Wept of the Wish-Ton-Wish
Joseph Mozier
American, 1812–1870

Details
Title
Wept of the Wish-Ton-Wish
Artist/Maker
Joseph Mozier (American, 1812–1870)
Date
1865
Medium
Marble
Dimensions
52 x 18 x 18 inches
Credit
Gift of the West Foundation in honor of Gudmund Vigtel and Michael E. Shapiro
Accession #
2010.77
Joseph Mozier portrays Ruth, the main character in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish. It details the saga of a white woman who had been abducted as a child and raised by Narragansett Indians. Mozier dramatizes the moment when Ruth, now Narra-mattah, is transfixed by the sound of her birth mother’s voice. With this ambiguous, sentimental subject, Cooper and Mozier capitalized on the apprehensions and fascination of many Euro-Americans in the imagined intersections between Native and Western cultures.
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