Native Americans in Art

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.

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 King Kamehameha I was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Hawaii in 1969. 

This statue of Sakakawea was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by North Dakota in 2003.

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.

This statue of Chief Washakie was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Wyoming in 2000.