The Crazy Horse Memorial in Crazy Horse, SD, near Custer, is another place where the few pictures that I took do not do justice to the place. The memorial is a mountain carving in progress, a project undertaken by Korczak Ziolkowski, a world famous sculptor who once won the sculpture competition at the World's Fair and worked on Mount Rushmore.
While Mount Rushmore was in progress Ziolkowski received a letter from Henry Standing Bear (if you watch Longmire, I know this seems unlikely, but I promise this is his real name), a Lakota chief, who asked him to carve a mountain for his people. His reasoning is often quoted -- "so that the white man can see that the red man has great heroes too". Ziolkowski's response was that he "didn't think that was too much to ask", so he bought a large piece of land with a carvable mountain about thirty miles away from Mount Rushmore and got to work. Over the years the project has grown from his working on it completely alone to birthing a non-profit foundation, which is now co-headed by two of Ziolkowski's ten children.
Without ever having taken a dime from the government the Crazy Horse Foundation has funded the continuous carving of the mountain, a visitors complex complete with gift shop and restaurant, the Indian Museum of North America, and a Native American college.
It's an admirable feat, and no visit to the Black Hills is complete with a stop here.
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| The scale sculpture that the carving is based on |
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| Several students from the college on the grounds were running Native Americans arts and crafts for kids. P and RS were delighted. |
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| Even S got in on the crafts |
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| I love this pictures of the sculptors sons drilling on the mountain in the 1970's |
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| Drum playing |
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| A replica of the sculpture that won Ziolkowski the World's Fair |
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| The Crazy Horse, SD post office |
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| The mountain |
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