National American Indian Memorial
[1][2] The first expedition, which travelled to Crow Agency, Montana, in 1908, saw Dixon carefully direct filming and photographs in an effort to capture authentic images without "any hint of the white man's foot".
[3] The following year Dixon returned to Crow Agency where directed around 100 Native chiefs to film "The Last Great Indian Council" and a reenactment of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Many guests at the dinner party enthusiastically supported the idea, with Miles saying he was "gratified that there is now a feeling of generosity and respect towards the departing race".
[6] In June 1909 the President of the United States, William Howard Taft, received a letter from Wanamaker (historian Alan Trachtenberg theorizes Dixon wrote it) asking for his endorsement of the memorial.
Virtually all ocean-going ships destined for New York pass the site, so the monument would have been highly visible to visitors, seen well before the Statue of Liberty would come into view.
On December 8, 1911, the United States Congress formally authorized the use of federal land for the monument, though Wanamaker would be responsible for providing funding.
[17] Some criticized the memorial, including the architect Charles Moore, also a member of the Commission of Fine Arts, who described it as an "ungainly Indian on the roof of a Greek temple".
[14] In 1911, the United States Congress had approved the monument to be built on federal land, but groundbreaking did not take place on February 22, 1913, Washington's Birthday, at the old Fort Tompkins on Staten Island.
Dixon carefully arranged the ceremony, getting William Howard Taft, the current president of the United States, to agree to come, as well as "thirty of the most famous Chiefs from the Indian Reservations".
These thirty were carefully selected to conform to white stereotypes of Natives, and Dixon placed great emphasis on having them wearing traditional clothing.
[18] The Native group visited F. H. Abbott, the acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and James McLaughlin, a worker with the department, in Washington, D.C.
The delegation was "supervised" by McLaughlin and upon Abbott's suggestion they developed three speeches pledging allegiance to the United States to present at the groundbreaking.
Taft was greeted with a 21-gun salute and spent an hour there, giving a brief speech and digging first with a silver spade and later with a Native stone axe.
[23] Although he continued to heavily advocate for the memorial, returning to the Fort Wadsworth groundbreaking site in 1914 for the New York Commercial Tercentenary,[24] exhibiting photographs at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915 and giving lectures to an estimated million people, he gained support but little money.
In 1914, actor and activist Chauncey Yellow Robe condemned the project,[30] stating:We see a monument of the Indian in New York harbor as a memorial of his vanishing race.
