The Last of Their Race

Source: Stanley, John Mix, The Last of Their Race, 1857, oil on canvas, Whitney Western Art Museum, Cody, WY, https://centerofthewest.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/5.75.jpg

Date: 1857

Text/Transcription:

John Mix Stanley (1814-1872) was born in the Fingerlakes region of New York and spent much of his early life painting signs and portraits. In the 1840s, he moved to the Southwest, where he traveled around focusing on and painting his new interest: Indigenous life. He exhibited his work throughout the country, notably at the Native American Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute in 1852. Over 200 of his pieces were lost in an 1865 fire at the Smithsonian. ‘The Last of Their Race,’ one of his most famous surviving works, evokes a popular thought of the time that eventually, there would be no Indigenous people left in the United States. This sentiment was rooted in the idea that the people of Indigenous nations were vanishing and should be memorialized as they were being forcibly removed from their land and murdered.