Instructor

Pioneer-themed monuments located in Kansas City.  A longer tour is available of monuments throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area.

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.

A. Phimister Proctor, "Pioneer Mother," 1927. Photo by Cynthia Prescott

Pioneer Mother statue (Kansas City, MO)

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

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. Photo by Cynthia Prescott.

Daughters of Old Westport Memorial

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. Photo by Cynthia Prescott.

Pioneer Square Monument

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.



"The Wagon Master." Photo by Cynthia Prescott.

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Kansas City Pioneer Monuments

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