Type Sculpture Dimensions 7.6 m (25 ft) Created 1987 Year 1987 | Medium Wood Artist Peter Wolf Toth Material Wood | |
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Location Hillsboro, Oregon, United States | ||
Chief Kno-Tah is a wooden statue located in Shute Park in Hillsboro in the U.S. state of Oregon. Carved by Peter Wolf Toth, it was the 56th Native American head in his Trail of the Whispering Giants series. The 25-foot (7.6 m) tall, 250,000-pound (110,000 kg) statue was the first of two carved by Toth in Oregon. Completed in 1987, the statue was named in honor of a chief of the local Tualatin Indians.
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History
Toth selected Shute Park in Hillsboro for his first sculpture of a Native American head in Oregon in July 1987. Toth wanted a location in the Portland metropolitan area to allow easy access for a large population to see the statue that would include features drawn from Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce in northeastern Oregon. Part of his Trail of the Whispering Giants series, he carved a statue in each U.S. state with Oregon as the second to last state. Sculpting began that month on a log of Douglas fir, Oregon’s state tree. The 250,000-pound (110,000 kg) log was donated by Stimson Lumber Company and delivered free of charge by local companies.
On August 13, the partly carved log was lifted onto its base at the park along Tualatin Valley Highway by J. L. Craigg Construction. Toth carved it by hand, except for the use of an electric sander. The statue was later treated with wood preservatives and fiberglass was applied to the top to protect against the elements.
On September 25, 1987, the sculpture was dedicated as Chief Kno-Tah in a ceremony featuring Native American singing and dancing. About 400 attended the ceremony on a day proclaimed as United American Indian Day by Hillsboro mayor Shirley Huffman. City and county civic leaders as well as local Native American leaders spoke at the ceremony. Kno-Tah was the leader of the Tualatin band of the Kalapuya group of Native Americans when that band signed a treaty with the government to cede their ancestral home on the Tualatin Plains to pioneer settlers. Students at the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon, selected the name from submissions from local residents.
The 25-foot (7.6 m) tall statue was Toth’s 56th in his series of Native American heads. Toth donated the statue to the state as he did with each in the series. A plaque on the base was later added. After completing the statue, he carved a second Oregon one in Astoria later that year to honor coastal tribes. Until 1996, a picture of the sculpture was used by the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce for their postcards. The image was replaced with a collage featuring the Old Scotch Church, a vineyard, and a high-tech clean room. In February 2017, the top of the carving was damaged when a wind storm blew an adjacent tree into the front side, shearing off part of the head and causing the entire statue to lean.
Details
Chief Kno-Tah is made of Douglas fir and is 25 feet (7.6 m) tall, and 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter (19 cubic metres, 9.9 tonnes). The concrete base is 2 feet (0.61 m) tall and 8 feet (2.4 m) in diameter. It is part of a series titled Trail of the Whispering Giants. The figure features braided hair with feathers protruding from the back. The hand-carved statue is located in Shute Park along Tualatin Valley Highway in the south-central area of Hillsboro. Sculptor Peter Wolf Toth is a Hungarian born refugee whose family settled in Ohio when he was 11. In 1971, he started sculpting while in California, and a few years later began his series to carve a head of a Native American in each U.S. state. He completed that in 1988, and then moved on to Canada. The city’s parks and recreation department owns the statue.