Ear: Toth

It would be hard not to notice the 18-foot high cedar Indian head statue on the east side of the Astoria roundabout. So how did it get there?

Astorian Ed Johnson met Hungarian artist Peter Wolf Toth when he was teaching summer classes in Reno, Nevada, in the 1980s, and Toth was carving statues in the city park.

That was when Toth told Ed about his Trail of the Whispering Giants project, which entailed putting a statue honoring Native Americans in every state. Oregon didn’t have one — yet.

When Ed got back home from Reno, he started a letter writing campaign to invite Toth to Astoria to carve a Whispering Giant here, beginning with then-mayor Edith Henningsgaard Miller.

Toth accepted, and stayed at Joe Herman‘s (who did the rock work around the base). Carved from a giant log over several months, Ikala Nawan, or Man Who Fishes, honors the tribes of the North Coast, and is No. 57 in the series. It was dedicated in 1987; Johnson family photos are shown.

Toth did not get paid for his work, since he considers the Whispering Giants a gift to his adopted country. By the way, there’s another giant in Hillsboro, Kno-Tah, No. 56, also carved in 1987, and another was in Vancouver, Washington, which has disappeared.

So what is Toth doing now? He has completed 74 statues, including in all 50 states, in several Canadian provinces and in Europe, although several are now deteriorating or missing. He has a small roadside gallery in Edgewater, Florida, which RoadsideAmerica.com says “appears to be overflowing with art.”