On a whim, 24-year-old college dropout Peter Wolf Toth—whose surname rhymes with "oath"—stopped along the California coast and began carving a giant head into a seaside cliff. When he returned the next day, a crowd had gathered. A local newspaper characterized the unfinished sculpture as an Indian head. In a 1989 interview, Toth acknowledged that he may have carved one subconsciously because he had always been interested in Native people.
After returning to his adopted hometown of Akron, Ohio, Toth carved a second head in the stump of a dead elm tree in a city park. He eventually conceived a mission to create a Native American sculpture in each state, calling the project the Trail of the Whispering Giants. He intended the works to draw attention to Native American history and to experiences that he felt paralleled his own childhood.
Except for his first sculpture in California, Toth carved the monuments from local wood. He described the Mandan figure as a composite representing North Dakota's eight Native nations. It has a craggy, Methuselah-ancient look similar to his other statues. After abandoning an initial attempt using a hollow, deteriorated tree in Jaycee Park, the Helbling family donated a healthy cottonwood nearby. The Mandan people had used cottonwood in building earthlodges. The completed sculpture was later treated with preservatives to protect it from the weather.
The sculpture was formally dedicated and presented to the people of North Dakota on November 24, 1981. Toth originally intended to place it at the Heritage Center in Bismarck, but delays associated with selecting a state-owned site led him to accept a location in southern Mandan. The Helbling family donated a corner of a business parking lot with the intention of transferring the land to the local park district.
Toth favored the publicly accessible location along the route to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near the Highway 1806 bridge across the Heart River and the Mandan village at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park.
Mandan's sculpture, the 39th in the series, originally stood 25 feet high, including its 3.5-foot base, and had a full feather at the center rear of its headdress. The octagonal concrete base was originally faced with brick. A vehicle struck it in 2013 and tore away the veneer. City staff rebuilt the plinth in a round form in 2014 and covered it with stacked stone. L&H Manufacturing refurbished and reinstalled the dedication plaque.
Most of the tall center feather fell during a storm in 2020. Rot was found at its base, possibly related to earlier damage. Mandan city staff removed the deteriorated wood and resealed the carving. The sculpture now retains a spray-shaped ornament on the headband and a stub of the former rear feather. Including its base, it stands just under 20 feet tall.
Toth was born in Hungary. His family was forced to relocate to Poland and, when he was nine, fled by foot and train to Yugoslavia during the 1956 uprising. They moved among refugee camps before immigrating to Ohio. He later compared those repeated relocations and experiences of violence and repression with those of many Native Americans. "My monuments are made to remind people of the contributions of the Indians of this country," Toth said, "Statues to honor the plight of the Native Peoples of North America."
Toth grew up watching his father carve wood. With some college training, although he considered himself self-taught, he created his sculptures primarily with a hammer and chisel. He consulted regional tribal members when developing their features and adornments, while describing each figure as his own composite conception of the area's Native people. "[It] is my concept of the Indians of ... the area ... [I] visualize an Indian within the log. It is a composite of all the native people of the state."
Local donors typically provided the wood and materials for each monument's base. Toth accepted no payment for his labor, intending the sculptures as gifts to his adopted country. He supported himself through odd jobs and the sale of small carvings made in the evenings. Municipal governments, park departments, chambers of commerce, and private individuals sometimes provided living expenses, materials, or services. He chronicled his life and the project in the book Indian Giver, periodically updating it through a fourth edition.
After completing the Mandan sculpture, Toth and his wife, Kathy, traveled to Alaska for his next carving. He completed his goal of placing a monument in all 50 states in May 1989. The Polynesian head in Hawaii was number 58 because several states had multiple statues and Canada had already received two. The series ultimately included 73 monuments in the United States and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario. Toth carved a 74th monument in Hungary to honor King Stephen I.
The Mandan Historical Society acknowledges Mayor Tim Helbling, who provided photographs and information about the 2013 damage and the City of Mandan's maintenance of the monument.