If you read travel reviews of Crazy Horse Monument (CHM) and Mt. Rushmore Memorial (MRM) you might conclude that when two or three people give their opinions, there ends up being four viewpoints! At first, I wondered, what’s not to like about these American icons in the Black Hills of South Dakota? I have visited both places and appreciated their unique greatness. Diving deeper into the monuments’ history, however, reveals some shadows that accompany the splendor of viewing amazing feats. That, too, is part of the tales of imperfect people who had faith–and dynamite–to remove mountains.
Crazy Horse Monument is privately operated by a nonprofit foundation. Its 87-feet high Indian face is remarkable—sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski’s uncompleted lifetime work, that is now carried on by a nonprofit foundation of family and friends. When completed, the monument will exhibit Crazy Horse (c. 1840-1877) mounted on his horse pointing to the beautiful Black Hills. This Oglala Lakota Chief, who died from an assassin bullet while under federal custody, is quoted to have said: “My lands are where my dead lie buried!” (Some native Americans grumble about the monument’s emerging pointing arm and hand. They say that in their cultures it is offensive to point. But this is not an opinion of consensus.)
The foundation announced recently it is coming up with a timeline for completing Crazy Horse, but at the rate the work is going, this huge endeavor won’t be finished for decades. In a visitor documentary, CHM emphasizes its pride in not accepting any government money to speed the project along. The work is tedious and challenging. After 67 years of labor one doesn’t want to blast off irreparable damage.
Still, farmer’s daughter that I am, I cannot understand why the workers don’t make hay while the sun is shining. Quitting time for the 10 professional sculpture workers is around 3:30 p.m. They can’t work many days due to weather conditions like lightning and ice. But the bottom line is these guys have “office hours.” I suppose, some of this is for safety and physical preservation, but it sure indicates there is no expediency in getting the job done. Whether the original vision can transfer to a third generation seems shaky.
Meanwhile, 16 miles northeast of CHM sits Mt. Rushmore Memorial (MRM). It depicts sixty-foot high faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. It is quite a sight, day or night. MRM was funded by the government. With a crew of 400 workers, it took 14 years to complete (1927-1941) and was headed by Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941)and his son Lincoln. One motivation for the workers was they had to climb Mt. Rushmore to punch in their time clocks! Korczak worked briefly on Mt. Rushmore, but was fired after he got in an argument with Lincoln.
The elder Borglum, since he was Korczak boss, is loosely connected to all three granite etched monuments in our country. A renowned sculptor, Borglum was approached in 1915 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to do a bust of General Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain, Georgia. Mormon-raised in Iowa,
Borglum, as an adult, was a temperamental artist, who believed in nativism: that is, the belief that native-born Americans, especially of Anglo-Saxon extraction, had superior rights to the “foreign-born. ” World War I delayed the Stone Mountain project, but Borglum didn’t lose any sleep in partnering with the KuKluxKlan to finance it after WWI. He made the first official carving on June 23, 1923. However, he couldn’t get along with his benefactors and left the project in 1925; his partially finished work was expunged and two other sculptors worked on and off of the carving until it was considered complete in 1972.
While Borglum was working on Stone Mountain, South Dakota historian Doane Robinson invited the sculptor to come to the Black Hills. Robinson envisioned an attraction of Wild West heroes, like Lewis and Clark, carved into the granite Needles of the hills. Borglum envisioned something bigger—a Shrine to Democracy. Immediately, the men, with South Dakota U.S. Senator Peter Norbeck, began to secure federal funding for the project. The story of the funding involves keeping vacationing President Calvin Coolidge in the state by secretly stocking the stream outside his cabin with trout! The fish did their job; President Coolidge left South Dakota in favor of Mt. Rushmore.
The site Borglum chose because of its good granite and southeast view was called “Six Grandfathers” by the Sioux. The Mount Rushmore name came from prominent NY lawyer Charles E. Rushmore, who was in the Black Hills on a 1885 prospecting expedition. The Black Hills (Paha Sapa) was a sacred place to the roaming Sioux tribes. An 1868 treaty had given the deeds of the land to the Sioux “in perpetuity.” That lasted six years because of the gold rush. Then in 1876 all Lakota Sioux were ordered to reservations. Chiefs Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Gall organized a resistance, which led to Custer’s death (1876), Wounded Knee (1890) and so many other travesties.
In March of 1941, Gutzon Borglum unexpectedly died, leaving his son, Lincoln Borglum, to finish the final details of MRM. However, with the country’s impending involvement in WWII, federal funding was pulled and Mount Rushmore was declared complete October 31, 1941. Even though it did not match Borglum’s original models of heads and waists, as far as the government was concerned, Mt. Rushmore was good enough. Millions of tourists agree.
Korczak (1908-1982) started Crazy Horse Memorial under the direction of Chief Henry Standing Bear (1874-1953) in 1948. According to CHM, Standing Bear desired a memorial for the Native American people to show,
“…the white man that the red man has great heroes as well.” He is said to have had visions that led him to Korczak (and he read newspaper accounts of the sculptor). Standing Bear, a cousin to Crazy Horse, had been educated at Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Indian Industrial School. His background gave him a bridge to communicate with whites and native Americans. Today, some Indians criticize Standing Bear’s initiative with Korczak, declaring that the Indian way is not to act independently but by tribal counsel (there’s that rule by committee again).
Korczak was the right man for Standing Bear’s vision. A young orphan of Polish immigrants who died in a car accident, Korczak was raised in New England as the only adopted child of an Irish American family. At CHM, there is much memorabilia from Korczak and wife Ruth’s New England lives, including a self-portrait of a young Korczak. As a young adult, Korczak took back his biological parents’ name. According to our bus tour guide, Korczak had even more empathy for what happened to native Americans, because he felt strongly about the suppression of his Polish people by the Russians after WWII. He and Ruth, who died last year, gave their lives to CHM. They raised their ten children there and are an incredible testament to what one family can do with a lifelong vision. It would make a great movie with the right screen writer and director.
CHM also has lots of Indian memorabilia in a beautiful information center. During my visit there, it was difficult to absorb the collection because it represents many tribes and doesn’t seem well organized. The gift shop offers a large collection of books about Indian and settlers’ history. CHM, in cooperation with universities, has a summer college program for native Americans. So far, over 130 students from 25 tribes and 16 states have completed this college internship. There is a CHM dream to have a native American medical research center. Like the monument, however, this is far from becoming a reality.
The people involved in creating Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse Monument had large dreams and sacrificed much to bring them to fruition. Although they didn’t accomplish what they set out to do, they created something amazing, with determination, giftedness, and hard work. As one sign says on the CHM property, “Never Forget Your Dreams.” I would add that reality molds our dreams in ways we don’t expect. The results are far from perfect, but they still can be powerful.
“By carving Crazy Horse, if I can give back to the Indian some of his pride and create a means to keep alive his culture and heritage, my life will have been worthwhile.”
–KORCZAK ZIOLKOWSKI / SCULPTOR