Crazy Horse Monument
Crazy Horse Memorial, the world's largest sculpture, still in progress, is
located in the Black Hills of South Dakota on US Highway 16/385 just 17
miles southwest of Mount Rushmore. The work was begun in 1948 by sculptor
Korczak Ziolkowski at the request of Native Americans. Korczak died in
1982. His wife Ruth and their family continue the project working with the
Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation.
The Crazy Horse Memorial mountain crew uses precision explosive
engineering to carefully and safely remove and shape the rock of the
mountain. Since the dedication of the face of Crazy Horse in 1998, the
work has been focused on blocking out the horse's head.
A network of about a dozen benches will be cut out around the horse's
head. The benches both block out the head to within 20 feet of the final
surface of the horse's head and also provide access roads for the heavy
equipment used to drill holes for loading explosives and to remove loose
rock after each blast.
"Crazy Horse is to be carved not so much as a
lineal likeness, but more as a memorial to the spirit of Crazy Horse -- to
his people. With his left hand thrown out pointing in answer to the
derisive question asked by a white man, 'Where are your lands now?' he
replied, 'My lands are where my dead lie buried'."
May 29, 1949
Korczak Ziolkowski
"I thought of things that had happened the last
days, seasons and summers. I began to see that all things were strung
together like beads of a necklace, one after another, from this day back
and this day forward they went on forever; the hunt, the warpath, the
teaching by Hump and my father and the wounding of Conquering Bear. "
Crazy Horse
"I thought of other beads: The songs of my
mother as we laughed together when I was a child, the songs I sang to
Little Mouse as I brushed away the mosquitoes and gnats from her face as
she lay in her cradleboard. And how I told her stories until she fell to
sleep. I saw the face of Little Mouse as she is now, with her long
eyelashes flicking up and down over her smiling, bright black eyes. It was
as if I had returned to mother earth from another world and she wanted to
hold me to her bosom and whisper in my ear."
Crazy Horse
View The Crazy Horse Memorial Webcam Here
WHO WAS CRAZY HORSE?
Crazy Horse was born around 1842, along Rapid Creek near present-day Rapid
City, South Dakota, to the east of Paha Sapa, the Black Hills. He
was the son of an Oglala medicine man of the same name and his Brule wife,
the sister of Spotted Tail. His mother died when he was young, and
his father took her sister as a wife and she helped raise Crazy Horse.
He spent time in both Oglala and Brule camps. His childhood name was
Curly.
Before he was 12, Curly had killed a buffalo and received his own horse.
On August 19, 1854, he was in CONQUERING BEAR's camp in northern Wyoming
when the Brule leader was killed in the GRATTAN Fight. Although he
was away from camp during the Battle of Ash Hollow the following year, he
witnessed the destruction of Sioux tepees and possessions by the soldiers
during General WILLIAM S. HARNEY's punitive expedition through Sioux
territory along the Oregon Trail, experiences that helped shape his
militant attitude toward whites.
After the Grattan Fight, Curly underwent a Vision Quest in which he had a
vivid dream of a rider in a storm on horseback, with long unbraided hair,
a small stone in his ear, zigzag lightning decorating his cheek, and hail
dotting his body. Although a warrior, he bore no scalps.
People clutched at the rider, but could not hold him. The storm
faded and a red-backed hawk flew over the rider's head. When Curly later
related the dream to his father, the medicine man interpreted it as a sign
of his son's future greatness in battle.
At about the age of 16, now bearing his father's name, Crazy Horse rode
for the first time as an adult warrior in a raid on Crows. Like the
rider in his dream, he wore his hair free, a stone earring, and a
headdress with a red hawk feather in it. His face was painted
with a lightning bolt and his body with hail-like dots. The raid was
successful, but Crazy Horse received a wound in the leg, because, his
father interpreted, unlike the rider in the vision, he had taken two
scalps. For the remainder of his career as a warrior, it is said
that Crazy Horse never again took a scalp.
Crazy Horse became further known to many of the Sioux bands for his
courage in the War for the BOZEMAN Trail of 1866-68 under the Oglala RED
CLOUD , when the army began building a road in Powder River country from
the Oregon Trail to the goldfields of Montana. He was one of the
young chiefs, along with the Miniconjou HUMP and the Hunkpapas GALL and
RAIN-IN-THE-FACE , who used decoy tactics against the soldiers. Near
Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming, Crazy Horse participated in the Indian
victories known as the FETTERMAN Fight of December 21, 1866, and the Wagon
Box Fight of August 2, 1867.
With the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, in which the army agreed to abandon
the posts along the Bozeman Trail, Red Cloud and Spotted Tail settled on
reservation lands. Crazy Horse became war chief of the Oglalas, with
some Brule followers as well. Moreover, he made friends and
followers among the Northern Cheyennes through his first marriage to a
Cheyenne woman. He later married an Oglala woman too.
Crazy Horse again waged war in the early 1870s, leading his warriors in
raids on Northern Pacific Railway surveyors. The Black Hills Gold
Rush, which brought more whites to the region, increased tensions.
When the nomadic hunting bands ignored the order to report to their
reservations by January 31, 1876, the military organized a campaign
against them.
Crazy Horse's band fought in the opening engagement of the War for the
Black Hills of 1876-77, the Battle of Powder River. In March 1876,
when his scouts discovered an Indian trail, General GEORGE CROOK sent a
detachment under Colonel Joseph Reynolds to locate the Indian camp along
the Powder in southeastern Montana. At dawn on March 17, Reynolds
ordered a charge.
The Indians retreated to surrounding bluffs and fired at the troops who
burned the village and rounded up the Indian horses. Crazy Horse
regrouped his warriors and, during a snowstorm that night, recaptured the
herd. Meanwhile, SITTING BULL of the Hunkpapas, who, during the
1860s, had been active in raids in northern Montana and North Dakota along
the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, came into prominence as the spiritual
leader of the allied Northern Plains tribes. Gall acted as his
leading war chief. Crazy Horse joined the Hunkpapas on the upper Rosebud.
On June 17, 1876, at the Battle of the Rosebud, Crazy Horse, Gall, and
other war chiefs led their warriors in repeated assaults that forced
Crook's troops to retreat. The Indians then moved their camp
to the Bighorn River. On June 25, at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Crazy
Horse led the victorious assault on GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER's men from the
north and west, while Gall's warriors attacked from the south and west.
Following Little Bighorn, the Indian bands split up, and Crazy Horse led
his people back to the Rosebud.
The next autumn and winter, Colonel NELSON A. MILES led the 5th Infantry
from a base at the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone rivers in a
relentless pursuit of the militants, wearing them down and making it
difficult for them to obtain food. When the Indians attempted
hit-and-run strikes, the soldiers responded with heavy artillery to repel
them. On January 8, 1877, at Wolf Mountain on the Tongue River in
southern Montana, Crazy Horse led 800 braves in a surprise attack.
Miles had disguised his howitzers as wagons and opened fire with them. The
Indians withdrew to bluffs and, when the soldiers counterattacked,
retreated under the cover of a snowstorm.
More and more of the fugitive bands were surrendering. Crazy Horse
received a promise from Crook through Red Cloud that if he surrendered,
his people would have a reservation of their own in the Powder River
country. His people weary and starving, Crazy Horse led some
800 followers to Fort Robinson on the Red Cloud Agency in northwestern
Nebraska on May 5, 1877. But the promise of a reservation fell
through. Crazy Horse remained at the Red Cloud Agency, and his
presence caused unrest among the Indians and suspicion among the whites.
Older chiefs resented the adulation he received from young braves.
He remained aloof from whites and refused Crook's request to send him to
Washington, D.C., for a meeting with President Rutherford Hayes.
Crazy Horse's wife became sick. On hearing unfounded rumors
that Crazy Horse was planning a rebellion, Crook ordered his arrest.
Taking his family with him, Crazy Horse headed for the Spotted Tail Agency
to the northwest. In a parley with troops sent to capture him, Crazy
Horse agreed to return, and the next day, September 5, 1877, he was led
back to Fort Robinson. What exactly happened at the Red Cloud
Agency is unknown. It is thought Crazy Horse had not expected to be
imprisoned. On realizing he was being taken to the stockade,
he resisted and, while the Indian police attempted to regain control, he
was bayoneted in the abdomen by a soldier. Crazy Horse died that
night. His father and stepmother were given his body and,
following their son's request, buried him in his homeland-somewhere near
Wounded Knee, according to legend.
Korczak & Chief Henry Standing Bear at the 1948
dedication ceremony
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