On Saturday afternoon, just hours after the Confederate statues in downtown Charlottesville were removed, the city’s contractors also took down the statue of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea from the intersection of Ridge and Main streets.
Local activists and descendants of Sacagawea had long called for the statue’s removal. It portrays Lewis and Clark standing tall, gazing out over the horizon, while Sacagawea, who guided the feckless explorers throughout their expedition, cowers behind them.
In November 2019, City Council invited Sacagawea’s descendants to town for a work session to discuss the statue’s removal. Descendant Rose Ann Abrahamson said she’d visited nearly every statue of her ancestor in the country, and that “this statue in Charlottesville is the worst we have ever seen.”
Area activists had made similar points for years. Monacan tribe members Karenne Wood and Ken Bradham had spoken out against the statue, as had Anthony Guy Lopez, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe. In 2009, the city placed a plaque at the foot of the monument in an effort to add context to it.
In 1919, local philanthropist and segregationist Paul Goodloe McIntire commissioned sculptor Charles Keck to produce a statue of Lewis and Clark, who each had ties to Albemarle County. Keck added Sacagawea of his own accord. “The sculptor threw in the Indian and she is the best of the lot,” McIntire said at the time.
At the 2019 work session, after hearing from the descendants, City Council resolved 4-0 to get rid of the bronze eyesore. On Saturday afternoon, council convened an emergency meeting to vote on the immediate relocation of the statue—the construction crew that had come to town to remove the other two statues finished “in record time,” said City Manager Chip Boyles, giving the city a golden opportunity to remove the third statue at no additional cost. The impromptu meeting lasted 25 minutes, and saw council vote 5-0 to take speedy action, with Vice-Mayor Sena Magill calling in from her car to cast her vote.
The monument has been sent to the Lewis and Clark Exploratory Center in Darden Towe Park. Alexandria Searls, the center’s director, joined the emergency meeting, and committed to working with Indigenous peoples’ groups to properly contextualize the statue in its new setting.
Abrahamson joined the call as well. “I feel it’s entirely offensive, and it should be obliterated,” she said. “But if it can be utilized to give a greater message to educate the public, that would be an opportunity. So I’m very pleased with what is taking place. It’s been a long road.”