Days numbered for decaying Native American statue

LACONIA — Time appears to have run out for a huge wooden sculpture in Opechee Park depicting an American Indian and called Keewakwa Abenaki Keenabeh, or "The Defiant One.”

The 34-year-old statue has been ravaged by rot and insects, has a pole propping it up from the back and is surrounded by a fence.

City Manager Scott Myers said the safest path is to have it disassembled and removed. No date was immediately set.

“We are at the point right now where we need to take that statue down,” he said at the Monday night City Council meeting. “We will look to dismantle when conditions allow.”

Nobody on the council objected.

The alternative would be to try to remove it in one piece, but that could cost more than $7,000, and the statue could fall apart in the process, Myers said. Restoration, if it is even possible, could cost a like amount.

The 36-foot, 12-ton red oak piece, created by Peter Wolf Toth, depicts the face and headdress of a Native American man.

“We may be able to take the back part off so the face could be salvaged, but no guarantees,” Myers said.

Councilor Bob Hamel said he and the late Councilor Armand Bolduc took steps to try to preserve the wood in past years, but Hamel said it’s clear the sculpture has now reached the end of its days.

“At some point, a tree becomes sawdust, and that’s where this is heading,” he said. “I just lost a maple that was 300 or 400 years old. It came down in the last windstorm. It has a lifespan.”

Problems with the statue and ideas for saving it have been discussed among city officials for more than two years.

Money raised in a drive to preserve the statue was not sufficient.

Toth has done similar statues in every state as part of his “Whispering Giants” series.

He fled his native Hungary as a child. He has said he views his art work as a gift to America in return for the gift of freedom he received from this country.