The Capitol Dome

to have "'e Rescue'. . . removed, ground into dust, and scat- tered to the four winds, that no more remembrance may be per- petuated of our barbaric past," referencing the violent actions of conquest perpetrated by settlers, not the portrayal of poten- tial violence against the settler family imagined in the statue. e monument, his resolution stated, was "a constant reminder of ill-will toward the American Indian." 20 In 1941, Rep. James O'Connor from Montana, who also chaired the Committee on Indian Affairs, echoed Burdick's sentiments in his own resolu- tion. He used more pointed language, though, asserting that e Rescue "misrepresented and grossly maligned" Native peo- ple and that the "group is an atrocious distortion of the facts of American history and a gratuitous insult." He concluded his removal appeal, arguing that it "perpetuates a slander . . . tends to promote disunity, and falsifies American history." 21 Both resolutions died in committee without coming up for a vote. As early as 1945 the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) began protesting against the statue groups. As they fought against congressional efforts to pass termination legislation—a set of policies designed to end federal recognition of Native sovereignty, to sever the trust relationship between the United States and Indigenous nations, and place tribal individuals under the jurisdiction of state law—NCAI became increasingly frustrated that terminationist congressmen passed by these statues as they entered and left the building, providing them with a convenient visual reference point for the kinds of historical narratives they created in their legislative arguments. Historian Paul Rosier noted, "the image [e Rescue] and its title also argued that white Americans' enlightened intervention rescued Indians from themselves." Terminationists in Congress asserted that "Native Americans needed whites to rescue them from the primitive and un-American conditions of reservation life, in this case through legislation and relocation." 22 Several organizations and individuals backed Smart's cam- paign in the 1950s. e National Congress of American Indians, the California Indian Rights Association, the Southern California Off ice of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, as well as members of the Oklahoma State Supreme Court all wrote letters and passed resolutions in support. For example, writing for the Friends Committee to the architect of the Capitol in 1959, Alice Shoemaker noted that the statues were "a constant source of antagonistic emotion to Indian people visiting Washington and to those at home." Using rhetoric similar to Smart's she asserted, "we add insult to injury when we place at our Capital [sic] for visitors from all over the world to see statuary which shows Indians as savages." She concluded, "we urge you to destroy these figures." 23 Although there were several other factors that also contrib- uted to their removal, Smart's efforts played the decisive role. In a letter to George Stewart, who had replaced David Lynn as architect of the Capitol, on the subject of what should hap- pen to the statues, Republican congressman from Michigan August Johansen wrote in 1959 that "maybe this is a good time to make peace with the Indians." 24 Discovery and Rescue were taken off the cheek-blocks and are currently in storage. In 1994, the president of Salisbury State University on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, omas Belevance, inquired about loan- ing the Rescue to place on his campus. In his response, Archi- tect George White, who had taken over after Stewart's death, outlined a fuller story of the statue's removal. e sculptures were "in extremely poor condition," he noted, they were "badly deteriorated by weathering when removed from the east front of the Capitol in 1958." He lamented that "the removal and subsequent moves have left the marble in many fragments" and that the cost of restoration "would undoubtedly be consider- able." White concluded importantly, "the subject of the sculp- ture was long considered controversial because of its negative portrayal of the Native American. Because of these consider- ations, the group has remained in storage." 25 Of all the pieces in the two statues, the dog has fared the best; it is currently on loan to the Middlebury College Museum of Art. Not all of Smart's opponents felt as benignly capitulatory as Congressman Johansen, however. A 1960 issue of Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, referred to the removal of the statues as a "massacre" and the reporter, Jack Anderson, took the oppor- tunity to editorialize. He wrote, "Today's Indians have pretty well adopted the habits and acoutrements [sic] of the white man, including a powerful lobby which brings much wampum from the Great White Father for loss of real or imaginary rights each year. Scalping has been reduced to perhaps peddling a few tickets to the Cotton Bowl at outrageous prices." 26 Interest- ingly, though, Smart faced very little direct opposition herself and seemingly avoided much of the racialized language and symbolism used against other Native activists across the twen- tieth century. In fact, the only insult publicly directed at Smart seems to be a moment when Capitol Architect Stewart referred to her in a public presentation as the "irate Indian woman." 27 While there are many different ways to interpret Smart's campaign, it makes sense to situate it within the context of Native activism during the Cold War. In her foundational study, Cold War Civil Rights, Mary Dudziak argued persuasively that during the Cold War, as America attempted to manage its international image, the boundaries between foreign and domestic affairs blurred. e Cold War therefore had a posi- tive effect on African American civil rights in that American policy-makers had to take the arguments of black activists seri- ously and make changes toward racial justice to represent the nation's image abroad. Recently several scholars have pointed to the "pervasive internationalism" in the work of postwar Native activists who drew inspiration from global decolonization THE CAPITOL DOME 6

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