Native Americans in Art

This statue of Chief Standing Bear was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Nebraska in 2019.

Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca tribe was the central figure of an 1879 court case that established that Native Americans are "persons" under the law and are entitled to the same rights as anyone else in the nation.

This painting depicts Christopher Columbus and members of his crew on a beach in the West Indies, newly landed from his flagship Santa Maria on October 12, 1492. The island landing was the first landfall of their expedition to find a westward route from Europe to China, Japan and perhaps unknown lands. American neoclassicist painter John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) was commissioned by Congress in June 1836 to paint the Landing of Columbus for the Capitol Rotunda. It was installed in the Rotunda by early January 1847.

The center figure is America, who stands with an eagle at her side and the sun at her back. On the right, a woodsman, hunter, Indian chief, Indian mother and child, and Indian grave represent the early days of America. On the left the diversity of human endeavor is suggested by the soldier, the merchant, the two youths, the schoolmaster and child, and the mechanic. Completing this side of the tympanum are sheaves of wheat, symbolic of fertility, and an anchor, symbolic of hope; these elements are in contrast with the grave at the opposite end of the tympanum.

This painting depicts Christopher Columbus and members of his crew on a beach in the West Indies, newly landed from his flagship Santa Maria on October 12, 1492. The island landing was the first landfall of their expedition to find a westward route from Europe to China, Japan and perhaps unknown lands. American neoclassicist painter John Vanderlyn (1775-1852) was commissioned by Congress in June 1836 to paint the Landing of Columbus for the Capitol Rotunda. It was installed in the Rotunda by early January 1847.

Above each of the four Rotunda doors in the U.S. Capitol are scenes from the history of the American Colonies carved in relief into the sandstone walls. The three sculptors who decorated the Rotunda were employed during the rebuilding of the Capitol after the fire of 1814.

This statue of Po'pay was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by New Mexico in 2005.

This statue of Sequoyah was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Oklahoma in 1917.

William Henry Powell's dramatic and brilliantly colored canvas was the last of the eight large historical paintings in the Rotunda commissioned by the Congress. It shows Spanish conquistador and explorer Hernando De Soto (1500–1542), riding a white horse and dressed in Renaissance finery, arriving at the Mississippi River at a point below Natchez on May 8, 1541. De Soto was the first European documented to have seen the river.

This statue of Sarah Winnemucca was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Nevada in 2005.

Thomas U. Walter's 1859 cross-section drawing of the new Dome (constructed 1855-1863) shows a recessed belt atop the Rotunda walls with relief sculpture.

This painting depicts the ceremony in which Pocahontas, daughter of the influential Algonkian chief Powhatan, was baptized and given the name Rebecca in an Anglican church. It took place in 1613 or 1614 in the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement on the North American continent. Pocahontas is thought to be the earliest native convert to Christianity in the English colonies; this ceremony and her subsequent marriage to John Rolfe helped to establish peaceful relations between the colonists and the Tidewater tribes.