Crazy Horse Monument

    The weather continues to be wonderful – cooler nights and warm, sunny days.  We have a huge, grassy area between our two campers so we can move our lawn chairs from one patch of shade to another.  This gives Rick a good perspective on all the surrounding campsites to watch our fellow campers backing in and setting up camp.  He really loves to observe their technique.  Joyce and Mark are missing their dog, Libby, and so they spend a lot of time watching and talking to our camping neighbors’ dogs. We have all enjoyed watching one ambitious little guy on his two-wheeler riding round and around our section of campground.  Every now and then he takes a pretty good tumble on the gravel road, but he just dusts himself off and hops back on the little bike.  I love being in a great campground with lots of family activity. 

We visited Mt. Rushmore yesterday, so today we went to the “Other” huge mountain sculpture – Crazy Horse.  This monument may someday be a three dimensional carving of Chief Crazy Horse on a horse.  At the moment the only part that is finished is the face of Crazy Horse with many other areas marked in white paint and beginning to take shape.  The project is somewhat controversial – between the Native Americans and the family that is creating the sculpture and between our group as we visited it.  Over 50 years ago Korczak Ziolkowski, a well known sculptor who had worked very briefly on Mt. Rushmore, was asked Lakota Chief Standing Bear to create a memorial to Chief Crazy Horse to show that the Native Americans had heroes as well as the white man.  Korczak started the project in 1948 by himself.  He made a scale model of the final project.  Korczak died in 1982 with only a small portion of the project completed.  His wife and seven of his ten children continue to work on the project.  In 1998 the face of chief was unveiled - it is powerful and has great detail.  In addition a huge visitor center including a large collection of Native American artifacts, a restaurant and a replication of the Korczak’s studio and home were built. 

There have been many opportunities for the project to take state or federal funding to move it towards completion.  The family believes that it is needs to be a private enterprise.  Some Native Americans do not believe that blasting millions of pounds of granite off of a mountain that is sacred to them is a good thing.  The final monument will be 563 feet high and 641 feet long so a lot of the original mountain will be gone.   I guess that I am of the opinion that somewhere along the line this has become a memorial to Korczak Ziolkowski and his family rather than a project which belongs to the Native Americans.  Whatever the case, the collection of Native American items is very interesting and the huge face of Crazy Horse is quite striking. 

We enjoyed our visit – Joyce and I bought earrings from a Native American vendor in the cultural center.  We went back to the campground for lunch and then visited the train museum and the wood carving museum.  Neither one was much to write home about.  After a supper of buffalo burgers we enjoyed a campfire.  All around us other groups of campers gathered around their fires as well, as the sky grew dark and the stars came out.  I imagined that we were pioneers on a wagon train resting after a busy day.  One more day of touring with Mark and Joyce and then they head for Wyoming.