An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States Ortiz

"Indian Country" 161

Without redress for their collective land rights under the claims
court, the Pueblos had no choice but to seek federal Indian trust
status. After they lost in their first attempt, finally in r9r3 the US Su­
preme Court reversed the earlier decision and declared the Pueblos
wards of the fe deral government with protected trust status, stating:
"They are essentially a simple, uninformed, inferior people."48

At the beginning of the twentieth century, sculptor James Earle

Fraser unveiled the monumental and iconic sculpture The End of

the Trail, which he had created exclusively for the triumphal r9r5

Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, Califor­

nia. The image of the near naked, exhausted, dying Indian mounted

on his equally exhausted horse proclaimed the final solution, the

elimination of the Indigenous peoples of the continent. The follow­

ing year, Ishi, the California Ya ni who had been held captive for five

years by anthropologists who studied him, died and was proclaimed

"the last Indian." Dozens of other popular images of "the vanishing

Indian" were displayed during this period. The film industry soon

kicked in, and Indians were killed over and over on screens viewed

by millions of children, including Indian girls and boys.

With utter military triumph on the continent, the United States

then set out to dominate the world, but the Indigenous peoples re­

mained and persisted as the "American Century" proceeded.