The Capitol Dome

hulking settler's restrictive arm-hold. is piece does not sug- gest assimilation, but rather subjugation. 10 e same report that ridiculed Persico's statue suggested that while Greenough "evidently intended to do something bold and strong . . . the very exaggeration of the design renders it weak and meaning- less, while the execution is only commonplace." 11 Interestingly, among the initial critiques, those most vocally antagonistic to e Rescue focused on the dog (its placement, its demeanor, its attitude, its facial expression, and the accuracy of its imagined breed). Little was said about the more dramatic and violent components of the group. Despite the original poor reviews, however, both statue groups found general acceptance and even admiration on the East Front stairs. In fact, in an issue of e Crayon, a nine- teenth-century magazine devoted to art criticism, W. J. Stone noted that e Rescue was "refined, chaste, and beautiful" and he also displayed an uncommon self-awareness about portray- als of the violence of conquest in the art that had filled and surrounded the Capitol over the past two decades. "Although their lands were necessary to us, [we should not] hand down to posterity . . . our deeds of oppression towards the Aborigines . . . by having it sculptured in stone on the very walls of the Rotunda," he wrote. en, after recounting a story in which an anonymous Indian man strolled through the rotunda, openly criticizing and challenging the narrative told in the reliefs— that Native people were killed after giving food and land to settlers—he concluded that "this little incident has been men- tioned to show how far superior Greenough's design is [for e Rescue]; it can never be so severely criticized by our Aborigines." 12 Perhaps he spoke too soon. The Removal Campaign It's not entirely clear when Leta Myers Smart first trained her eyes and her formidable pen on the Capitol statue groups; the earliest letter available was written in 1952. Prior to that point, Smart had lived a compelling and politically engaged life. One of seven siblings, she was born in Nebraska to John and Barbara Myers in approximately 1894 (the 1920 census lists her birthdate as 1898, while both the 1930 and 1940 censuses list 1894). 13 She attended Hampton Institute in Virginia, a historically African American school that also focused on pro- viding educational opportunities for Native American youth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 14 In 1915, Smart began teaching at the Zuni Boarding School in New Mexico. It was perhaps there that she became frustrated with the Office of Indian Affairs, as so many other Native boarding school employees did. She took particular issue with its efforts to forcefully assimilate Native children and the ways in which she felt the office was mismanaged. Not long after, THE CAPITOL DOME 4 Fig. 3. Crating Rescue on upper north cheek block. ARCHI T EC T OF T HE C API TOL

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