The Last of the Tribes

Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873 · modeled 1867-1872, carved 1876-1877

As Hiram Powers was making this sculpture, he wrote, "The time is not distant when the last Indian will pass away," and described this figure as "the last of them all . . . fleeing before civilization [and] looking back in terror." At the same time, the U.S. government was using genocidal strategies to remove thousands of Indigenous people from their homes. The Last of the Tribes embodies the myth of the "vanishing race," a discredited belief that Indigenous people in North America would, when they came into contact with Euro-Americans, become invisible through extinction or assimilation.