recorded 1,910 people who died on the Mormon trail, around 600 died at Winter Quarters between the years 1846-88. The account from those who survived the harsh winter at Winter Quarter shows the grim reality of it all. General Thomas L Kane who spent some time with the Mormons and stayed in Winters Quarter writes about his experience during his stay. Kane himself was ill at some point and in his writing, describes the effect rapid illness and death had on the encampment.  The following excerpt from a discourse Kane delivered in front of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1850 paints a grim picture.  “The Few who were able to keep their feet, went about among the tents and wagons with food and water, like nurses through the wards of an Infirmary. Here at one time the digging got behind and burials were slow; and you might see women sit in the open tents keeping the flies off their dead children, sometime after decomposition had set in.” By 1848 Winters Quarter was abandoned and later on becomes the city of Florence which, later on, was annexed into the city of Omaha. The sculptor is a member of the LDS church from Salt Lake City and is also a descendent of a survivor from Winter Quarters with ancestors buried here. While visiting the cemetery, Fairbanks was inspired to make the striking sculpture of the two parents mourning as they laid their child in the ground. On the foot of the monument, a plaque reads “This monument itself is placed directly over the grave of an unknown child &amp; seven other pioneers.” And a few feet away from the monument lays a bronze tablet holding the known names of those who died and are buried at Winter Quarters.

This twelve-foot bronze monument was created by a descendent of the Mormon pioneers who stayed here on their journey west in the late 1840s. Recognizing the estimated six hundred Mormon pioneers who died here, the monument was dedicated in 1936 and remains the centerpiece of the cemetery in Florence, Nebraska. The statue depicts a pioneer and his wife standing above their child’s grave, stricken with grief. The monument among others was constructed to commemorate the more than 600 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who perished in the winters of 1846-47 and 1847-48 during their stay at an encampment known as Winters Quarters, one of the temporary camp settlements on the pilgrimage from Nauvoo, Illinois and other places to present-day Salt Lake City, Utah. Avard Fairbanks, professor of sculpture at the University of Michigan, was commissioned by the President of the Mormon Church, Hebert J. Grant, to create this sculpture in 1936. The monument was unveiled on September 20th, 1936 with 2,500 attendants, many of whom came from Utah by train to attend the event.

Mormon Pioneer Cemetery Monument, “Tragedy of Winter Quarters” 

Winter Quarters was the site of an 1846-47 winter encampment of Mormon settlers fleeing persecution in the Midwest and preparing to cross the Plains to Utah. Many died in the encampment and were buried in the Winter Quarters cemetery. In 1936 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marked that cemetery with a bronze Avard T. Fairbanks monument of a couple burying their infant. Then to mark the sesquicentennial of the Mormon Trail in 1997, the LDS Church erected a new Winter Quarters visitor center. This monument was installed in front of that visitor center. Inspired by a beloved Torleif Knaphus monument at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, it depicts the later LDS handcart brigades that traveled from Iowa to Utah in the 1850s.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) marked the site of the Winter Quarters cemetery with an Avard T. Fairbanks bronze statue in 1936. A half century later, a small visitor’s center appeared in a renovated home near the cemetery. Then in the mid-1990s, the LDS Church undertook a reimagining of Mormon historic sites. “A new day is dawning in church historical sites,” said LDS Museum of Church History and Art exhibit curator Marjorie Condor. “They are now telling a site-specific story.” But their “sacred purpose … is to witness and to remember.” As part of that massive project, the Church constructed a new visitor’s center at Winter Quarters with more than 7,000 square feet of exhibit space. The Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters was dedicated in 1997 to mark the sesquicentennial of the Mormon migration. Beyond drawing attention to the historic cemetery, Condor and other LDS employees designed a museum depicting Winter Quarters as a place of what Condor called “sorting out individuality and community” and “the great jumping off place.”[1]LDS sculptor Franz Johansen, assisted by his son Nathan, created a bronze pioneer family statue for the sesquicentennial of the Mormon Trail. Johansen’s bronze pioneer grouping stands in front of the Mormon Trail Center, luring tourists into its modern museum. In contrast to “cowboy” artists producing statues for other western audiences, the Utah farm-boy-turned-artist’s “figures and subject matter reflect his European training.” The Lehi, Utah, resident taught art at Brigham Young University for thirty-three years, and was called by the Church for a one-year mission to complete the statue. Johansen was “grateful I could use my abilities and talents to help the church . . . to help build [the] kingdom.”[2] Rather than focusing on the experience of those who lived and died at Winter Quarters in the 1840s, however, Johansen turned his attention to what had become a sculptural shorthand for a uniquely Mormon migration: the LDS handcart companies of the 1850s.Like Torleif Knaphus’ beloved monument on Temple Square, Johansen’s sculpture commemorates the faith that sustained handcart pioneers on the long journey. Also like Knaphus, Johansen instructed viewers in traditional gender role expectations: men perform physical labor, while women provide emotional support. (In reality, men and women worked together to push or pull the handcarts.) Johansen’s father pulls the handcart, while the mother walks beside him, wearing her hair in a bun and carrying her straw hat in her hand. The woman reaches a delicate hand to her husband. The artist explained to the Deseret News that “It shows the love that was there. It's an emotional pulling rather than a physical pulling.”[3] A young boy and young girl walk alongside the handcart. The boy pulls on a rope tied to the cart that mimics his father’s toil, without substantially assisting with the actual work of pulling the cart. The bareheaded girl wears her hair in a jaunty ponytail that echoes her mother’s loose bun but belies the overall historical accuracy of the scene. She holds a small bunch of wildflowers in her left hand; her right hand is outstretched in a gentle gesture that echoes her mother’s. A toddler boy rides packed inside the cart among the family’s belongings. A bearded grandfather in a long coat and sunbonneted grandmother walk along behind the cart. The grandfather uses a walking stick, leaning forward at an angle that echoes the way that the father leans into the cart’s pull bar. The grandmother walks upright like the mother and daughter, and stretches out both her hands to steady the precious cargo in the cart in a gesture that mimics the mother’s and daughter’s emotional support of the father’s effort.Unlike other handcart monuments, this family’s belongings are carefully tucked away under a canvas cover that echoes covered wagons common in other overland trail imagery. The cover means that only the grandfather’s hat resting atop the blanket, the young child tucked inside, and a spider-style cooking pot hanging beneath it are visible. Where Knaphus and others had included grease buckets and other specific objects to remind viewers of the hardships that Mormon migrants overcame, Johansen chose to emphasize the emotional connections among the family members. The sculpture includes a bronze base that shows the tracks of the settlers who went before them. But the feet of Johansen’s family members barely touch the ground in their sturdy boots, emphasizing their faith and anticipation of the promised land, rather than the determination required for the long, difficult journey. Their hopeful journey amid the particularly trying work of migration by handcart stands as an uplifting counterpoint to Avard and J. Leo Fairbanks’ grim tributes to the suffering that migrants endured at Winter Quarters. In place of Winter Quarters misery, Johansen offers hopeful overland migrants. In place of LDS guilt and embarrassment over the suffering of the handcart companies, he offers handcarts as a symbol of Mormons’ hard work and unwavering faith.

Inspired by a beloved Torleif Knaphus monument at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, this monument depicts the Mormon handcart brigades that traveled overland from Iowa to Utah in the 1850s. It balances the nearby "Tragedy at Winter Quarters" with an unrealistically positive view of a later Mormon overland migration.

Handcart Pioneer Monument

The earliest western pioneer monuments were erected to mark the closing of the frontier in the 1890s. Pioneer monuments placed during this period consistently depicted American Indians yielding western lands to white settlement. The first completed was Karl Gerhardt’s 1892 Pioneer Statuary Group for Iowa’s state capitol grounds. This early pioneer monument's design called for "a group consisting of father and son guided by a friendly Indian in search of a home."[1] The resulting Pioneer Statuary Group features a white pioneer man, his adolescent son, and a Native American man gazing out over the Iowa lands the white men intend to settle. Differences in their attire, tools and positioning indicate white dominance. The bearded pioneer father and his son wear the long European-style coats and short hairstyles that white Americans associated with Western European civilization. That their suits are made of fringed buckskin shows their (carefully limited) assumption of indigeneity. In contrast, the Native man's bare torso and face and long braids indicate his lack of Euro-American sophistication. The white father stands poised to conquer the land using his manufactured ax and Bowie knife. Standing to his right, the pioneer’s son carries a rifle and ammunition, prepared to defend Anglo settlers from wild animals and humans and to provide for them through hunting. They tower over their seated indigenous guide, who gazes back toward the life he has lost. His primitive stone tomahawk and wooden staff are no match for the white men’s manufactured weapons, and reinforce the message that he must yield to white settlement. Other pioneer monuments installed in San Francisco and Salt Lake City in the 1890s depicted this progression from savagery to civilization even more explicitly, placing white Americans at the top of tall pillars to indicate their cultural superiority.In 2020, as protesters toppled Confederate monuments and public statues associated with colonialism, Indigenous activists called for the statuary group's removal.

Karl Gerhardt’s Pioneer Statuary Group features a white pioneer man, his adolescent son, and an Indian man gazing out over the Iowa lands the white men intend to settle. Although all three men wear fringed buckskin, differences in their attire, tools and positioning indicate that the indigenous man has yielded his native lands to the white settlers. The bearded pioneer father and his son wear the long European-style coats and hairstyles that late-19th-century white Americans associated with Western civilization, while the fringed buckskin declares their ability to conquer untamed lands. In contrast, the Indian’s bare torso, shaved face and long braids indicate his savagery.

Pioneer Statuary Group

The Iowa Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) placed this historical marker to mark the Mormon Handcart Brigade camp in Coralville in 1936. Like many other historical markers placed by the DAR and other women's heritage groups in the early 20th century, it features a bronze plaque installed on a large boulder. The plaque includes text honoring European immigrants to constructed handcarts at the site before continuing their journey westward pushing and pulling those handcarts in 1856. It also features a bas relief of a handcart company.The use of handcarts was unique to the Mormon migration. Whereas non-Mormons traveled overland as families and companies at their own expense, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsored the mass migration of Saints from the eastern United States and Europe to Utah through its Perpetual Emigration Fund. Due to financial setbacks, the emigration fund was unable to pay passage across the Atlantic, railroad fare to the end of the line in Iowa, and also provide wagons and ox teams for the many poor European immigrant converts. Beginning in 1855 the Church instead organized companies that would push or pull wooden carts from Iowa City to Salt Lake City. Five handcart companies set out during the 1856 travel season. Three companies arrived safely, but due to their late start, the last two companies suffered through harsh winter conditions, and more than two hundred people (nearly a quarter of the emigrants) perished. Despite those difficulties, additional handcart companies successfully crossed the Plains in 1857, 1859, and 1860, before the church abandoned that model.Many late-nineteenth-century Mormons, beset by discrimination and economic hardship, appeared eager to forget the handcart brigades. Handcart stories, like that of the Donner Party in the mainstream migration to the West Coast, evoked tragedy, poverty, and perhaps an element embarrassment. But that began to change in the early twentieth century, as Mormons increasingly assimilated into mainstream American culture. This marker's bas relief--in contrast to later monuments--accurately depicted both men and women working side-by-side to pull the handcarts. But it does not show children assisting, nor does it show anyone pushing the handcarts from behind. Moreover, it depicts the handcarts with tall wagon covers like those used on larger ox-pulled covered wagons. The resulting handcarts closely resemble more standard covered wagons, except that it substitutes married couples for the teams of oxen that typically pulled the larger covered wagons.Originally installed on the edge of downtown Coralville, Iowa, at the corner of 5th St. and 10th Ave., the marker was later moved to S. T. Morrison Park.This historical marker echoed a 1918 bas relief plaque mounted on a boulder in Council Bluffs as a tribute to those who migrated across the Plains from Council Bluffs by covered wagons pulled by oxen.

Historical marker including text and bas relief sculpture telling the history of the Mormon Handcart Brigade. Converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encamped near here to construct handcarts to carry their belongings on the overland journey from Iowa to Utah.

Mormon Handcart Brigade Camp Marker

In 1856, 1300 Mormons rode the railroad to its western terminus at Iowa City and then camped at nearby Coralville to build handcarts before setting off across the Plains. Both a 1936 historical marker and this heroic-sized statue tell this unique Mormon history in Coralville.The use of handcarts was unique to the Mormon migration. Whereas non-Mormons traveled overland as families and companies at their own expense, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sponsored the mass migration of Saints from the eastern United States and Europe to Utah through its Perpetual Emigration Fund. Due to financial setbacks, the emigration fund was unable to pay passage across the Atlantic, railroad fare to the end of the line in Iowa, and also provide wagons and ox teams for the many poor European immigrant converts. Beginning in 1855, the Church instead organized companies that would push or pull wooden carts from Iowa City to Salt Lake City. Five handcart companies set out during the 1856 travel season. Three companies arrived safely, but due to their late start, the last two companies suffered through harsh winter conditions, and more than two hundred people (nearly a quarter of the emigrants) perished. Despite those difficulties, additional handcart companies successfully crossed the Plains in 1857, 1859, and 1860, before the church abandoned that model.Many late-19th-century Mormons, beset by discrimination and economic hardship, appeared eager to forget the handcart brigades. Handcart stories, like that of the Donner Party in the mainstream migration to the West Coast, evoked tragedy, poverty, and perhaps an element embarrassment. But that began to change in the early 20th century, as Mormons increasingly assimilated into mainstream American culture. By the late 20th century, handcarts became valued symbols of a uniquely Mormon migration.In 2000, the Mormon Historic Site Foundation (a non-profit organization independent from the LDS Church that raises funds to commemorate Church history sites throughout the United States) erected a heroic-sized statue of handcart pioneers. Stanley J. Watts produced a replica of Torleif Knaphus’ popular handcart family monument in Salt Lake City. The Watts replica was placed near the new Johnson County Historical Museum. But rather than installing the monument in front of that museum, like at the Mormon Winter Quarters (outside Omaha, Nebraska), the foundation placed the sculpture on the plaza in front of the Marriott hotel (a hospitality company with Mormon roots).A bronze plaque briefly recounts the history of the handcart companies, and declares that the monument honors the “dedicated families who sacrificed homelands, possessions, and in some instances even their lives for their faith.”

The Mormon Historic Site Foundation dedicated this bronze monument in 2006 to commemorate Mormon converts who camped in nearby Coralville while building the handcarts they later pushed and pulled across the Plains to Utah in 1856. The statue is a reproduction of a popular monument in Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. The dedication ceremony coincided with the opening of an exhibit on Mormon history at the nearby museum operated by the Johnson County Historical Society.

Mormon Handcart Pioneers Statue

Sculpted by former artist-in-residence and long-time Iowa State University faculty member Christian Petersen. Petersen (1885-1961) immigrated from Denmark at the age of 9. He came to Iowa State to participate in the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He then taught in the Home Economics program for 21 years.After his death, his widow loaned this "Madonna of the Prairie" to the city of Ames for 1 year in the early 1970s. It was installed on the Iowa State campus in 1982.The sculpture portrays a frontier woman in a pose similar to those of Renaissance-era Madonna paintings and sculptures, holding a young child up close to her body. The mother's flowing gown more closely resembles traditional representations of the Virgin Mary than it does other "prairie madonna" works. Those works typically portray the settler woman in a sunbonnet and prairie-style dress. Most portray her carrying a swaddled infant or leading a young boy as she strides westward.

Sculpture by longtime Iowa State University faculty member Christian Petersen. Following the artist's death it was installed on the Ames campus. The title suggests it depicts a frontier settler and her child. But the sculpture more closely resembles Renaissance-era representations of the Virgin Mary than it does other 20th-century pioneer mother monuments.

Madonna of the Prairie statue

The Promise of America statue is also known as the Norwegian-American Immigrant Family Monument. It stands on a 6-acre restored prairie site east of Lake Mills, Iowa. It honors Norwegian immigration to the northern Great Plains in the late 19th century. The monument celebrates the United States as a melting pot of cultures. At the same time, it represents Norwegian immigrants as white pioneers civilizing the western frontier.The dedication plaque declares:<blockquote>Thousands of Norwegian immigrants came to the prairies of the Upper Midwest in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. With strength and determination they founded a great agricultural community.</blockquote><blockquote>A perilous journey now behind them, this immigrant family of the 1860's stands together ready to begin a new life. With faith and family to sustain them through the hardships which lie ahead--they go forward to claim the promise of America.</blockquote><blockquote>In gratitude to all immigrants to settled on the prairies to long ago, we dedicate this monument.</blockquote>The statue emphasizes the family's Norwegianness and their experience as immigrants. The 1860s Norwegian immigrant clothing was researched at the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah. The men's hats and double-breasted vests and the girl's head covering mark them as from the "old country." Rosemaling on a box held by the mother and the family's trunk celebrate Norwegian folk art traditions. Behind them, a Norwegian flag flies between the US flag and the Iowa state flag. The large steamer trunk that stands between the family and the viewer and the suitcase in the man's hand emphasize their recent arrival from Europe.The monument also interjects the Norwegian immigrant experience into narratives celebrating white settlement of the West. Carlson’s sculpture features a husband and wife standing behind their two school-aged children. Many pioneer monuments depict a man holding an axe or rifle as they gaze confidently out over newly claimed lands. In contrast, this Norwegian settler father holds a suitcase and stares stoically forward, pondering the new land. His son points excitedly out over the Iowa prairie, leading their family westward as Yankee pioneer sons had done in public monuments for half a century. The mother clings to a treasured rosemaling box and a similarly decorated shipping trunk, emphasizing her as a keeper of Norwegian culture rather than the enthusiastic bearer of white civilization characteristic of 1920s pioneer mothers. Her daughter clasps local wildflowers in her hand like young girls in many pioneer family monuments. Yet her Norwegian-style cap and wide-eyed expression reflect her uncertainty about their new home.

Dedicated in 1995, the Promise of America statue (also known as the Norwegian-American Immigrant Family Monument) was commissioned by the Norwegian-American Immigrant Family Monument Commission of Lake Mills and stands on a section of restored prairie. The statue depicts Norwegian immigrants to the Upper Midwest in the second half of the 19th century, portraying them as both New Americans and American pioneers.

Promise of America Statue

This statue is also known as Land is Our Heritage. It was sculpted by George Bassett (1925-2023) for the Delavan, Minnesota, town centennial in 1977. Pioneer monuments became a common way towns in the Upper Midwest and Great Plains to mark their communities' centennials in the late 20th century. Bassett utilized imagery that was common to many of these pioneer monuments. The man wears a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, work trousers and suspenders, and holds a wide-brimmed hat in his proper right hand. The woman wears a long dress with the sleeves rolled up and an apron that she holds back with her proper left hand. Field stone lines the monument's base. Such decoration also appears on centennial monuments erected in eastern Montana a few years later.George Bassett was known in Minnesota as a "Renaissance Man." Bassett began his art training while serving in the US Air Force, stationed in Italy from 1944-46. Upon his return to the United States, he worked as a teacher, farmer, scientist, architect and painter, but expressed himself most powerfully in bronze sculpture.The monument was installed in 1977 with a time capsule to be opened during Delavan's sesquicentennial in 2027.

Sculpture also known as Land is Our Heritage. Sculpted by Minnesota artist and "Renaissance Man" George Bassett. Installed to mark the Delavan, Minnesota, town centennial in 1977. It is similar to other town and county centennial monuments erected in the 1970s-1990s in the Upper Midwest and Great Plains.

Delavan Pioneers statue

Artist Gordon Dingman sought to depict Indians and white settlers coexisting peacefully in the area prior to the 1862 US-Dakota War. His mural depicts four scenes of local settlements that incorporate both whites and Indians. In the first, white and Native women do domestic work on either side of a mounted Sioux warrior, suggesting parallels, if not meaningful cultural connections. But Dingman did not treat Indian and white male figures equally. In a second scene, three white laborers, a draft horse, and a drag symbolize westward expansion. Dingman intended his use of “direct frontal views and uncompromising postures [to] suggest national attitudes of that period leading to broken treaties, exploitation and ultimately war.” A third scene depicts an Indian man dressed in white-style clothing using the wrong end of a saw, suggesting that he was waiting for “another man/cultural group to help him transition into a changed world.”[1] Thus, while Dingman sought to stress peaceful coexistence, his mural instead shows the persistence of the assumption that settlers were more advanced while portraying Native peoples as backward.New Ulm’s sculptural brick mural "Life Sketches" established local German immigrants’ connections to American settlement as progress by setting those immigrants against an image of Indigenous people that assumed backwardness. New Ulm’s 1974 mural also depicted relative interracial harmony that preceded a local armed racial conflict: the US-Dakota War of 1862 (more commonly known by the culturally-biased title the Great Sioux Uprising). Like many other Indian wars, the 1862 US-Dakota War was caused by decades of broken promises and encroachment by white settlers. White settlement on Native homelands destroyed traditional lifeways and resulted in Native Americans’ physical removal and cultural erasure. Fearing widespread starvation when the U.S. Civil War delayed a federal treaty payment, bands of Dakota (Sioux) warriors lashed out at local settlers, many of whom were recent immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia, killing more than 600 whites (many of them unarmed civilians) and devastating the German town of New Ulm. Local militias and the Union Army soundly defeated the Dakota warriors. Thirty-eight Dakota combatants were hanged in the largest mass execution in American history. The Dakota people--most of them noncombatants--were driven out of Minnesota and into internment camps and reservations in surrounding territories. Having forcibly removed the Dakota from Minnesota, local whites joined Far Western cities in memorializing their racial superiority. In the 1890s New Ulm dedicated a state-sponsored monument honoring the whites--both immigrant and native-born--who had “defended” their settlement “against the savage Indians.” At the dedication of the obelisk mounted with battle scenes, Hon. John F. Maegher declared that the “defenders” “saved our state and its lovely women.”[1] Well into the 20th century, local whites commemorated white victims of what they called the Sioux uprising or massacre. They expressed little sympathy for the plight of the Dakota people while also erecting a monument to Dakota men who fought and killed members of the tribe.That history of Indian removal came to the forefront when, in preparation for the 1976 national bicentennial celebration, the New Ulm Business District and Southwest Minnesota State College commissioned a mural depicting frontier life in the town. New Ulm had been settled by the socialist German-American Turner Society in the 1850s. In keeping with the town’s German cultural identity and standard American depictions of technology and progress, the Historic Trail committee envisioned a mural depicting beer wagons, trains, and a steamboat. As artist Gordon Dingman, who was born in New Ulm, began sculpting the relief mural, however, he became captivated by the 1973 violent showdown between American Indian activists seeking to reclaim indigenous lands and federal law enforcement at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. By the early 1970s, indigenous rights activism such as that at Wounded Knee had persuaded some Minnesotans to reconsider the history of the Dakota War, recognizing that the conflict represented a desperate response to white conquest of native lands and mistreatment at the hands of the US government. Dingman sought to depict German settlers and Santee Sioux living in relative harmony on the Minnesota frontier prior to the 1862 war. His interpretation stopped well short of challenging the long-accepted narrative of American Indian savagery, however. Although Dingman completed archival research to inform his depiction of both immigrants and Native peoples, the artist’s design flattened out the German immigrants’ ethnic identity. And his depictions of Dakota people were modeled on Euro-American depictions of Native Americans by artists George Catlin, Seth Eastman and Karl Bodmer that were themselves informed as much by myth as historic reality.While Gordon Dingman sought to celebrate peaceful coexistence, his New Ulm mural actually reinforced the logic of manifest destiny. Dingman intended his design to critique uncompromising “national attitudes of the period leading to broken treaties, exploitation and ultimately war,”[2] but he depicted westward expansion as the central narrative in local history. The final scene depicts a Dakota man dressed in Anglo-style clothing using the wrong end of a saw, waiting for “another man/cultural group to help him transition into a changed world.”[3] While Dingman’s mural certainly depicted the Dakota in a more humane manner than did the 1891 Defenders monument, it fell well short of the artist’s intent to depict “racial and cultural openness.” Rather than celebrating traditional indigenous culture and gender norms, its primary message was one of white dominance.

This mural was created for the US Bicentennial in 1976. The New Ulm Business District and Southwest Minnesota State College commissioned artist Gordon Dingman to create a mural depicting frontier life in New Ulm. But Dingman's work was inspired by the 1973 violent showdown between Native American activists and federal officials at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Dingman sought to depict peaceful coexistence between German immigrants, white American settlers, and Native peoples prior to the US-Dakota War of 1862 (widely known as the Great Sioux Uprising).

Life Sketches Mural (1976)

In the early 1930s, Minneapolis, Minnesota, city leaders pursued an elaborate plan to raze a red-light district and construct a new Civic Center inspired by the City Beautiful movement to include a parklike square to be renamed “Pioneer Square.” Minneapolis Park Superintendent Theodore Wirth originally envisioned a tall stone shaft topped by a bronze American eagle and surrounded at its base by four bronze figures at its base: a Native man and woman, and a pioneer man and woman.In contrast, local sculptor John K. Daniels envisioned a granite or bronze design emphasizing White industry and economic development in the Mill City: a 25-foot-tall base representing 2 millstones on top of each other, above which an overshot water wheel would tower. A pioneer and a laborer would stand to either side of the water wheel. At the top of a pedestal would be a young woman representing Minnesota, holding a sheaf of wheat to celebrate the city’s flour milling industry.Those two different views ultimately yielded to a monument that closely resembled other Midwestern pioneer monuments’ representations of early settlers. It emphasized a hard-working male Anglo-American settler, supported by a self-sacrificing wife and mother, and accompanied by a frontiersman who might represent other European immigrant groups and perhaps also the laborers that Daniels originally proposed.On the reverse of the monument is a bas relief that portrays French missionaries/explorers paving the way for White settlement. Daniels’ bas relief celebrated the man credited with “discovering” the falls of the Mississippi River. Known to the Dakota as Owámniyomni, among other names, Louis Hennepin renamed the falls after his patron saint. Those falls later provided the power that enabled Minneapolis to grow into the wheat milling capital of the region. Daniels’ relief portrayed a European Catholic missionary interactive with the local Native population.Three decades later, a massive freeway construction project spurred another effort at redevelopment. An apartment tower was constructed on the site of Pioneer Park; the 14-ton granite monument was moved to a “temporary” location in the St. Anthony West neighborhood on a tiny triangle of land beside a split-level home, where it served as a bumper to automobile traffic more than a public monument. After languishing in that location for another forty years, a local neighborhood association raised funds to move the statue across Main Street to the newly created B. F. Nelson Park.The monument received little public attention in its new permanent location until Black Lives Matter and anti-colonialism protests swept the nation in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd about 5 miles from the monument in May 2020. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board received complaints about the statue. On Thanksgiving morning 2020–a holiday that some have renamed a National Day of Mourning to mark the devastating impact of white colonization on Native peoples–someone splashed the monument with red paint. They spray-painted anti-colonial slogans on the granite monument: “no thanks,” “no more genocide,” “Decolonize,” and “land back.”

Granite monument carved by local Norwegian-born sculptor John K. Daniels. Erected as part of a 1930s efforts to replace skid row with an elaborate City Center, this statue was placed in the newly formed Pioneers Park, near the new art deco Post Office. Relocated to Northeast Minneapolis in 1961 amid new urban renewal efforts. It remained on a small traffic island until 2008, when it was moved 100 yards to a newly formed BF Nelson Park. In 2020, amid a growing Black Lives Matter protest movement following the police killing of George Floyd nearby, protesters splashed the monument with red paint and spray-painted anti-colonial slogans onto it.Screen reader support enabled.

The Pioneers

The Minnesota Centennial Women’s Committee hired local artist Gordon Shumaker to sculpt this twenty-foot-tall Pioneer Woman for the state fairgrounds. The monument portrayed traditional pioneer mother monument artistic elements constructed from modern materials.Shumaker dressed his highly traditional pioneer woman in both a sunbonnet and a shawl across her shoulders. In so doing, he combined other artistic traditions for pioneer mother monuments: wide-brimmed sunbonnets and Madonna-like headscarves. The book in her right hand and the satchel hanging from her right elbow replicate Bryant Baker’s famous 1929 Pioneer Woman in Ponca City, Oklahoma. But Baker’s statue included a young boy to balance those burdens artistically and symbolically, representing hope for the future. Shumaker instead depicted a woman striding placidly westward. Her pose more closely resembles the solo woman in Leo Friedlander’s Pioneer Woman that was erected in Denton, Texas, in the 1930s.In an apparent nod to the more avant-garde art movements of the 1950s, such as pop art’s focus on consumerism, Shumaker produced his Pioneer Woman from oddly modern and ephemeral fiberglass. Shumaker he then painted that fiberglass to resemble the enduring bronze that had been favored at the height of the Pioneer Mother movement. Existing records do not reveal whether Shumaker and the donors intentionally sought to play with modernity and tradition in this monument. It is possible that postwar civic frugality inspired him to paint state-of-the-art fiberglass to resemble traditional bronze.Newspaper coverage suggests that Shumaker’s efforts to adapt the iconography of that movement to the postwar era received little attention amid state centennial events. Prior to 1940, monument dedications were major events typically receiving extensive newspaper coverage, particularly when mounted to mark a local anniversary. By contrast, although Shumaker’s Pioneer Woman was featured prominently in advertisements for the fair, the statue itself appears to have elicited little excitement. Its dedication became just one of many events that occurred amid the circus-like atmosphere of centennial celebrations centered at the Minnesota State Fair—all of which lost much of their luster amid heavy rainstorms. As the fiberglass statue aged over the next several decades, however, it became widely accepted—and widely photographed—as a supposedly traditional feature of the fair.

This Pioneer Woman was created for the 1958 centennial of Minnesota statehood. Although sculpted from modern fiberglass, it closely resembles bronze pioneer mother monuments from the 1920s. It has become a familiar landmark on the Minnesota state fairgrounds.

Pioneer Monuments on Interstate 35 Travel Corridor

Statehood

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information