CHRISTINE GARNIER: The idea of an Indigenous figure to represent the gold rush is extremely problematic today. 

NARRATOR: The discovery of gold in CA in 1848 sparked a migration of people called the gold rush. This sculpture is an allegory for that phenomenon: when mining transformed the land. In creating it, however, the artist Hiram Powers was working thousands of miles away in Florence, Italy. And he did not address the social and political complexities in the way we would today. Christine Garnier, assistant professor of Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and specialist in American sculpture.

CHRISTINE GARNIER: What we see was also not Powers’ original idea:

That she would be clearly as a marked Indigenous woman. Imagine donning this very nude sculpture with a feathered dress that had embroidery on it, a single star representing her statehood, pearls and gold in her hair, moccasins, spilling out rocks at her feet.

NARRATOR: Although specific Indigenous details of the original concept did not make it to the final design, Powers still asserted her Native identity as a key element in the work.

CHRISTINE GARNIER: The gold rush became a point of genocide for Indigenous Californians in the 1850s while Powers was designing this sculpture. Before the gold rush, there were about 150,000 Indigenous people living in California, and by the time Powers died in 1873, there were only 30,000.

So for her to be a representation of both the gold rush and also an Indigenous female is extremely fraught, and brings up all of these histories of not only genocide but also the very denuding of their homelands as well.