James Earle Fraser's best known sculpture “The End of the Trail” has come to symbolize the decimation of the Native American population due to the westward expansion. In 1893, the year of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the 15 year old Fraser, then a student of the Art Institute, produced the first version of this bronze sculpture. Later the Art Institute modeled and cast the sculpture. A melancholic commentary on the vanishing Indian, the work portrays an exhausted Sioux drooping on his equally weary pony. Both rider and horse literally and figuratively have reached the end of the trail. This statue is reproduced in solid bronze, cast with a patina and then hand-rubbed to bring out detail and highlights. The statue is then mounted on a fine marble base with an etched brass plate.