John Sutter statue, days after being defaced, no longer stands at Sacramento hospital
The statue of white settler and colonizer John Sutter outside the hospital that bears his name was removed Monday, as protests against police brutality have reignited calls to tear down monuments that honor controversial, racist and unsavory figures.
On Monday afternoon, a half-dozen workers chiseled and drilled into the rock pedestal propping up the statue outside Sutter Health Medical Center that memorializes John Sutter, one of the first white settlers and colonizers in the Sacramento Valley whose problematic treatment of Native Americans has been the subject of debate among historians.
The statue, overlooking Sutter’s Fort at 28th and L streets, was vandalized last week with red paint.
“Out of respect for some community members’ viewpoints, and in the interest of public safety for our patients and staff,” Sutter Health decided to remove the donated statue, a company spokesman said Monday.
“There are important conversations happening across the country about the appropriate representation of statues and monuments, and we look forward to listening to and participating in future conversations about how our own community may display artwork from the different communities and individuals that have played important roles in Sacramento’s history,” the spokesman said.
Ida Rodriguez, a member of the Statewide Coalition Against Racist Symbols, has been calling on state and local officials to tear down monuments that glorify figures who abused American Indians. She said the statue of Sutter “should’ve been taken down a long time ago.”
“He’s a racist, he’s a murderer, and he enslaved thousands of Native Americans,” Rodriguez said.
The 8-foot-high, one-ton, $130,000 statue was created in 1987 and donated to then-Sutter General Hospital by the United Swiss Lodge to commemorate “a man of vision and compassion,” according to the statue’s inscription.
Sutter was a Swiss immigrant credited with building Sutter’s Fort and founding New Helvetia, an early settlement built near the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers. His son, John Sutter Jr., later founded Sacramento.
The origins of Sutter Health is tied to John Sutter as well — its first hospital was named after its neighbor, Sutter’s Fort, which cared for Gold Rush pioneers as Sacramento’s first hospital, according to a press release by the hospital system.
But Sutter has been a controversial figure for decades. An article by the History Channel described Sutter as a “shrewd businessman” who “enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and a makeshift militia with which he defended his territory.”
“The Capt. (Sutter) keeps 600 to 800 Indians in a complete state of Slavery,” wrote settler James Clyman in 1846 when he visited Sutter’s Fort.
As workers drilled into the rock pedestal Monday afternoon, Bill George, president of the Sacramento Historical Society, said he was disappointed to see the statue go.
“I’m always sad to see a part of our history removed,” George said. “I can understand the view that these statues should not be here, but John Sutter was an extremely important person, not only in the history of Sacramento, but the history of Northern California but the United States and the Western migration.”
In response to criticism about Sutter’s treatment of Native Americans, George said “you have to look at the context and the era in which it happened.” He added historians generally agree Sutter “treated them better than his contemporaries.”
The removal comes after renewed conversations nationwide about removing monuments for controversial historical figures. Recent protests sparked by the death of George Floyd by a police officer have called attention to Confederate monuments in particular, with many arguing that the statues do more to glorify America’s racist past of slavery rather than mark history or heritage.
In some states, protesters have vandalized or broken down Confederate statues by force, while some cities have proactively taken down monuments.
In Sacramento, the statue of John Sutter was lifted off the pedestal around 3 p.m. as a couple dozen people looked on and cheered. The statue was later loaded onto a trailer, with the figure’s head wrapped in a blanket.
This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 4:22 PM.