Statue of Sarah Winnemucca gets new Capitol home

WASHINGTON -- In 2005, a 6-foot marble statue of Sarah Winnemucca was donated by Nevada for display in the U.S. Capitol. For three years, it sat near a side door entrance to the House of Representatives wing.

On Dec. 2, the statue of the 19th century Northern Paiute author and educator will go on display in a presumably more prominent location. It is among two dozen statues being moved into the new $600 million Capitol Visitors Center, where thousands of families and student groups will gather to begin tours of the landmark.

Over the past several weeks, Capitol workers have uprooted heavy stone likenesses from hallways around the Capitol and relocated them into the visitor center, which was built underground on the East Front across from the Supreme Court and Library of Congress.

"The statues selected to be moved are those that were most recently donated to the collection, and represent the diversity of our country," said chief building manager Stephen Ayers, the acting architect of the Capitol.

The visitors center is closed to the public until its December opening. A spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday the Sarah Winnemucca statue has been placed in Emancipation Hall, the centerpiece of the visitor center that was named in memory of the slaves who built much of the Capitol grounds from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s.

"It is the first place the visitors will come to when they enter so it is a pretty good location," spokesman Jon Summers said.

Benjamin Victor, the South Dakota artist who sculpted the Sarah Winnemucca statue and who unveiled it at a Capitol ceremony in March 2005, said he hopes it will be prominently displayed.

"I trust they will indeed place her well and that she will show well to the public for years to come," Victor said in an e-mail.

"I will always be honored personally to have the piece in the collection. I just hope for Sarah's sake that the placement will give her the exposure in our Nation's history -- and in the minds and eyes of visitors to the Capitol -- that she deserves."

Winnemucca lived from 1844 to 1891. She lobbied for the rights of American Indians forced onto reservations and tried to make peace with the white settlers who moved into Nevada. She was the first American Indian woman to write a book in English, and she opened a school for Paiute children in Lovelock.

Each state is invited to place two statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection. Nevada's second statue is of Patrick McCarran, a powerful U.S. senator during the 1930s and 1940s. The McCarran statue, which was donated in 1960, is not being relocated.