Stories & Lifestyle: The Crazy Horse Memorial

The first thing that comes to mind when hearing the name of Crazy Horse is probably the famous nightclub in Paris - not many people know that it is the name of a famous Native American whose memorial has been under construction for the last 60 years.

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a sculpture that is being made to honor the Oglala Lakota Indian Crazy Horse. Similar to Mount Rushmore the monument is being carved into the mountain, but it is going to be significantly bigger. It is approximately 25 km (15 miles) southwest of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills, South Dakota.

In the famous Battle of Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876, thanks to his superior strategy Crazy Horse together with Sitting Bull defeated General Custer's army. After the battle, Crazy Horse had to be on the run since the US army was after him. On January 8, 1877, General Nelson A. Miles' men found his camp, but Crazy Horse managed to escape. The cold winter, however, left him and his men hungry, thirsty and exhausted. So at last he surrendered, together with 300 families. He was taken to Red Cloud Reservation near Fort Robinson. When he tried to resist being arrested, he was stabbed with a bayonet.

The Crazy Horse Memorial is not being financed with public funds, but by the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, which is running an Indian museum near the location of the monument. In 1939, sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who had already worked on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, was invited by Chief Henry Standing Bear of the Sioux to design an Indian memorial. Carving began in 1948, almost 10 million tons of granite have been blasted from the mountainside since then. Still, only the face is finished so far (since 1998), a completion date for the entire monument is not yet in sight. Ziolkowski died in 1982, his wife and seven of his ten children continue to work on the memorial.

Many natives oppose this memorial. They say it desecrates their holy Black Hills and point out that Crazy Horse never wanted to be photographed because he didn't want to be portrayed in any way. Once the monument is finished, the sculpture will show Crazy Horse on horseback with one arm stretched out toward the East. All the heads of Mount Rushmore combined have approximately the same size as the horse's head. The sculpture will be 195 meters (641 feet) wide and 172 meters (563 feet) high.