James Earl Fraser depicts the president, Theodore Roosevelt, seated high astride a horse, flanked by a Native American man and an African man standing below. Although this image depicts Roosevelt as sympathetic toward Native Americans due to the noble depiction of the man, it was actually the artist who was the sympathetic one. Fraser was exposed to frontier life and witnessed the mass movement of Native Americans from their land onto reservations. The statue has been linked with the image of the American Museum of Natural History and for decades has been seen by many as a problematic depiction of racial hierarchy.
