World's Tallest Indian

Skowhegan, Maine

Skowhegan's big brave is easily the World's Tallest Indian, though he is too skinny to be the World's Largest Indian (height x radius squared x pi).

He is 62 feet tall atop a 20-foot-tall base. He appears to be carved out of raw pine trees, with legs like telephone poles. The World's Tallest Indian was erected in 1969 in observance of Maine's 150th anniversary, created by Bernard Langlais (1921-1977), a sculptor from Old Town who attended the local art school.

The statue is dedicated to Maine's Abnaki Indians, who are known to have helped the Pilgrims make it through a couple of bad winters. In their heyday, the Abnaki dressed even more comfortably than the statue's crate-like attire suggests. No tomahawk-waving Mohawk with a mohawk here -- this Abnaki gentlemen is content to clutch a fish trap resembling too-skinny scaffolding.

The engraved wooden sign at the statue's base reads: "Dedicated to the Maine Indians, the first people to use these lands in peaceful ways." On the back of the base is the message: "Copyright 1969, Skowhegan Hospitality Association."

A popular 1970s postcard helped to make this out-of-the-way Indian widely known -- but subsequent decades of Maine weather beat up the Indian, leaving him barely recognizable and hidden behind tall trees. The town rallied to his aid, and a year-long restoration project saw the Indian returned to like-new condition on Sept. 13, 2014.