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Appeal to the Great Spirit

Founder Cast by Gorham Manufacturing Company American
1913; cast ca. 1916
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 765
Appeal to the Great Spirit presents a Native man on horseback wearing a feathered headdress, his head raised and arms outspread in communion with a divine power. More than four hundred authorized bronze statuettes were cast in three different sizes, of which this is the middle one—testament to the popularity of sculptures depicting prevailing Euro-American visions of a "vanishing race." Today, such works represent the complicated, painful legacies surrounding falsehoods about the decline and erasure of Indigenous peoples.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Appeal to the Great Spirit
  • Artist: Cyrus Edwin Dallin (Springville, Utah 1861–1944 Arlington Heights, Massachusetts)
  • Founder: Cast by Gorham Manufacturing Company (American, Providence, Rhode Island, 1831–present)
  • Date: 1913; cast ca. 1916
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Bronze
  • Dimensions: 21 3/8 × 14 1/2 × 21 3/4 in. (54.3 × 36.8 × 55.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Morris K. Jesup Fund and Jonathan L. Cohen and Allison B. Morrow Gift, 2013
  • Object Number: 2013.441
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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