Indian Hunter

Indian Hunter is a bronze sculpture in Central Park depicting a young Indigenous hunter standing with his hunting dog at his side. The figure rises about 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall and rests on a polished Rockport granite base.

This bronze was unveiled in Central Park in 1869 and was the first public sculpture by an American artist installed there. Sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward created it after travels to the Dakota Territory in the early 1860s.

The sculpture shows a young Indigenous hunter and his dog in a moment of readiness for the hunt, capturing a relationship between person and animal that visitors can observe as they walk past.

The sculpture stands along Central Park pathways and is easily accessible to visitors walking through the park. Maintenance is handled regularly by the Central Park Conservancy to preserve the bronze.

Ward based this work on direct observation of Indigenous peoples and their practices during fieldwork in the Dakota Territory. His firsthand research gave the sculpture an authenticity that was uncommon for artistic works of this period.