Following rumors of a gold finding in 1874, George Armstrong Custer led 1000 troops into the Black Hills. Their discovery of a small amount of gold on French Creek triggered a massive gold rush, and invading prospectors, in violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, clashed with the native tribes. In the resulting war, Crazy Horse emerged as a hero of the Lakota, leading them to victory at the Fetterman Fight and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, in which General Custer was slain. In the final days of the Black Hills War, Crazy Horse was murdered under a flag of truce by a US Army officer while attempting to negotiate a surrender.
The Crazy Horse Memorial on Thunderhead Mountain was proposed by Chief Henry Standing Bear, who was two years old during the Black Hills War. He saw the sculpture of Crazy Horse as a rebuttal to Mount Rushmore, an opportunity to show the white man, “that we have heroes too.” To execute the project, Standing Bear commissioned Korczak Ziolkowski, a renowned sculptor who’d worked for Gutzon Borglum on Mount Rushmore (before he was fired for picking a fistfight with Borglum’s son).
When Ziolkowski passed away in 1982, his family continued work on the monument. Once finished, the Crazy Horse Memorial will be the largest sculpture in the world. At the date of my visit, what was completed was the face, as well as the tunnel that will separate the body of the man from the head of his horse, outlined in white paint on the mountainside. Current work was focused on Crazy Horse’s left hand, the one pointing in response to the white man’s question, “Where are your lands now?”
The famous answer: “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”
Not all believe this sculpture is the proper legacy for Crazy Horse. After 69 years of slow progress the Ziolkowskis, who aren’t of native descent, have been accused of profiteering, of taking too long on purpose. But the sculptors say their deliberate speed is necessitated by irregularities in the mineral content of the mountain—it’s much harder to blow through iron than the other minerals which make up pegmatite granite. Still, dynamiting a holy site to impress it with the likeness of a man—some Lakota leaders say this goes against everything Crazy Horse fought for.
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This is the seventh post in a cross-country road trip series. To start from the beginning, click here!
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