We return in the morning to do the audio tour and walk around Mount Rushmore up close. It was nice we were here yesterday evening after everything was closed because there were significantly less people. It’s kind of crazy on a midweek day in October how many people are here. I mean I guess we are, but still….
Can you name the 4 Presidents featured on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial? And guess why they were picked to be a part of this memorial?
Mount Rushmore National Memorial was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum. The idea came from a historian, Doane Robinson, to promote tourism in South Dakota. He originally wanted American West heroes such as Lewis & Clark and Buffalo Bill Cody, but Borglum though Presidents would have wider appeal. He started the project in 1927 and the memorial was finished in October 1941. Unfortunately Borglum died in March 1941 so he was not there to see the the project to completion. His son Lincoln completed the project. Originally it was supposed to display the presidents to their waist, but due to lack of funding and the fact that Gutzon died, it remained the way it is today.
President George Washington. This was an easy pick. He was our 1st president. He was president from 1789-1897. He represented the nation’s ”birth”.
President Abraham Lincoln was also an easy pick. Borglum was a big fan of President Lincoln. He even named his first son after him. Lincoln is our 16th President from 1861-1865. President Lincoln was to represent the “preservation” of our country during the Civil War.
Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd President. He was picked to represent the “growth” of our country. 1801-1809.
Theodore Roosevelt. Our 26th president. 1901-1909. The most controversial figure for the memorial. He was a fairly recent president and there was a bit of controversy as whether not he should have been placed in the memorial. The crux of the scandal was that Teddy Roosevelt was good friends with the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. According to the audio tour, he was picked to represent the “development” of our country.
We left a giant rock memorial that had been completed to go to a rock memorial that was in the beginning stages of its completion, the Crazy Horse Memorial just about 20 miles away also in the Black Hills.
There was a lot of initial controversy over Mount Rushmore. It is located in the Black Hills. (I was recently told anywhere you see ponderosa pines, you are in the black hills). The Black Hills were originally gifted to the Lakota people via the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, but the U.S. took it back in 1876 after they found gold there. The U.S. then deciding to put giant faces of U.S. Presidents was very difficult to the Lakota people for 2 reasons, 1. it was on land “taken away” from them and subsequently heroes of American culture that forced the indigenous people from their land was erected, but even more so 2. the “Black Hills” in particular are considered sacred ground.
This is the part of history that I have never been aware of or cared to seek out before, but grateful for this journey to be able to see beauty in all the ways. There is beauty in seeing this rock sculpture as a work of art. Because I feel like it is…a work of art in itself And what a feat. But there is also beauty (albeit the sad parts of beauty) in the understanding of history, the background, and the controversy.
So we went to the memorial honoring Crazy Horse, a Native American, and guess what, controversy there too. In response to Mount Rushmore a Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear commissioned Korczak Ziolkowski to carve the Crazy Horse monument in 1948. “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.” It would feature Crazy Horse on his horse pointing to his lands which are “my lands are where my dead lie buried.” Crazy Horse’s family feels that Standing Bear never had the right to ask Ziolkowski to do this and the monument is a “desecration of the landscape and environment of the Black Hills, and of the ideals of Crazy Horse himself”. In addition, Crazy Horse was very aloof and humble and made a point to never having his picture taken. “…will you imprison my shadow as well?…”.
Crazy Horse is one of the most notable Native Americans of his time. He was never a chief, but was a great warrior of the Lakota and very much respected. He has been credited to the warrior who led the defeat of the 7th cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn and along with Sitting Bull took up arms agains the U.S. Army to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people. “…his life shows how great he was, because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because [though] he may have surrendered, … he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never captured. His dislike of the oncoming civilization was prophetic. Unlike many people all over the world, when he met white men he was not diminished by the encounter.”
At first the Native Americans were split about the project, but because of the for profit business the Ziolkowski family has made of the monument, the lack of Native Americans working at the site and museum, most feel as though the family is no longer honoring Crazy Horse, but profiting from him. The project started back in 1948 and is very far from completion. The site is owned entirely by the Ziolkowski family, is run as a non-profit, and no money being donated to the local tribes.
Once completed it will be the 2nd largest statue in the world measuring at 563’ high by 643’ wide. Crazy Horse’s fade will he 83’ high. (The heads at Mount Rushmore are 60’ tall). Beyond the controversy it was neat to see it in its initial stage and and I will come back in another 30 years to see where it’s done.
We have more to learn about Crazy Horse and the Native American tribes of this area that is for certain…so forgive me…because we are learning as we are going…and its A LOT of information to take in.