The West,
cast in bronze.

1. 

   1874Plains

   The cavalry and the war pony

   The tack dates the scene: the cavalry horse carries 1874 military issue, while the Indian pony wears its own style of saddle. Lightning marks zig-zag across the pony’s hind quarters to speed it into battle and terrify its foe; circles ringed around its eyes were meant to sharpen its sight.

   In bronze: After the Dust Settles

2. 

   17 June 1876Battle

   The Rosebud

   Eight days before the Little Bighorn, a large force of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors surprised General George Crook and his 1,325 troops on Rosebud Creek. They fought with a cohesion and organisation the Army had seldom seen, then shifted back to guerrilla tactics that broke the cavalry’s rhythm entirely.

   In bronze: Rescue on the Rosebud

3. 

   25 June 1876Battle

   Medicine Tail Coulee

   A reckless charge by the so-called Son of the Morning Star turned the heat of a lazy June afternoon into an explosion of Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors. His offensive became a defence as sheer numbers and steep geography turned against him, and the mounted cavalry horses — the war machines of the age — wheeled into a mad retreat up the coulee.

   In bronze: Medicine Tail Runaway

4. 

   1877Nez Perce

   Chief Joseph

   The Nez Perce leader whose band was pursued more than a thousand miles across the Northwest in the flight of 1877. The portrait anchors a thread that runs forward almost forty years, to a horseman who rode with that same band as a boy.

   In bronze: Chief Joseph

5. 

   9 April 1892Wyoming

   Nate Champion’s last run

   A lone man, besieged by the hired guns of fear and greed, single-handedly begins a western civil war against the push of unwarranted authority. With his Colt and his Winchester he makes one last run out of his blazing cabin, and falls to twenty-eight bullets. The Johnson County Cattle War became the subject of the artist’s first monument, in Buffalo.

   In bronze: Nate Champion’s Last Run

6. 

   c. 1908Outlaw

   Hole-in-the-Wall, and after

   How they met their end remains a riddle no historian has solved — there is still no evidence whether the pair lived or died in South America. The only clues left behind are a red dirt trail and four rocks where the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout cabin once stood, in the country above Kaycee.

   In bronze: Butch and Sundance – Got Your Back

7. 

   1916Rodeo

   They called him Jackson Sundown

   A Nez Perce horseman who as a youth was among the band that fled in 1877, and who in 1916 — in his fifties — won the bucking championship at the Pendleton Round-Up. The artist found him on a Crow Fair poster in King’s Saddlery, asked who he was, and went looking for the rest.

   In bronze: They Called Him Jackson Sundown

8. 

   c. 1918Emblem

   Red Wing, and a license plate

   First Sergeant George Ostrom rode up to Crow Agency, Montana, for a tough mount and came back with Red Wing. His commanding officer claimed the good-looking horse — then two black bear mascots wandered onto the parade ground, and rider and horse parted company. Neither knew the image would become the longest-lasting license plate in history.

   In bronze: This is Wyoming II

9. 

   EnduringBelief

   The shield and the vision

   A charging bison, an approaching arrow, a hail storm — the outcome of any of them could be altered by the skilled use of a mystical dream and a dried buffalo hide. Painted with scenes of what is to come, a shield protects its bearer today and brings him luck tomorrow.

   In bronze: The Vision

9 entries, drawn from the sculptures’ own records. Dates the records do not establish are left as eras rather than guessed at. The artist’s own chronology lives on the Timeline.