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Authors: Rebecca Solnit
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one bears responsibility, that is represented in the Pioneer Monument, as well as in such ideologically similar works as
The End of the Trail
and Edward Curtis’s reconfigured photographs.
The text that was finally put on the bronze plaque in front of “Early Days” reads, in part, “At least 300,000 Native people—and perhaps far more—lived in California at the time of the first settlement in 1769. During contact with colonizers from Europe and the United States, the Native population of California was devastated by disease, malnutrition, and armed attacks. The most dramatic decline of the Native population occurred in the years following the discovery of gold in 1848.” From a text that commented on the grouping, it has become a text that draws attention away from it, toward the Forty-Niners on the opposite sideof the monument, and that also underscores the congratulatory tone of the whole ensemble. It concludes with the statement that, in 1990, the indigenous American population of the state was 236,078 (though it left out the fact that many of those are not Native Californians). Having weathered the reaction, the Arts Commission has permanently reoriented the meaning of the sculpture—has made it an artifact rather than an expression of public sentiment.
The San Francisco monument pitted two relatively disenfranchised groups against each other, but the conflict is more often between indigenous and dominant-culture values and interpretations, as with the new memorial to the Indians killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876. The history of this Montana site reflects changing federal attitudes: established in 1879 as a national cemetery for the soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry who died and were buried there, it became Custer Battlefield National Monument in 1940, and in 1991 was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in a law signed by President George H. W. Bush that also called for an additional monument at the site (a granite obelisk bearing the name of General Custer and his fallen troops having been erected long ago). As the official Little Bighorn Battlefield statement put it, “The law also stated that the memorial should provide visitors with a better understanding of the events leading up to the battle and encourage peace among people of all races.” An advisory committee was formed, a public competition was held, and a ruckus ensued.
In 1997, the
Times
of London reported that “enraged critics say that erecting an Indian monument at Little Bighorn is akin to ‘handing the Vietnam War memorial over to the Vietnamese.’ ” Another unnamed traditionalist told the western states’ progressive newspaper
High Country News
, “It’s like erecting a monument to the Mexicans killed at the Alamo.” Philadelphia designers John R. Collins and Alison J. Towers’s winning design for the monument is an earthwork, a circular berm with a northern aperture through which can be seen a grouping of three larger-than-life mounted Indians. It’s an odd mix of contemporary siteworks, à la Maya Lin and Nancy Holt, and old-fashioned heroic representation. It provides both a place to gather and to think and something to look at—something foreveryone but those still fighting the Indians. As in the San Francisco case, governments have become more progressive than some of the governed.
In his 1995 book of photographs,
Sweet Medicine: Sites of Indian Massacres, Battlefields, and Treatie
s, Drex Brooks portrays places important to indigenous history and culture across the continental United States. What is most startling is how many are unmarked. The site where King Philip and his Wampanoag warriors were massacred in Bristol County, Rhode Island, in 1675, for example, is only a stream in a thicket of young branches; and many others are likewise unaltered, unmarked landscapes. A massacre site in Mystic, Connecticut, is built up, but uncommemorated: the bland buildings and signs
The End of the Trail
and Edward Curtis’s reconfigured photographs.
The text that was finally put on the bronze plaque in front of “Early Days” reads, in part, “At least 300,000 Native people—and perhaps far more—lived in California at the time of the first settlement in 1769. During contact with colonizers from Europe and the United States, the Native population of California was devastated by disease, malnutrition, and armed attacks. The most dramatic decline of the Native population occurred in the years following the discovery of gold in 1848.” From a text that commented on the grouping, it has become a text that draws attention away from it, toward the Forty-Niners on the opposite sideof the monument, and that also underscores the congratulatory tone of the whole ensemble. It concludes with the statement that, in 1990, the indigenous American population of the state was 236,078 (though it left out the fact that many of those are not Native Californians). Having weathered the reaction, the Arts Commission has permanently reoriented the meaning of the sculpture—has made it an artifact rather than an expression of public sentiment.
The San Francisco monument pitted two relatively disenfranchised groups against each other, but the conflict is more often between indigenous and dominant-culture values and interpretations, as with the new memorial to the Indians killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn in the summer of 1876. The history of this Montana site reflects changing federal attitudes: established in 1879 as a national cemetery for the soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry who died and were buried there, it became Custer Battlefield National Monument in 1940, and in 1991 was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in a law signed by President George H. W. Bush that also called for an additional monument at the site (a granite obelisk bearing the name of General Custer and his fallen troops having been erected long ago). As the official Little Bighorn Battlefield statement put it, “The law also stated that the memorial should provide visitors with a better understanding of the events leading up to the battle and encourage peace among people of all races.” An advisory committee was formed, a public competition was held, and a ruckus ensued.
In 1997, the
Times
of London reported that “enraged critics say that erecting an Indian monument at Little Bighorn is akin to ‘handing the Vietnam War memorial over to the Vietnamese.’ ” Another unnamed traditionalist told the western states’ progressive newspaper
High Country News
, “It’s like erecting a monument to the Mexicans killed at the Alamo.” Philadelphia designers John R. Collins and Alison J. Towers’s winning design for the monument is an earthwork, a circular berm with a northern aperture through which can be seen a grouping of three larger-than-life mounted Indians. It’s an odd mix of contemporary siteworks, à la Maya Lin and Nancy Holt, and old-fashioned heroic representation. It provides both a place to gather and to think and something to look at—something foreveryone but those still fighting the Indians. As in the San Francisco case, governments have become more progressive than some of the governed.
In his 1995 book of photographs,
Sweet Medicine: Sites of Indian Massacres, Battlefields, and Treatie
s, Drex Brooks portrays places important to indigenous history and culture across the continental United States. What is most startling is how many are unmarked. The site where King Philip and his Wampanoag warriors were massacred in Bristol County, Rhode Island, in 1675, for example, is only a stream in a thicket of young branches; and many others are likewise unaltered, unmarked landscapes. A massacre site in Mystic, Connecticut, is built up, but uncommemorated: the bland buildings and signs
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