Crazy Horse Memorial

Listen first. Out here in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the wind moves through ponderosa pines with a low, steady rush. The air smells of resin and warm stone. Then you look up, across a mile of forest and open ground, and you see a face. It is carved into the granite of a mountain, and it looks out toward the east. That is Crazy Horse, the Lakota leader, and the mountain is still being shaped around him.

The mountain has a name of its own. It is called Thunderhead Mountain. Its rock is Black Hills granite, pale and grey, with a coarse grain that catches the sun. From the viewing terrace, the scale is hard to judge. Trees on the slopes look like moss. Machinery near the summit looks like toys. Give your eyes a moment. The face alone is taller than a ten-storey building.

The idea did not start with a sculptor. It started with a request. In the late 1930s and 1940s, a Lakota elder named Henry Standing Bear wrote to a sculptor called Korczak Ziolkowski. His message, as the memorial tells it, was simple. He wanted the white world to know that the Native people had heroes too. Ziolkowski was a self-taught artist from Boston, of Polish descent. He had worked briefly on Mount Rushmore, which stands only a short drive from here.

Ziolkowski accepted. After service in the Second World War, he came to the Black Hills, and in 1948 the first blast was set off on the mountain. He was alone at the start. He built a log cabin, then a road, then a long wooden staircase up the rock face. Visitors often miss this detail... for years, one man climbed hundreds of steps each day to drill and blast by hand.

Here is the first surprise. There is no confirmed photograph of Crazy Horse. He refused to be photographed during his lifetime, according to most accounts. So the face you see is not a portrait. Ziolkowski described the carving as a memorial to the spirit of Crazy Horse and his people. It is an image of what he stood for, not a record of how he looked.

Who was the man himself? Crazy Horse was an Oglala Lakota war leader in the nineteenth century. He fought to protect his people's land and way of life as settlers and the United States Army pushed west. He is remembered for his role at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. A year later, in 1877, he was killed at Fort Robinson in Nebraska, while soldiers were trying to hold him in custody. He was still a young man.

Now look at the pose that is planned. Crazy Horse sits on a horse, and his left arm stretches forward over the horse's head. His hand points into the distance. According to a story told at the memorial, a white man once asked him mockingly, "Where are your lands now?" Crazy Horse is said to have pointed and answered, "My lands are where my dead lie buried." Treat it as a story passed down, not a recorded transcript. But it gives the pointing arm its meaning.

The second surprise is about money. Ziolkowski refused federal government funding for this project. He believed the memorial should be built by people who chose to support it. Even today, the work is paid for by visitors and private donors. That choice is one reason progress is so slow. It is also why people here talk about the carving in generations, not years.

And it really is a family story. Ziolkowski died in 1982, with the face still unfinished. He was buried at the foot of the mountain. His wife, Ruth, took over the work, together with several of their ten children. In 1998, the completed face was dedicated. Ruth led the memorial until her death in 2014, and family members have continued the project since then.

The planned size is difficult to imagine. When it is finished, the carving should be around 563 feet high, roughly 170 metres, and about 641 feet long. The face is about 87 feet tall. For comparison, each president's head at Mount Rushmore is about sixty feet tall. The next major stage is the horse's head, which will sit below and to the right of the face. Nobody here gives a firm finishing date.

It is honest to say that not everyone welcomes this memorial. The Black Hills are sacred land to the Lakota. The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie recognised the hills as theirs, and the land was taken after gold was found. Some Lakota people, including voices among Crazy Horse's own relatives, have objected to blasting a sacred mountain. Others see the carving as a source of pride. Both views are part of this place.

The mountain is only one part of the site. Inside the visitor complex you can find the Indian Museum of North America, with clothing, beadwork, tools and art from many Native nations. There is a cultural centre where Native artists and speakers often share their work. On the terrace, a white scale model shows the finished sculpture. Hold it in your eye, then look at the mountain behind it. The gap between them is the work still to come.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment. Look at the line of the arm against the sky, and the rough slope where the horse will one day appear. Listen for wind, for voices, for distant machines. You are seeing an unfinished thing, and it may stay unfinished for a long time. As you walk back toward the pines, look over your shoulder once more. The face will still be watching the east.