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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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A Chief of the Multnomah Tribe, Hermon Atkins MacNeil American, Bronze, American
A Chief of the Multnomah Tribe
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The Sun Vow, Hermon Atkins MacNeil American, Bronze, American
The Sun Vow
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In Hot Pursuit, Charles Schreyvogel American, Oil on canvas, American
In Hot Pursuit
Charles Schreyvogel
After 1900
End of the Trail, James Earle Fraser American, Bronze, American
End of the Trail
James Earle Fraser
Founder Cast by Roman Bronze Works
1918, cast 1918

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