Native Portland Series, 7: OHSU and Washington Park

Find all Native Tour stops on the tour map.

OHSU

It's a real hassle navigating the OHSU campus, atop what we call "Pill Hill" (hint: I should have parked at the bottom and taken the tramway up), but I was stalking a single piece of public art, which I finally found at the BICC (BioMedical Information and Communication Center, otherwise known as…THE LIBRARY.) Its artist is not indicated, and I can't find it anywhere. Called "Spirit of Healing," it seems to be evoking the powerful traditional ways of medicine and healing (which are often in opposition to Western ways.)

 

Washington Park Statues

This wonderful 400-acre park in the heart of Portland contains two bronze statues of Native people, both dating back more than 100 years.  They are both by non-Native sculptors.  Both were commissioned around the time of the worldwide exposition at the centennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which was hosted in Portland in 1906.

The first is my favorite:  The Coming of the White Man, a bronze sculpture by American artist Hermon Atkins MacNeil, who was supposedly known for his depictions of Native people and Western themes.  It depicts two Native men, one being Chief Multnomah, looking towards the Columbia River, apparently upon the arrival of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1805.  it was donated to the city in 1904 by the family of former mayor, David P. Thompson.  I find this statue stunning, but it raises so many questions.  What was the narrative in the mind of the artist, and those who commissioned it?  How did people--Native or white--who viewed it, think about it?

 

 

The other statue, Sacajawea and Jean-Baptiste, was definitely commissioned for the Lewis and Clark Exposition, by a committee of Portland women; its plaque says she was "the only woman in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and in honor of the pioneer mother of old Oregon."  It was sculpted by Alice Cooper, the first woman artist to be commissioned for public sculpture in Portland.  It was unveiled at the center of the exposition's plaza in July, 1905, and was moved to Washington Park in 1906, following the exposition.  Both statues are on or near "Lewis and Clark" circle in Washington Park, perhaps saying something about how these Native people were seen for their "cameo" roles in the great narrative of those explorers.  It too, is a beautiful sculpture, strangely disconnected from any real connection (that I know of) with the people depicted, and lacking their own voice or story.