Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha inspired Edmonia Lewis to carve the Old Arrow Maker, Minnehaha of the Dakota tribe plaits “mats of flags and rushes” while her father makes “arrow-heads of jasper.” They both look up to greet Hiawatha, an Ojibwe, whose presence is implied by the deer he brought as a token of marriage. Lewis’s evocative subjects often reflect her dual heritage; her father was African American and her mother Chippewa (Ojibwe). After studying at Oberlin College she became a sculptor, working in Boston and Rome despite the social challenges posed by her race and gender. The cessation of hostilities between the Ojibwe and Dakota after years of inter-tribal war that the poem and sculpture represent may refer to Lewis’s hopes for reconciliation between the North and South after the Civil War. In the story, Hiawatha later marries Minnehaha with the wish that “… old feuds might be forgotten/And old wounds be healed forever.”
- Title
-
Old Arrow Maker
- Artist
- Date
- modeled 1866, carved 1872
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 21 1⁄2 x 13 5⁄8 x 13 3⁄8 in. (54.5 x 34.5 x 34.0 cm.)
- Credit Line
-
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Robbins
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- marble
- Classifications
- Keywords
-
- Figure group
- Indian
- Occupation – craft – arrow maker
- Object – game – deer
- Dress – Indian dress
- Object Number
-
1983.95.179
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI
