Memorializing Crazy Horse

November is Native American History Month; next year (2025) will mark the 350th anniversary of King Phillip’s War, the beginning of the end for the native people as the dominant polity on this continent. I’m marking the occasion with a series of daily posts related to the history of the Native Americans and their interactions with encroaching Europeans. Some will have to do with pop culture; others will be weightier. This series is dedicated to Sterling and Samantha.

Is there a better name for anything or anyone than Crazy Horse? It’s the common English rendering for the name of the Oglala war chief Tȟašúŋke Witkó (c. 1840-1877). Crazy Horse rose to prominence among the Lakota Sioux in the Black Hills War, in particular battles such as the Fetterman Fight (1866) and Little Big Horn (1876). He was never defeated in battle, and never captured (although in the end, he did surrender himself voluntarily). Because of his reputed ferocity in warfare, I had always assumed that the name referred to the man himself. Who wouldn’t fear an opponent named Crazy Horse? It turns out, though, that a more literal translation of his name would be “His-Horse-Is-Crazy”. In which case you might stand a fighting chance!

Crazy Horse is also famous for never having been photographed, which, believe it ot not, is unusual among the major Native American leaders of the mid to late 19th century. He resisted requests to capture his image for reasons having to do with superstition, and perhaps just to be contrary. In Dee Brown’s excellent book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, just about every major chief is shown in a photo. To depict Crazy Horse, Brown had to resort to a crude drawing by a contemporary. There is a tintype that some have claimed is a genuine photograph of Crazy Horse, but it has been pretty convincingly debunked, for clues in the image indicate that it was taken many years after his death.

But there are many ways to memorialize a man. His portrayals in the movies include Anthony Quinn in They Died With Their Boots On (1941), Victor Mature in Chief Crazy Horse (1955), and Michael GreyEyes in Crazy Horse (1995). A Paris night club (founded 1951) was named after him (this is the city, after all, that gave us the Apache Dance). A literary magazine founded in 1960 by poet Thomas McGrath was named after him, although in 2022 the editors rather idiotically changed the named to Swamp Pink, claiming the previous appellation was an “exploitation”, though literary magazines are pretty famous for never earning a dime. The rock band Crazy Horse formed by Neil Young in 1968, on the other hand, has made much more than a dime, though Young has also fought for indigenous rights against big oil companies for decades, which maybe balances things out.

The ultimate tribute to Crazy Horse, however, has been nearly a century in the making, and will surely be well over a century in reaching completion. It dates to 1931 when Luther Standing Bear wrote to Gutzon Borglum, who was then in the midst of carving Mount Rushmore, suggesting that Crazy Horse would be a more appropriate figure to memorialize in a South Dakota mountain. Nothing came of it at that time, but Luther’s brother Henry Standing Bear took it on. He wrote to Korczak Ziolkowski, one of the Mount Rushmore sculptors to take on the project, and he accepted the commission. Work on the Crazy Horse Memorial began in 1948. Here is what the finished product will look like:

Thus far, over 75 years since work began, only the head has been completed, with some excavation of the space under the pointing arm:

Ziolkowski died in 1982, at which point his wife Ruth took over. She oversaw the completion of the head, which was dedicated in 1998. The memorial-in-progress is open to tourists; income from attendance goes toward completion of the project. Ruth Ziolkowski died in 2014. Since that time the Ziolkowski children and grandchildren have overseen construction.

While the memorial is located on private land, and while Henry Standing Bear was a genuine Oglala Lakota chief, there has been criticism from both inside and outside the Native American community about the memorial. Some believe that Crazy Horse, who resisted being photographed, would not want his image replicated in this way. Some dislike the idea that the project, though initiated by a tribal leader, is now in the hands of a white family, who earn their living by working on it. Others are angry at the despoiling of a mountain. (To them I would say, “TOO LATE! Might as well finish it”). Lastly, there are those that say that precious charitable funds would be better spent on programs that might benefit living Native Americans. This is the very same argument people use against completion of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC, to which I would counter with Matthew 26:11. And are the aesthetics of monumentalism somehow “Old World”, an invasion of alien culture from Europe and the Near East? The pyramids and other sculpted structures of Mexico and Peru would argue differently.

Anyway, the critics seem to be missing the most salient point. This is a massive tribute to a Native American hero. It will be ten times larger than Mount Rushmore, 564 feet tall, nearly twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, one of the largest monuments in the world. That won’t be a source of Native American pride? It won’t educate people about who Crazy Horse was? The statue is literally pointing toward the lands that were stolen! Do you want the story told, or not?

For more info on the Crazy Horse Memorial, including how to visit, see their website here.