On Columbus Day, a posse of protestors dressed in prom gowns crowded around the Lewis and Clark statue on Main Street. They were protesting the subordinate position of Sacagawea in the statue, holding signs like "Sacagawea Never Cowered."
C-VILLE went and dug through the records at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Historical Society to try to get to the bottom of the Sacagawea question.
 "By making her look down I have tried to suggest that they were on a high prominence, and she was more interested in the immediate surroundings, and not aware of what was in the minds of the explorers," said the statue’s sculptor. |
The development of the Lewis and Clark statue dates back to 1912, shortly after a September 8 editorial in The Daily Progress reprimanded the Charlottesville community for ignoring the small park in front of the historic Midway School, at the juncture of Ridge and Main streets. Soon enough, new owners of the Charlottesville and Albemarle Railway Company got interested and proposed to City Council a civic improvement project for the area that included adding trees, shrubbery and a fountain.
City Council approved the request in November 1912, but members of the community thought a statue might be more appropriate than a fountain. Another Daily Progress editorial suggested a likeness of Thomas Jefferson, but the railway company decided to seek a statue in honor of Lewis and Clark, given that Meriwether Lewis was born in Albemarle County, as were William Clark’s father and brother. Main Street was not directly involved in the Lewis and Clark expedition, but the paper thought the street fitting as a "great early artery facing West."
Though attempts were first made to derive funds from Congress, local philanthropist Paul Goodloe McIntire (of McIntire Road and McIntire Park fame) eventually decided to fund the project with a $20,000 gift to the city. On the advice of McIntire’s friend and mural painter Duncan Smith, McIntire contacted Charles Keck in 1917. Keck, a member of the National Sculpture Society known for depicting subjects in an accurate and lifelike manner, had previously sculpted representations of Booker T. Washington and the Prophet Mohammed. A contract was signed on November 12, 1917, and the statue was unveiled in 1919.
There is no documentation of the negotiations between McIntire and Keck over the statue’s design, but McIntire noted that the terms specified a description of the pedestal and two figures. Keck changed the original plan by adding Sacagawea, and McIntire saw it as a welcome surprise: "The sculptor threw in the Indian and she is the best of the lot," McIntire said, adding that the statue has been "greatly improved." In fact, McIntire was so impressed with Keck’s work that he commissioned him to produce the Stonewall Jackson monument in Charlottesville’s Court Square as well.
Though there has been controversy over whether Sacagawea is tracking or cowering, in Keck’s words, she is bending forward, intent on the vast expanse of the ocean. "The guide Sacagawea is at their side, a little to the rear, so that she shall not compete too much in the composition with Lewis and Clark," he said. "By making her look down I have tried to suggest that they were on a high prominence, and she was more interested in the immediate surroundings, and not aware of what was in the minds of the explorers."
So did Keck mean that she was the practical one leading around a couple of absent-minded ninnies, or that she was incapable of high thought? Let the debate continue.
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