Rapture  by Willy Whitten

Issued January 1995
18 inches tall (45.7 cm)
Legends Special Commission

The late 1880s marked the end of the Plains Indians' traditional way of life. With their ancestral hunting grounds lost to white expansion and the great buffalo herds gone, many tribes turned to the ghost dance for spiritual deliverance.

This piece captures the moment when the ghost dancer has just reached exaltation and his spirit and body are lifted to the heavens. The figure stands on a half-globe and his foot is on the sacred grounds of the Black Hills, today's South Dakota region.

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