End of the Trail | ||||||||
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End of the Trail Wind Spinner
| End of the Trail Figurine
| End of the Trail Sculpture
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End of the Trail Sculpture
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End of the TrailA Long Wait for Glory and Fame Although in desperate need of restoration, the plaster sculpture stood in a corner at Mooney Park for forty-eight years! After all those years, the sculpture's fame was still not over. The National Cowboy Hall of Fame of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma purchased The End of the Trail statue in 1966 and cast it in bronze. Fraser's dream of a bronze casting for his sculpture had finally been realized. The bronze casting of the statue was created in Italy and then handed to the Mooney Grove Park for display. The original plaster sculpture remained at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, and is still there today. Many would say The End of the Trail represents defeat, while others feel that it shows victory. whatever Fraser's intentions, the statue has captured the hearts of millions, and replicas are now displayed in many households in some shape or form, either as a decorative piece or as a tribute to history. Written by Candice Pardue A Piece of American History – The End of the TrailAn original plaster sculpture depicting a Native American Indian and his mount, tired and dispirited, either from their trip to the Pacific coast, or from their fate, End of the Trail has come to symbolize the surrender of a proud people driven westward by the encroaching civilization of a new country. Whether or not that interpretation is the correct one, nobody knows, as Fraser never left any papers or records of what his thoughts were when he created the work. James Fraser’s family moved from Minnesota to South Dakota in 1880, when he was only four years old. Fraser then grew up amongst men who traveled the railways, and cowboys who told tails of how the Indians were disappearing further and further to the west. It is thought that these stories were the inspiration for Fraser’s best-known work, which was completed when he was barely 17, winning a $1,000 prize from the American Art Association in Paris. He then went on to work for one of the jury panel that had judged the work. In 1915, Fraser recreated the piece as an 18 foot plaster sculpture for the Pan Pacific exhibition in San Francisco, where it again won the Gold Medal, and virtually overnight, became a cult phenomenon, which was reproduced in various mediums. The sculptor had wanted to see the statue cast in bronze and placed on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but wartime deprivations meant that was out of the question. After the Exhibition, one of the greatest American sculptures was consigned to a heap of refuse, along with others from the display. It was rescued by some admirers from Tulare County, California, in 1918, but they too, were unable to afford the bronze casting, or even repairs to the now deteriorating plaster work. It languished in a park near Visalia, California, until 1966, when the National Cowboy Hall of Fame purchased and transported it to Oklahoma, where it was repaired, a mold made, and Fraser’s dream of a bronze replica was finally cast and placed in Tulare County. A bronze replica also stands outside the Cowboy Hall of Fame, while indoors, in a room of glass walls and ceilings, the original, restored statue stands as a proud tribute to the artist and the subject. In the last decade of the 19th century, the American Indian had been largely forced from their lands onto reservations. The spread of civilization across America, also brought the spread of disease to an indigenous population that had never known such illnesses before. Decimated by war, sickness and starvation, the Indians’ traditional ways of life had come to an end, although many held their heads high and looked to the future, beyond their forced assimilation into a culture that was foreign to them. As a people their destiny languished for 30-40 years, a time when Native Americans did not even have the vote, or a say in their own futures. But in a strange twist of fate, their very assimilation into the culture of a new America, brought about a resurgence of pride in their roots, origins, and tribal traditions, which has continued to grow over the years. Defying the apparent attitude of surrender that most people see in “The End of the Trail”, the Native peoples of America live on, their lives strongly rooted in both the tragedies and triumphs of a nation, much of which is portrayed in that singular sculpture of Fraser’s. | ||||||||
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Indian Sculptures
End of the Trail
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Native American Blankets
Native American Medicine Wheels
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