Artist Ed Galloway created this visionary art environment between 1937 and 1963 as a monument to the American Indian, building twelve structures on the land where he and his wife Villie lived for twenty-six years almost entirely with his own hands. Its Native American motif speaks to Oklahoma’s history as Indian Territory before statehood in 1907 and to the social realities of western expansion, including the Trail of Tears ending in the land now called Oklahoma. Galloway believed the original inhabitants of this land should be honored and remembered, and his monumental sculptures express that reverence for Native America while also reflecting common misconceptions of the era by presenting Native cultures as more homogenous than they were. The structures are adorned with Native American portraits and wildlife motifs and mimic the totem poles of the Haida and Tlingit peoples of present-day Alaska, while the eleven-sided Fiddle House was said to be modeled after the Navajo hogan. Among the identified bas-relief portraits are Sitting Bull, Quanah Parker, Chief Joseph, and Geronimo at the top of the main totem, and a large arrowhead is said to include dedications to Oklahoma’s Five Tribes: the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Muscogee (Creek). The largest totem rises from the back of an enormous sandstone turtle evoking Turtle Island, or North America, and the ninety-foot concrete structure contains more than 200 hand-sculpted bas-relief creatures and Native American portraits. It is estimated to contain twenty-eight tons of cement, six tons of steel, and one hundred tons of sand and rock, and took Galloway eleven years to complete using sand from a nearby creek bed along with scrap metal and house paint gathered from neighbors, making the park both an act of imagination and a work shaped by community collaboration.

Photo: Jim Argo Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society (23389.63.214) (PD)

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller

Photo: Duane and Tracy Marsteller

Foyil, Oklahoma · USA