 in 1980 |
 in 1997 |
 in 1997 |
 in 1997 |
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in 1980 |
in 1997 |
in 1997 |
in 1997 |
CRAZY HORSE, S.D. -- During the 1930s, Chief Henry Standing Bear watched in silence as faces of great white leaders emerged from the ancient granite of Mount Rushmore in his ancestral Sioux homeland: George Washington in 1930, Thomas Jefferson in 1936, Abraham Lincoln in 1937 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1939. Lincoln in 1937 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1939. Finally, in the fall of 1939, the Sioux leader wrote an appeal to a Connecticut sculptor who had worked on the monument: "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes, too."
Half a century and 8 million tons of rock after the sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, acted on that appeal, the defiant eyes of Chief Crazy Horse once again glare across the Black Hills of South Dakota. One year from now, on June 3, 1998, sculptors plan to dedicate an 87-foot-high version of his fearsome visage, a monument higher than the Great Sphinx of Egypt and higher than the heads of Mount Rushmore, 17 miles away. When fully completed, perhaps 50 years from now, the sculpture of the Indian warrior astride his stallion is to be the largest mountain carving in the world. Crazy Horse's outstretched arm will be longer than a football field. His finger, pointing over the Black Hills, will be larger than a city bus. Overall, the complete sculpture will rise higher than the Washington Monument. In a historical twist, this ambitious monument is being blasted and jack-hammered out of a mountain ridge five miles north of Custer, a town named after Gen. George Custer. After the Civil War, Custer helped open the Sioux lands of the Black Hills to gold miners. In 1876, Custer was killed by Crazy Horse's warriors.
Ziolkowski's widow, Ruth, and most of her 10 children still toil on the project, 15 years after her husband's death. When she was asked why, she said, "Korczak used to say, 'I will give the few remaining Indians a little pride.' " For decades, the words used locally to describe the Ziolkowskis and their Crazy Horse project have ranged from kitsch to kooks to worse. "Fifty years ago, attitudes about Native Americans were totally different than today," said the 71-year-old widow, whose children recently celebrated her 50th anniversary here in typical style: with a series of nighttime dynamite blasts on the mountain. She said, "People figured Rushmore was enough, why do we need this one?" The Ziolkowskis were also seen as eccentric for refusing offers of government money over the years. With Mrs. Ziolkowski setting the example by refusing to cash her $1-a-year federal paycheck as postmistress of Crazy Horse, the family has insisted that the project be entirely paid for with private money, largely donations and gate admissions.
After decades of skepticism, ridicule is giving way to recognition. With interest growing in Indian history, paid attendance last year hit 1.2 million, almost half the level of Mount Rushmore. On June 7, 13,000 visitors hiked to the statue's nearly completed face, a record number for the annual, six-mile hike. For safety reasons, the public is kept at least two miles away from the statue the rest of the year. Some skeptics call the Crazy Horse statue a makework project for the sculptor's children. Given past rates of progress, it may be a project for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren as well.
The project began on June 3, 1948. As five Sioux veterans of the Little Big Horn watched from the best seats, Ziolkowski set off the first dynamite charge. During 35 years of labor, Ziolkowski, a self-taught sculptor, was injured repeatedly. Although he refused government aid, Ziolkowski dreamed of a monument far larger than Mount Rushmore, which was paid for by taxpayers in the 1930s. While the four presidents at Mount Rushmore stand out in high bas-relief, the Crazy Horse Memorial is to be in the round -- a mountain carved down to a man on horseback that can be seen from all sides. As an informational video tells visitors, the statue, when finished, will be almost twice the height of the 305-foot Statue of Liberty. A horse's nostril will be large enough to hold a five-room house. At the base of the monument, plans call for a round, hogan-shaped Indian museum and a university and medical training center for Indians.
After Ziolkowski's death in 1982, the family-controlled Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, which owns the mountain and controls the carving, decided to set a deadline of 1998 for the completion of the face. To build a base of support for the project, the family started a Crazy Horse Grass Roots Club, which now has 20,000 members nationwide. In the past two decades, about 1,000 South Dakota Indians have received grants from the Crazy Horse Memorial Native American Scholarship Program, a fund maintained by corporate donations. Last fall, the Ziolkowskis opened the Native American Education and Cultural Center, a pine and granite building. Besides providing space for community college credit classes, the center offers lectures on Indian issues, exhibitions of traditional Indian skills and free display space to Indians selling crafts. "I think it's pretty neat," said Alice Whitehorse Toncy, a Navajo artisan who was selling turquoise bracelets and earrings on a recent morning. "All the Native Americans come in free. It makes you proud to be a Native American."
Some Indians question why a piece of nature is being blasted apart to create an image of a man. "How can we tear up a mountain for a statue?" asked John Yellow Bird Steele, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council in Pine Ridge, about 100 miles east of here. He said that the council supported "the overall concept" but also noted, "No one knows what Crazy Horse looked like because he would not allow anyone to photograph him." Gregg Bourland, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Council, also questioned the need for a statue of the great leader."You don't need to carve up a whole mountain to remember these things about him," Bourland said from his reservation home. "You can look at a beautiful sunset, watch a bird fly or look a cloud drift by to remember the spirit of Crazy Horse." Responding to this, Mrs. Ziolkowski recalled Chief Henry Standing Bear's trip to West Hartford in 1941 and said: "It was the Indians who chose Crazy Horse. It was the Indians who asked Korczak to carve the mountain."
While the debate might continue for decades, the words of Crazy Horse might carry weight.On Sept. 6, 1877, the Indian rebel died after a soldier rammed a bayonet into his back during a meeting under a flag of truce at Fort Robinson, Neb. A few years after his death, a medicine man, Black Elk, told an interviewer that Crazy Horse had predicted to him: "I will return to you in stone."