Dallin created the work while studying in Paris and based the figure on a member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, which he attended often.

[1] In 1893, Lambert Tree bought the bronze version of the statue at the World's Columbian Exposition for $10,000, and donated it to Lincoln Park in Chicago, where it has stood since the summer of 1894.

[2] Despite Dallin's admiration for Indigenous people and his objection to their mistreatment by white settlers, the monument has sometimes been criticized as reinforcing stereotypes about Native Americans as "savages" and a "dying race.

[1] A Signal of Peace is one of Dallin's four most prominent sculptures of Indigenous people, alongside The Medicine Man (1899), Protest of the Sioux (1904), and Appeal to the Great Spirit (1908).

[2] He first completed a plaster version of the statue and entered it into the Paris Salon of 1890, where it won honorable mention, which was uncommon for an American artist to receive at the time.

[3]: 11 The monument is a life-size bronze statue that depicts a Native American man who is barely clothed with just moccasins, a loincloth, and a feathered headpiece, riding on top of a horse.

[citation needed] The statue is raised on a high granite pedestal, with a plaque reading: "A SIGNAL OF PEACE" with "The Gift of Lambert Tree" directly underneath.

"[citation needed] However, Dallin's unpublished manuscripts, newspaper interviews, and old letters have been used as evidence that he was an advocate for the American indigenous people, and critiqued their mistreatment by white settlers.