Fraser's rider sat his pony at the entrance to the Court of Palms, and 'it may be doubted if the Exposition produced a more popular bit of sculpture' (Todd). It caught 'the eye, the understanding, and the sympathy' at once. It was also one of the official photographer's best sellers. The spear points downward, the rider sags, and the wind-blown pony braces at what the title implies is the continent's last edge.
Its message was of its time. Todd read it as 'the final chapter in the tragedy of a supplanted race,' and the exposition's sculpture program consciously paired it with Borglum's hopeful Pioneer before the matching Court of Flowers. Modern scholars note that the fair presented Native Americans as noble but doomed, even while Native people worked at, performed in and visited the exposition.
John Barry recorded a telling moment. A tall Westerner in front of the statue told his wife that the rider looked exactly like 'a Blackfoot after a couple of days' tusselling with the wind and the rain in the mountains,' and concluded that 'the man that made that statue knew his business.'
It told the final chapter in the tragedy of a supplanted race.
Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2 (1921), ch. LVII
At a glance
- Fraser first modeled the composition in 1894; the 1915 plaster won the exposition's gold medal (Wikipedia).
- Plans to cast a bronze for the Pacific Palisades fell through in wartime; the plaster was dumped in a mud pit in Marina Park with other exposition works (Wikipedia).
- Tulare County bought and rescued it in 1919 for Mooney Grove Park in Visalia, near Borglum's Pioneer (Wikipedia).
- After Fraser's death in 1953, Tulare County agreed to trade the deteriorating plaster to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame (now the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum) in Oklahoma City for a replica; the museum finished restoring it in 1971 (Wikipedia).
- Marian Manville Pope's lines, which Todd understood the artist sanctioned: 'The trail is lost, the path is hid...'
Afterward
The plaster survived the fair's wrecking by chance, went to Visalia's Mooney Grove Park in 1919, and was later exchanged for a replica and moved to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, which completed its restoration in 1971 (Wikipedia).
Sources
- Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. 2, chs. LVII, LXI
- Barry, The City of Domes (1915), ch. XII (The Half Courts)
- Official Guide of the PPIE (1915), sculpture list
- Wikipedia: End of the Trail (Fraser), history after 1915
- Wikipedia: Panama–Pacific International Exposition, Native American representation