This poem ran in the Oregon Journal to welcome Alice Cooper’s Sacajawea to Portland’s Washington Park.

In yonder city, glory crowned,
Where art will vie with art to keep
The memories of those heroes green,
The flush of conscious pride should leap
To see her fair memorial stand
Among the honored names that be
Her face toward the sunset, still
Her finger lifted toward the sea!

No history research required here beyond Portland’s parks site.

A bronze statue of Sacajawea, the heroic Shoshone Indian woman who helped lead the Lewis and Clark explorers through the mountains of the west, is located near the Chiming fountain.

Mounted on a rough boulder, it was first unveiled on July 7, 1905, at the Lewis and Clark Centennial. Among those present at the unveiling were Susan B. Anthony, Abigail Scott Duniway, and Eva Emery Dye.

The project was promoted and paid for by subscriptions solicited nationwide by a group of Portland women headed by Mrs. Sarah Evans.

The committee commissioned Alice Cooper of Denver, at that time an understudy of Lorado Taft, to sculpt the statue. It was cast in New York and required more than 20 tons of Oregon copper, donated by Dr. Henry Waldo Coe of Portland.

In April 1906, the statue was placed in its current location in Washington Park. Its inscription reads, “Erected by the women of the United States in memory of the only woman in the Lewis & Clark expedition, and in honor of the pioneer mother of Oregon.”