Kicking Bear

Matȟó Wanáȟtake

Sculpture by Alexander Phimister Proctor on the Dumbarton Bridge.

56 conventionalized Indian heads support the corbels of the Dumbarton, or Buffalo Bridge that carries Q street over Rock Creek, in Washington DC. They were designed by architect Glen Brown and sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor based on the life mask of Kicking Bear which they found in the Smithsonian.

The Cody Center gives this short biography of Kicking Bear:

Kicking Bear (Mato Wanartaka) 1846-1904

Kicking Bear, Mato Wanartaka (Lakota, Matȟó Wanáȟtake) (1846-1904), born to Black Fox and Iron Cedar Woman of the Oglala Sioux, was brother to Moses Flying Hawk and first cousin to Crazy Horse (their mothers were sisters). With Kicking Bear's marriage to Chief Big Foot's daughter, Woodpecker Woman, Kicking Bear became a band chief of the Minneconjou Sioux and fought for the Lakota Nation during major battles, including the Rosebud and the Battle of Little Bighorn. Kicking Bear accompanied Short Bull to Nevada in 1889 to learn about the Ghost Dance from Wovoka, leader of the Ghost Dance movement. The Ghost Dance was effectively subdued following the Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890, and leaders of the movement, including Kicking Bear and Short Bull, were imprisoned at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Kicking Bear and other incarcerated Native men and women were released from prison to join the European tour of Buffalo Bill's Wild West for the season of 1891-92. Kicking Bear and Short Bull, among others, were sent back to Fort Sheridan when they insisted on returning home prematurely, sailing from Glasgow on board the Corean March 4, 1892. Kicking Bear and Short Bull were the last to be released from Fort Sheridan. During the 1891-92 tour, Kicking Bear was widely promoted as the "Fighting Chief of the Ghost Dancers."

Mató Wanághtakté - Kicking Bear, Sioux Warrior + 

Ghost Dance Leader in 1890.

(William Dinwiddie, 1896)

Kicking Bear came to Washington in 1896 on a diplomatic mission. Photos and a life mask were taken as a means of preserving the likeness of the American Indian, then widely seen as a vanishing race. His life-mask and costume were displayed in the museum. (See Krieger,  1928)

Sioux Warrior in Full Costume, Effigy of Kicking Bear

(on display in the Smithsonian) 

Kicking Bear's life mask provided a "typical" Native American face for use in representing a type. This display was originally labeled as a "Kicking Bear" in the museum but it came to be labeled, "Sioux Warrior in Full Costume." 

Life Mask of Kicking Bear

1896

And it was as a representation of the "typical Indian" that the heads, copied from the life-mask, were used on the Dumbarton Bridge. In their article on The Que Street Bridge in American Architect, Vol.108, Oct. 27, 1915, Glen Brown and his son Bedford Brown, IV say this about the heads:

The Corbels were started on Indian heads —we were fortunate enough to secure a life mask of Kicking Bear from the National Museum, which gave us a good type of head as a basis for the conventionalized modelling.

This was not Kicking Bear's only foray into the popular representation of Native Americans. He performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, after all, —in return  for  the commutation of his sentence and release from Fort Sheridan. And his likeness was used to represent Black Partridge in the 1892 Fort Dearborn Massacre Monument, sculpted by Carl Rohl-Smith.

Fort Dearborn Massacre Monument,

Keystone View Company, Chicago, 1930

(LOC)

Kicking Bear posed for Black Partridge seen on the right defending Mrs. Helm, the daughter of John Kinsie from an attacking warrior on the left. Kicking Bear's colleague Short Bull posed for the attacking warrior. Elmo Scott Watson remarked on the irony of this arrangement. 

So that is the other paradox of the Fort Dearborn Massacre statue. Short Bull, the dreamer, the man of peace, who urged his followers to refrain from hostile acts against the whites, is depicted as a murderous young brave. But Kicking Bear, the ruthless warrior, who used the new religion as a means of inciting the Sioux to rebellion, is the “noble red man” saving a white woman's life. And thus they are perpetuated in enduring bronze!

The first paradox was that the sculptor chose to immortalize an incident that probably didn't happen. Kicking Bear was aware of the twist in roles. Watson quotes a contemporary writer, probably Joseph Kirkland, that:

It chanced that the real disposition of the two principal models were the reverse of their assumed characters, and Kicking Bear (who when wearing his native dress and war paint carried a string of six scalps) was amused that he was assigned the more humane part. “‘Me, good Injun’ he cried, ‘Him, bad Injun!’ and he laughed loudly at the jest.”

An 1892 article sub-titled Sanguinary Kicking Bear Sitting the Model of a Life Saver, was widely circulated and noticed the same irony. 

Kicking Bear in Clay

At the same  time, Rohl-Smith also produced a bronze bust of Kicking Bear which belongs to the Danish National Art Museum (Statens Museum for Kunst, SMK).

Kicking Bear, Mato Wanartaka, 1892 by Carl Rohl-Smith

(SMK)

The Chicago Monuments Project brings the story of the Fort Dearborn Massacre Monument  to its conclusion.

Conceived in a sensationalist, luridly violent mode, the sculpture was long criticized by American Indian activists and was removed from public view in 1997.

Kicking Bear, wearing headdress of buffalo horns and leaves c1900

Photo by Heyn (LOC)