Appeal to the Great Spirit May 21, 2010

After he saw Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in 1889, Cyrus Dallin devoted much of his career to sculpting Indians and horses. His artistic interests were diverse, but he remains best known for his stylized, formal sculptures of Indians and Indian life. On the Warpath was cast in several sizes. Dallin viewed horses as important players in the dramatic tableaux of western life. In his time--the late 1800s and early 1900s--horses literally were carriers of culture and history as well as a primary means of transportation. Dallin was the first sculptor to sculpt heroic sculptures of Indians and their mounts in a manner similar to European bronzes. He worked in the neoclassical style that was in vogue in Paris where he studied.