The Indian statue, City Park, Denver, Colorado

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Few Denver parks drew as many visitors around 1906 as City Park, and this statue, which the record ties to the Native peoples of Colorado, gave the park a monument with a distinct subject. The photograph is a Detroit Photographic Company view, part of a large commercial series of American scenes sold to tourists and collectors in the early 1900s. Those views, often made by the company's photochrom process, show how cities presented themselves to visitors in the years before the First World War. Commemorative statues of Native figures were common in American parks of this era, and the image records a civic choice about how the city wanted its history remembered.

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