James Earle Fraser (American, 1876–1953)
Cast by Gorham Co. Founders
The End of the Trail
INV-1116
James Earle Fraser (American, 1876–1953)
Cast by Gorham Co. Founders1918
The End of the Trail
James Earle Fraser (American, 1876–1953) Cast by Gorham Co. Founders →sculptureamerican arts
Date
1918
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
H.: 111.8 cm (44 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Bequest of Arthur Rubloff Trust
The End of the Trail, James Earle Fraser’s best-known sculpture, has come to symbolize the genocide of Native American peoples amid relentless westward expansion. In 1894, the year after the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the 17-year-old Fraser, then a student at the School of the Art Institute, produced the first version of this bronze sculpture. (The Art Institute’s sculpture is a later model and cast.) Reenforcing the conception of the so-called vanishing Indian, the work portrays an exhausted Sioux drooping over his equally weary pony; both rider and horse have reached the end of the trail.