Bronze Hound's Art Collection: Nicanor Plaza (1844-1918)

To be honest, I forget the exact details of how I came to own this antique bronze sculpture. I know I bought it online in an auction, and I know that no one bid against me, but I don't remember exactly where I got it. I've been familiar with this work for many years however, having seen many pictures of the monument since my childhood.

Nicanor Plaza was born in Santiago, Chile in 1844. In 1858 he began studying sculpture at the newly opened Academy of Fine Arts division of the Universidad de Chile. He went to Paris to study sculpture in 1863, returning to Chile nine years later to become the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Santiago.

This sculpture actually has two titles. It was originally (and probably best known) by the first title, "Last of the Mohicans". The story as I have read it is that in 1860, diplomats at the US Embassy in Santiago commissioned Plaza (then living in Europe) to carve a statue of an authentic Araucanian Indian as a gift for the people of Chile. Plaza, who had never even seen an Indian, copied an engraving he found in a copy of "Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper, then presented his sculpture to his patrons. It was roundly rejected because it was not representative of the local tribes it was meant to represent. Now stuck with a large stone statue languishing unsold in Chile, Plaza sold it to the government. The sculpture was promptly retitled "Caupolicán" (though according to some "Lautaro") and placed on a hill overlooking Santiago in 1873. This caused some controversy however, as the local Mapuche tribe never wore headdresses anything like the one on the statue! The monument continues to look out over the city of Santiago today.

The ironies inherent in this piece are many and subtle. Natty Bumppo (who was depicted here), the main character of "Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper, though raised among the Delaware Indians, was a white man. So as the story of this sculpture goes, a group of gringos (from the American Consulate in Chile) hired another gringo (Plaza, a descendent of Spanish settlers and not of indigenous descent himself) to sculpt a statue of an Indian to give to the native people of Chile. Plaza instead created a sculpture of a white man dressed as an Indian (it's unclear if he even read the book or understood that Bumppo was not an Indian), probably from one of the only images of an Indian he could easily find in Paris at that time, thinking that no one would notice. When the white guys at the Consulate recognized the artwork (they'd read the book too) and angrily refused the piece, the government that ruled over the Indigenous people that this was rejected as a gift for, bought the sculpture instead. They then placed it high on a hill overlooking the city and renamed it for a local heroic Indian chief who fought against the Spanish invasion and was horribly tortured to death by the same Spaniards whose descendents both created and installed the piece. The statue remains in place today, a sculpture meant to honor the local Indians, of a white man dressed as an Indian, created by a white man, commissioned and rejected by white men then purchased by another group of white men and mounted on a hill to loom over the actual Indians. The story boggles the mind.

My copy is quite old, probably dating to before WWII. It is solid bronze, the Indian being affixed to the base with very old screws. Though this is not the most faithful reproduction that I've seen, it's in really beautiful condition. I consider it very good fortune that I was in the right place at the right time to add it to my collection!