Monumental Mobility: The Reminiscence Work of Massasoit

Put in at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1921 to commemorate the tercentenary of the touchdown of the Pilgrims, Cyrus Dallin’s statue
Massasoit was supposed to memorialize the Pokanoket Massasoit (chief) as a welcoming diplomat and participant within the legendary first Thanksgiving. However after the statue’s unveiling,
Massasoit started to maneuver and proliferate in methods one wouldn’t count on of typically stationary monuments tethered to put. The plaster mannequin was donated to the artist’s house state of Utah and prominently displayed within the state capitol; half a century later, it was caught up in a shocking case of fraud within the advantageous arts market. Variations of the statue now stand on Brigham Younger College’s campus; at an city intersection in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri; and in numerous properties around the globe within the type of memento statuettes.

As Lisa Blee and Jean M. O’Brien present on this thought-provoking ebook, the shocking story of this monumental statue reveals a lot in regards to the course of of making, commodifying, and reinforcing the historic reminiscence of Indigenous folks. Dallin’s statue, set alongside the historic reminiscence of the particular Massasoit and his mythic collaboration with the Pilgrims, reveals in any other case hidden dimensions of American memorial tradition: an elasticity of historic creativeness, a tight-knit relationship between consumption and commemoration, and the dual impulses to sanitize and grapple with the that means of settler-colonialism.