The Capitol Dome

statues as "unflattering and unjust" and "a great source of humiliation to every Indian who has set foot in Washington." 2 roughout her campaign she maintained that the images portrayed in the monuments were not only violent in content, but that their continued existence on the stairs of the Capitol re-enacted the violence of conquest and United States settle- ment on a daily basis. In telling this story, I want to assert that Smart's campaign reflects in some significant ways its 1950s Cold War context and connects with other examples of twentieth-century Native activism, especially in the period between the creation of the National Congress of American Indians (1944) and the American Indian Movement (1960s-1970s). Most people today think of Washington as a tourist destination—a place to "experience" history. "Engage. Excite. Entertain." exclaims the D.C. convention bureau website. But it was not always this way, nor was Washington always a seat of global power. It was a local place first—it became national; it became global. Native experiences with the city shaped that process of becoming and Leta Myers Smart's episode provides us with a window in. Discovery and Rescue Examining the art within and surrounding the U.S. Capitol highlights how central the portrayals and suggestions of Indigenous violence were to the commemorative landscape in Washington. In addition to the statues on the East Front, the works inside the Rotunda—sandstone reliefs of Pilgrims, Pocahontas, William Penn, and Daniel Boone, as well as the large historic paintings depicting Pilgrims (again), Pocahontas (again), Hernando De Soto, and Christopher Columbus—all contribute to a larger narrative of conquest and defeat. e art and architecture of congressional hall was created in conjunc- tion with and designed specifically to justify and legitimate America's sense of Manifest Destiny. In her book, Art and Empire, art historian Vivien Green Fryd asserted that "the sculpture and painting in the U.S. Capitol . . . outlines the course of North American empire by promoting and legitimiz- ing the subjugation of the Native Americans." 3 ese pieces, she suggested, "present situations from the past that seem to condone the policies being contemporaneously formulated by Congress and the presidents," namely the removal and reserva- tion policies of the early-to-mid-nineteenth century. 4 Luigi Persico, who was born in Naples and immigrated to the United States in 1818, sculpted e Discovery of America out of Seravezza marble between 1840 and 1844. James Buchanan, a close friend of Persico's, said that the piece represented "the great discoverer when he first bounded with ecstasy upon the shore, all his toils and perils past, presenting a hemisphere to the astonished world, with the name America inscribed on it." 5 e massive frame, frontal position, and rigid pose of Columbus is contrasted with the crouching and hesitant Indigenous woman. Her twisted pose, with uneven and broken contours, differs significantly from his solid, massive form. 6 Of course, it's worth noting that Senator Charles Sumner, a consistent critic of Capitol art, demanded, "What is Columbus going to do, play a game of nine pins?" 7 A report filed by the Washing- ton Art Union Association criticized the group as well, but it focused on the Native woman whose "crouching position . . . destroys the effect of the whole, and suggests a subject for ridi- cule rather than admiration." 8 Horatio Greenough, whose much-maligned sculpture of George Washington was placed in the Capitol Rotunda in 1841 (but later moved to the east lawn; it now resides in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History), was commissioned to create the group opposite e Discovery. He also chose Seravezza marble, in consultation with Persico, and his group e Rescue took its position in 1853. Secretary of State John Forsyth said, "I know of no single fact in profane history that can balance the one so wisely chosen by Mr. Persico as the subject of [Greenough's] group . . . which shall commemorate the dangers and difficulty of peopling our continent" (ignor- ing, of course, the fact that the continent had already been "peopled"). 9 e Native woman in Persico's image has been replaced with a muscular Indian man who struggled against a THE CAPITOL DOME 3 Fig. 2. Lifting north section of Rescue from upper north cheek block. ARCHI T EC T OF T HE C API TOL

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