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• Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp

• John Free, Jr.

“Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp” by John Free Sr. can be seen on the ON campus between the Office of the Chiefs and the old Superintendent’s House and will be on loan until the end of the year. LOUISE RED CORN/Osage News Without much notice, a massive bronze statue on a trailer was parked in between the Office of the Chiefs and the old superintendent’s house on the Osage Nation campus – just in time for the Osage sesquicentennial celebration that is set for Oct. 22.

The sculpture is familiar to many in a much more diminutive size: Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp by John Free Sr. has long graced one of the pocket parks on Kihekah in downtown Pawhuska, and another one more recently was placed in the hotel lobby of the Osage Casino in Tulsa.

Alas, the stunning monumental-sized bronze is not to grace the Osage campus for long. In fact, it’s never even going to be unloaded from its trailer, said John Free Jr., who cast the sculpture at the Bronze Horse Foundry about three years ago for Hugh Pickens, a renaissance man from Ponca City who has invested heavily in Native American and other art along with his now-deceased wife, Dr. S.J. Pickens, who was a psychiatrist, civil rights warrior, advocate for the arts, and collector of turquoise and other Native American jewelry.

Free said that the sculpture will remain where it is on the trailer (which has a hitch lock, so don’t get any crazy ideas) until the end of the year, after which it will be moved to Woolaroc, where it will remain for a few months as part of an exhibit for that museum’s new Pickens Gallery. After that, it is to travel to Tonkawa to be displayed at the just-opened Pickens Learning Commons at Northern Oklahoma College, where it will join a 120-foot mural by Osage artist Yatika Fields that was also commissioned by Pickens and donated to the school.

“Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp” by John Free Sr. can be seen on the ON campus between the Office of the Chiefs and the old Superintendent’s House through the end of the year. LOUISE RED CORN/Osage News Pickens could not be reached on Oct. 18, but he is an avid collector of art who is building the Pickens Museum on U.S. 60 west of his hometown of Ponca City and now displays works of art at NOC, Woolaroc and Ponca City’s City Central.