Instructor

Visit monuments celebrating Euro-American settlement of San Francisco. Learn about controversies surrounding the monuments, past and present.

The idea for San Francisco’s 1915 Pioneer Mother monument was planted a decade earlier when a San
Francisco resident viewed the city’s earlier pioneer monument. The sight of San
Francisco’s Pioneer Monument towering
over that city’s ruins in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake inspired in San
Francisco society matron Ella Sterling Mighels a vision of a monument to
pioneer mothers in her city. She worked tirelessly to promote her vision of a
monument to pioneer women as a civilizing influence over the rough-and-tumble world
of gold rush California. Like many women of her time, Mighels believed that
women’s influence should be channeled through motherhood within the domestic
sphere. While many white Californians shared Mighels’ racial vision, they were
slow to embrace her vision of a monument depicting a seated pioneer mother holding
church at her knee.

Mighels’ efforts inspired the creation of the Pioneer Mother
Monument Association (PMMA). Led by President Helen Sanborn, the association
organized a fundraising campaign. They planned to erect a monument “symbolizing
Motherhood, to be dedicated to the Pioneer Mothers of the West – the
self-sacrificing women who, with their little ones at their side, braved the
dangers and underwent the hardships and privations that are always incident to
pioneer life.”1 They
envisioned a woman and two or three children in mid-19th-century
clothing, with a gold miner father in the background or in a bronze relief
panel on the statue’s base.

Mighels and the PMMA struggled to raise support for the
statue until the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) Woman’s Board got
involved. The PPIE Woman’s Board sought to place the monument at San Francisco’s
1915 world’s fair. The PPIE was intended to celebrate San Francisco’s recovery
from the 1906 earthquake. The Pioneer
Mother monument would join the earlier monuments to California men that had
survived that earthquake.&nbsp; 

Most PPIE buildings and sculpture were made from plaster.
They were only intended to survive the length of the fair. For example, a larger-than-life
male Pioneer and male Indian at The End of the Trail were headed for a
landfill after the fair until citizens of Visalia, California, claimed them. In
contrast, the Pioneer Mother was cast
in bronze and would remain as a permanent gift to the city of San Francisco. 

The PMMA and various California pioneer associations pledged
to fundraise for the project. But tension soon developed between John Trask,
chief of the PPIE’s fine arts department, and the club women sponsoring the
statue. Some of the women questioned Trask’s choice to commission a prominent
eastern sculptor. They believed it should be done by a local artist. But Trask
was a leading figure in the fine arts establishment. He was convinced that no
California artist was qualified for a project of this significance. He gave the
commission to his friend Charles Grafly instead.

Grafly abandoned both Mighels’ image of a hoop-skirted woman
holding church at her knee and the PPMA’s
vision of a pioneer woman in a more practical prairie-style dress. Instead,
Grafly sculpted a woman clad in the fringed buckskin and moccasins that many
easterners associated with the Wild West.&nbsp;
The sculptor surrounded his pioneer women with nude children symbolizing
the future.

Grafly’s model produced outrage in San Francisco because it blurred
racial and gender identities. A decade earlier, Portland, Oregon, had welcomed
a sculpture of Sacajawea as a tribute
to white pioneer mothers. But in 1915, San Franciscans balked at Grafly’s
depiction of a white woman dressed in Native clothing. Pressure from the Native
Daughters of the Golden West and other women’s pioneer associations persuaded
Grafly to replace the “costume of a primitive Sioux Indian squaw”2 with
a homespun gown and simple leather shoes. Under pressure from the female
donors, Grafly also agreed to adjust the head covering.&nbsp; But even the final version lacked the wide
brim characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century sunbonnets designed to protect
white women’s fair complexions from the sun.

Some of the clubwomen sponsoring the monument – including
Mighels – also were outraged that Grafly insisted on depicting nude
children.&nbsp; PMMA president Sanborn
insisted that the children’s nudity made it impossible for the organization to
raise public subscriptions to support the monument.&nbsp;But Grafly remained determined to maintain the allegorical quality of the
children at her feet. Philanthropist and honorary president of the PPIE Woman’s
Board Phoebe Hearst and U.S. Senator (and former San Francisco mayor) James
Phelan finally brokered a compromise. They persuaded Grafly to make the boy’s genitalia
“somewhat less conspic[u]ous,”3 and
thus less offensive to Anglo women’s genteel sensibilities. 

Public opinion of the revised statue was generally
positive.&nbsp; More than one thousand people
visited the artist’s studio to view the completed statue, which they agreed was
a “symbolical masterpiece.”4 Thousands of California schoolchildren
contributed pennies and nickels toward erecting the monument, including $651.59
in San Francisco and $591.94 in Los Angeles (a total of about $30,000 in 2015
dollars).

The Pioneer Mother
monument was cast in bronze to make it a permanent fixture in San Francisco,
but it received less attention at the PPIE than did the plaster Pioneer and End of the Trail. After the fair, those pieces were moved to
Visalia’s Mooney Grove Park. But Grafly’s
bronze Pioneer Mother was neglected and forgotten. A
quarter-century later it was discovered, weather-worn and vandalized, in the
near-ruin of the Palace of Fine Arts.&nbsp;
Within three months of its discovery, civic and historic groups helped
to restore the monument, and it was displayed at the Golden Gate International
Exposition before being installed at its final site in a meadow in Golden Gate
Park on December 8, 1940. <div><div>

</div>

</div>

Competing visions of pioneer womanhood collided in the creation of this statue sculpted by Charles Grafly. The tribute to early Euro-American California settlers was created for San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It was forgotten after the fair, but later restored and moved to its permanent location in Golden Gate Park in 1940.

Pioneer Mother Monument

Eccentric millionaire James
Lick (1796-1876) included $100,000 ($2.8 million in 2015 dollars) in his will
to build a monument that would depict early California history. After selecting
the design and erecting&nbsp;the monument in 1894, thousands of San Franciscans
celebrated the monument's dedication in front of their new City Hall. City Hall
was destroyed by the fire that followed San Francisco’s enormous 1906
earthquake, but the 800-ton monument survived.

Design elements on the
monument depict white settlement of California from European exploration
through the Spanish mission era, Mexican period and the 1849 gold rush. The
center of the monument features a&nbsp;granite pedestal topped by a bronze
statue depicting "Eureka," the spirit of California.&nbsp; Scenes
from California history and portraits and names of famous Euro-Americans surround
that pedestal. These include: explorers Sir Francis Drake and Juan Rodriguez
Cabrillo; missionary Junipero Serra; military leaders John C. Frémont, Mariano
Guadalupe Vallejo, John D. Sloat, and Robert F. Stockton; trader Thomas O.
Larkin; and donor James Lick. James Marshall, who is credited with sparking the
California gold rush, appears along with John Sutter, on whose land he
discovered it.

Four statues originally flanked the
central pedestal. Allegorical female figures represent Commerce and Plenty. "Early
Days" depicts a Native American seated&nbsp;in front of a Catholic friar (representing
California’s Spanish mission era, 1769-1821) and a Mexican vaquero swinging a
lasso (representing the vast ranches of the Mexican era, 1821-1848). Another
depicts white American miners during the 1849 gold rush.

Few white residents of
the city perceived these images as offensive for the first half of the 20th
century. However, in the early 1990s, the Library Commission sought to move the
monument to make room for a new library. The proposed move, combined with
increased awareness of the treatment of Native peoples, led residents to
reconsider the monument. As leaders discussed the effort to move the monument
from its original location at the intersection of&nbsp;Grove, Hyde and Market
streets, they also addressed the nature of the monument.&nbsp; 
 
Rather than alter the statue, city leaders
responded to growing concerns about the monument by adding an additional plaque
in 1996 that discussed the often disturbing nature of conquest. The plaque
informs readers that over half of the Native population perished as a result of
the arrival of Europeans. Since that time, landscaping surrounding the statue
has made it increasingly difficult to see that plaque. 
 
In 2017, as Americans debated the removal of
Confederate monuments across the country,&nbsp;San Francisco's Art Commission
voted to remove the controversial "Early Days" bronze grouping.&nbsp; "Early Days" was seen as demeaning to Native peoples&nbsp;because it depicted a Spanish missionary and Mexican vaquero towering over a submissive American Indian man.&nbsp; After a year of public debate and legal wrangling, the "Early Days" statue was removed before dawn on September 14, 2018.

This monument was created in 1894 by Frank Happersberger and is one of the landmarks of the Civic Center Plaza area. At the time of its creation, few residents were concerned about the way the monument depicted Native Americans as subservient to European Americans. In recognition of the monument's biased interpretation of history, residents petitioned for an additional plaque that would provide historical context related to the creation of the monument. In September 2018, that portion of the monument was removed, leaving its pedestal empty.

San Francisco's Pioneer Monument

Also known as the Native Sons Monument and the Phelan
Fountain, the Admission Day Monument was erected to celebrate California’s 1850
admission to the Union. It was commissioned by San Francisco Mayor James D.
Phelan for $12,000. Like the Mechanics Monument located nearby, it was sculpted
by Californian Douglas Tilden. It was unveiled on California Admission Day
(September 9) in 1897.&nbsp; 

An 18.5-foot-tall Doric marble columnn designed by Willis
Polk rests on a paneled pedestal. A bronze winged female figure representing the
Genius of California stands atop the columnn. She holds a book inscribed “September
9, 1850,” the date California became a state. The angelic figure is said to be
modeled after the artist’s wife.

At the base of the columnn stands a miner representing the Youth
of California. The miner “rush[es]
forward with impetuous haste and cheer[s] lustily in triumphant enthusiasm.”1 Armed with a pistol, he holds a pick behind
his back and, waves a large American flag. The miner also honors the Native
Sons of the Golden West, to whom the monument is dedicated.

It is engraved with a declaration made by W.H. Seward to
U.S. Senate on California’s admission to the Union: “The unity of our empire
hangs on the decision of this day.”

The Admission Day monument was intended as a public drinking
fountain. According to the San Francisco
Call in 1895,

<blockquote>San Francisco is badly off for drinking fountains, and even
one of stucco or ordinary stone would be a boon to weary pedestrians, who too
often have to trudge along thirsty or patronize the saloon. A fountain such as
Mr. Phelan proposes to erect will make a draught of pure water an artistic joy.
It may even take the same hold on the public affection that the fountains in
Rome have, where the people linger to exchange the news and enjoy one moment
more of dolce far niente&nbsp;[sweetness of doing nothing] as they admire the sculptor's bronze and marble for
the hundredth time.2</blockquote>

Water poured out of the mouths of two bear heads symbolizing
California. Entwined rattlesnakes beneath the fountains represented the Sierra
Nevada mountains and the dangers of the Wild West.

The monument stood at the intersection of Mason, Turk and
Market Streets, near the Native Sons of the Golden West in San Francisco’s
Tenderloin District, from 1897-1948. It was moved to Golden Gate Park near many
other public monuments in 1948. But lobbying from the Native Sons returned it to
Market, Post &amp; Montgomery streets in 1977.

&nbsp;

Erected in 1897 to celebrate California statehood. Also known as the Native Sons Monument and the Phelan Fountain. It was commissioned by San Francisco Mayor James D. Phelan for $12,000. It was sculpted by Californian Douglas Tilden.

Admission Day Monument in San Francisco in 2013. Photo by Another Believer, Wikimedia Commons.

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Pioneer Monuments in San Francisco

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