“. . . Calumet is a town in Indiana in relation to Chicago and I was struck by that coincidence…then I went into heroics and The Calumet is a heroic painting. It isn’t about geography, it’s about Longfellow and the Hiawatha and the continent’s first citizens and again a great tragedy.”
— Robert Indiana
Excerpt from Robert Indiana, interview by Susan Elizabeth Ryan, Ph.D., Vinalhaven, ME, November 14, 1991 (Robert Indiana: Figures of Speech Archive, 1987-2005)