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Show World's Largest Tepee . By CARLTON CULMSEE - (EDITORIAL) Who is the greatest, hero of Utah history? He must be a savage named Massasoit who lived in New England three centuries ago, for a huge statue of him stands in the place of highest honor in the state. Yes, that noble pile known as the state capitol, which unites the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, and elements of modern culture, is the shrine for a large brown boy in a breech clout. Heroic in proportions, Massasoit towers up into the rotunda. Although he never came within 2,000 miles of Utah while he was alive, he is very much with us in bronze, several times life-size. Tourists must feel perplexed at seeing Massasoit in Utah's capitol. But as far as I have observed, the legislators and officials, the office workers and janitors, the school children and all the rest who swarm through the structure never appear puzzled. They simply take for granted this clouted Cape Codder who is alone and far from home. Usually old Massasoit is ignored. Of course people sometimes read the inscription on his pedestal: "Massasoit, Great Sachem of the Wampanoags,, Protector and Preserver of the Pilgrims." Some admire the splendor of the sculpture, some are filled with a mild, uncritical wonderment. A confidence man who had made my acquaintance and wanted me to believe him a naive, retired farmer, commented admiringly, "My, they grew 'em big them days, didn't they?" But mostly Massasoit is a forgotten man. Massasoit is a symbol of art in Utah. True, we justly pride ourselves on our music and spend relatively large sums to encourage it. But when it comes to sculpture and painting and architecture most of us pay lip-service to Culture out of habit, not out of real appreciation for its power. We have little feeling for what good art can do, and does do, to shape character and strengthen and elevate the spirit; and just as little indignation at what bad art can do and does do to stultify or weaken us. We regard it as a pastime or a frivolity, not as the result of the high striving of the human spirit to know (Continued on Page Two) WORLD'S LARGEST TEPEE (Continued 'from Page One) and to express itself. So the savage from the rockbound coast of New England stands huge but ignored in the rotunda of the capitol. My suggestion is that we remove him from this utterly inappropriate place. This is not the opening gun in a campaign to send Massasoit back to Massachusetts. By all means let us keep him. He was wrought by one of Utah's few top-rank sculptors, and we have all too few examples of fine sculpture in the state. But let us put the Sachem in some gallery or some spot where he will be comprehensible as a work of art and will not be regarded as an evidence of a lack of a sense of fitness. Springville is the most logical place for this statue. This town has an excellent gallery with an outstanding collection of paintings and the nucleus of a sculpture collection on Indian subjects. But to have this aborigine looming up into that neo-classical dome of the capitol is a grotesque incongruity. in-congruity. He is neither . Democrat nor Republican, neither statesman nor politician, neither pioneer nor greeter of pioneers. He is so far from home, so far from having any reason for being there! To have him there is just as fitting as to have a statue of John Calvin or William Penn instead of the present one at the intersection of Main and South Temple. Or, to have Cortez instead of Father Escalante on the "This is the Place" monument, and Leif Erickson instead of Jim Bridger, and Pocahontas instead of Brigham Young. Dean of Arts and Sciences, Utah State Agricultural College |