Cyrus Dallin’s ‘Appeal to the Great Spirit’

partial view of statue of a man on horseback.

Cyrus E. Dallin, Appeal to the Great Spirit (detail), 1909. Bronze, green patina. Gift of Peter C. Brooks and others.

A sculpture of a Native American man on horseback stands on a pedestal. Signs surround the sculpture with visitor thoughts on the work of art.

Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) at the MFA’s 2019 Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration.

A sculpture of a Native American man on horseback stands on a pedestal in front of a passing MBTA Green Line trolley. Signs surround the sculpture with visitor thoughts on the work of art.

Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) at the MFA’s 2019 Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration. Photo courtesy of Tony Rinaldo.

Visitors read signs with written responses to Cyrus Dallin's 'Appeal to the Great Spirit' that surround the sculpture, which depicts a Native American man on horseback.

Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) at the MFA’s 2019 Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration. Photo courtesy of Tony Rinaldo.

partial view of statue of a man on horseback.

Cyrus E. Dallin, Appeal to the Great Spirit (detail), 1909. Bronze, green patina. Gift of Peter C. Brooks and others.

A sculpture of a Native American man on horseback stands on a pedestal. Signs surround the sculpture with visitor thoughts on the work of art.

Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) at the MFA’s 2019 Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration.

A sculpture of a Native American man on horseback stands on a pedestal in front of a passing MBTA Green Line trolley. Signs surround the sculpture with visitor thoughts on the work of art.

Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) at the MFA’s 2019 Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration. Photo courtesy of Tony Rinaldo.

Visitors read signs with written responses to Cyrus Dallin's 'Appeal to the Great Spirit' that surround the sculpture, which depicts a Native American man on horseback.

Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit (1909) at the MFA’s 2019 Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration. Photo courtesy of Tony Rinaldo.

A Complicated Past

In 1912, when the MFA installed Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit at its Huntington Avenue Entrance, the sculpture was a contemporary work of art. The Museum’s leaders at that time did not intend for it to remain in front of the building permanently but it has stood there ever since. Depicting a Native American man astride a horse with his arms outstretched, Appeal to the Great Spirit has become an icon of the MFA and one of the most reproduced objects in the collection. A part of the Museum’s history, it has entered today’s international debates about cultural appropriation, public monuments, and Indigenous erasure.

Critics in the early 20th century praised Dallin’s sculpture for its “fine dignity” while describing its figure as representative of a “dying race.” Dallin himself likely believed his works honored Indigenous peoples and even critiqued the social injustices that they faced. Years after completing Appeal to the Great Spirit and other major sculptures of Indigenous figures, like Massasoit (1920), which stands at the top of Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Dallin became a Native rights activist, telling the Boston Globe, “The attitude of white people toward Indians in general is one of supreme arrogance.” Like the art critics of his time, Dallin had a limited perspective on his work. He likely saw Appeal to the Great Spirit as different from negative images of Native people, even though it perpetuated the “vanishing race” stereotype with its anonymous, unarmed figure dressed in a mix of Lakota- and Diné-style regalia. But what about the responses to Appeal to the Great Spirit that went unrecorded? What did Massachusett, Wampanoag, and other local Indigenous people think about this sculpture in 1912?

Conservation in Action

As part of caring for the collection, in May 2026 MFA conservators are collaborating with Excelsior Fine Art to clean Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit and apply a protective coating that shields its surface from corrosion caused by weather and pollution.

The bronze sculpture was brown when it first stood outside the MFA in 1912. Over several years, the harsh New England climate and industrial pollution rapidly corroded its surface, and a natural green film, known as patina, formed. Since Dallin preferred the dark-green patina, the Museum has tried to maintain this appearance for the past century.

Bronze sculptures displayed out of doors are generally coated to protect their surface. Solvent-based acrylic coatings have been in use since the 1980s, but these require regular removal and reapplication in order to remain effective.

Appeal to Great Spirit has not been fully recoated in more than 20 years. Since then, MFA conservators have washed its surface and applied layers of cold wax annually, but the sculpture’s underlying coating has deteriorated, leaving it unprotected and exposed to the elements. Its current faded green-and-black coloring is the result of a complicated mix of natural corrosion along with coatings and pigmented materials used over time to even out its appearance.

Conservators are employing sustainable practices in caring for Appeal to the Great Spirit

First, curators will use dry ice (carbon dioxide) to remove the sculpture’s failing acrylic coating and layers of wax and grime.

Once the bronze surface is clean, conservators will assess and document its condition by 3D scanning it and examining for cracks or areas of instability. Close inspection at this stage could yield insights into the original casting process.

Before applying the final protective coating, conservators will likely need repatinate certain areas across the bronze to even out its appearance.

Finally, conservators will apply hard wax to the heated sculpture. This durable “hot wax” coating is easier to maintain than the old acrylic one, and cleaning it requires fewer solvents, making it more sustainable.

Once this treatment is complete, conservators will care for the sculpture yearly, cleaning it, spot repairing the hot wax layer, and applying cold wax as a top layer of defense against corrosion.

In 2024, conservators followed a comparable process in caring for Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington’s bronze Pair of Great Danes (1907), located in the MFA’s Calderwood Courtyard. As a result, the light green-and-black patina that had developed on the surface of these sculptures over the years darkened and evened into a saturated deep green.

You can expect Appeal to the Great Spirit to undergo a similar change in appearance. Although this saturated green patina will make the sculpture look noticeably different than it has in recent years, curators and conservators feel it honors artist’s preferences while prioritizing long-term preservation.

Reckoning with History

We cannot recover unrecorded voices from the past, but we have sought to look beyond our walls, to the community members who live with this sculpture in public space today, to help us tell its many stories. Beginning in October 2019, as part of the MFA’s first Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration, we invited people from all backgrounds, including Indigenous artists, Dallin scholars, and MFA visitors, to answer the question, “What do you see when you look at Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit?” The range of perspectives, represented below, continue to inform how we contextualize, interpret, and publicly present this sculpture.

Handwritten note on MFA comment card
Image Gallery
Visitor Responses to ‘Appeal to the Great Spirit’

Art for This Moment

On our blog, a former MFA curatorial intern considers how Appeal to the Great Spirit fits into discussions about public monuments and wonders who is responsible for grappling with its complicated imagery.

Read the Essay

Join the Conversation

Connect with our curatorial team at [email protected] or on Instagram @americasmfa, where Appeal to the Great Spirit is featured on our Story Highlights.