*THE SHRINE OF HYPOCRISY: THE MEANING OF MOUNT RUSHMORE FOR THE LAKOTA
PEOPLE*

By Daniele Bolelli

*Introduction*

Why do they hate us? This is a question that increasing numbers of
Americans began asking themselves in the face of an international
political situation providing mounting evidence that the United States
are not universally loved throughout the world. The question is often
animated by that righteous indignation that emerges from a mix of
naïvete and sincerity. Are we not the Land of the Free and Home of the
Brave? Is it not true that our flag is the symbol of democracy and
justice for all? Anyone opposing our colors must therefore be an enemy
of freedom itself.

This unfortunately is what happens when people get too attached to
symbols. They tend to forget that symbols hold multiple meanings to
different people. What separates people, then, may not always be the
opposition to, or endorsement of a particular value, but the different
values attached to the same symbol. Whereas some will see the American
flag and connect it with the ideal of freedom, others will see in it the
standard of imperialism and colonization. This is not to say that
opposition to the American flag does not sometimes derive from a total
opposition to the freedoms of a Western, secular society. However, in
many other occasions people opposing the American flag are individuals
who greatly value the ideal of freedom and see their freedom threatened
by those very same Stars and Stripes.

A prime example of this conflict over the meanings of a famous symbol
can be found without even having to leave the boundaries of the United
States. The monument of Mount Rushmore, the colossal sculpture of the
faces of four presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore
Roosevelt) which were carved into the mountains of South Dakota, is a
classic American icon. Almost three million people a year visit Mount
Rushmore thereby making tourism the second largest industry in a poor
state that would otherwise never attract many people (the rest of South
Dakota is not exactly known as a prime tourist destination.) (1) In 1962
the images of Mount Rushmore were among the very first ever televised in
a commercial satellite broadcast (2). Rushmore served as a backdrop for
the defeat of Soviet spies in the Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “North by
Northwest.” Many American presidents came to South Dakota to pay homage
to the monument in person. Calvin Coolidge visited it before it was
finished in 1927 and on the same day in which he denied clemency for the
famous activists Sacco and Vanzetti, he gave a speech calling Rushmore
“…the spirit of patriotism” (3). At the request of the author, F.D.
Roosevelt became the first to call the monument “America’s Shrine of
Democracy” (4). George Bush the elder visited in 1991 for the 50-year
celebration of the works (5).

In the eyes of millions of Americans, Mount Rushmore is an enduring
symbol of every good value that the United States stand for. If they
were to mentally connect Rushmore to other places, they would probably
think of other icons of patriotism such as the Statue of Liberty and the
Liberty Bell. If members of the Lakota Sioux tribe, however, were to try
the same exercise they would probably come up with very different
answers. It is likely that they would connect Rushmore to the site of
the 1876 Little Big Horn battle between their ancestors and the U.S.
Army, and to Wounded Knee, the place where in 1890 over 300 Lakota
(mostly unarmed women and children) were massacred by the U.S. Army. For
the Lakota, in fact, Mount Rushmore is the ultimate symbol of
colonization and oppression. The conflict over the meaning of Mount
Rushmore is a classic example of conflict between people who view a
symbol through the lenses of their historically specific grievances
versus those who gloss over historical realities and view it through
lenses tinted by a generic emotional appeal to freedom and patriotism.

In order to make any sense of how different sets of peoples can end up
viewing the same symbol so differently, we need to explore in some
detail the history behind it.

*The War for the Black Hills: The Lakota Nation versus the United States *

The Black Hills, the mountains in which Mount Rushmore is carved, are
located in the western portion of the state of South Dakota. At their
highest point they tower over 7000 feet above sea level (the highest
elevation of any peak east of the Rockies), and they extend
approximately 100 miles from north to south and 60 from east to west
(6). According to the Lakota people, the Black Hills are the spiritual
center of their universe; they are “the home of our heart, and the heart
of our home” (7). The Lakota also refer to the Black Hills as “the heart
of everything that is” and find it only fitting that when satellite
pictures of the Black Hills were first taken they revealed that, seen
from space, these mountains look like a human heart (8). Contemporary
Lakota activist James Weddell argues that a deep sense of reverence and
love for the Black Hills are at the core of what Lakota identity is all
about (9). By saying that the Black Hills “are the birthplace of the
Lakota people” (10), Lakota elder Matthew King (now deceased) summed up
his tribe’s origin stories which tell that the Lakota were created at
the dawn of time out of the mountains.

Many Western historians have a less romantic view of the Lakota past and
argue that the Lakota first came to the Black Hills in 1775 and pushed
other tribes from the area (11). The Lakota readily admit that during
the 1600s and much of the 1700s they lived further east (modern day
Minnesota and Wisconsin.) However, they also argue that they had
inhabited the Black Hills long before this time and that, even during
this migration east, members of the tribe still traveled regularly to
the Black Hills to carry out ceremonies there. Their return to the area
in the 1700s is therefore not considered an invasion of a foreign land
but a return home (12). Since Western historians know nothing about the
Lakota whereabouts before the 1600s, Lakota oral history remains
unchallenged.

What is undisputed is that the earliest reports written by Euro-American
explorers indicate the Lakota’s sense of reverence and protectiveness
for the Black Hills. Several adventurers who had heard reports regarding
the possible existence of gold in Black Hills met the fate of Ezra Kind.
In 1887, while building a house near modern day Spearfish in the
northern part of the Hills, a certain Louis Thoen unearthed a flat piece
of limestone on which was scratched a message dated 1834. The message,
conserved in the Adams Museum in Deadwood, read:

Came to the Hills in 1833 seven of us DeLacompt, Ezra Kind, G. W. Wood, 
T. Brown, R. Kent, Wm. King, Indian Crow. All died but me Ezra Kind. 
Killed by Ind. beyond the high hill got our gold in 1834. Got all the gold 
we could carry our ponys got by Indians I have lost my gun and nothing to 
eat and Indians hunting me. (13) 

Several reports indicate that Kind’s was not an isolated episode.
Although they were occasionally willing to discuss the cession of some
of the other lands under their control, the Lakota did everything in
their power to keep non-Indians away from the Black Hills. In a special
tribal council held in 1857 the Lakota decided to kill any tribal member
guilty of revealing the presence of gold to non-Indians. This was not
because they cared much for the gold themselves. Rather it was in order
to avoid the invasion of many miners in their beloved Black Hills (14).

It is clear that from very early on he United States perceived the
Lakota power as a serious obstacle to expansion and colonization. After
meeting the Lakota in 1804 during his famous expedition, Merriwether
Lewis described them in this fashion:

“These are the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever
remain the pirates of the Missouri, until such measures are pursued by
our government as will make them feel a dependence on its will for their
supply of merchandise. Unless these people are reduced to order by
coercive measures I am ready to pronounce that the citizens of the
United States can never enjoy but partially the advantages which the
Missouri presents.” (15)

Open hostilities between the Lakota and their Cheyenne allies on one
side and the United States on the other began in 1854 and continued
sporadically until 1864. At this time, warfare for control of much of
the northern plains intensified until 1868. The war did not go as well
as the U.S. government was hoping it would. Being nomadic
buffalo-hunters, the tribes were very hard to track down, and were very
proficient at guerrilla warfare. These tactics frustrated the U.S. army
to the point that in 1868 the government agreed to cease the conflict
and to sign a treaty that was very favorable to the tribes. From an
Indian point of view, the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty is the most important
document signed by the U.S. government with any Indian tribe precisely
because the tribes involved signed it from a position of strength. In
the treaty, the U.S. government, in addition to promising supplies to
the tribes, recognized Lakota sovereignty over much of North and South
Dakota (including the Black Hills), Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, and
Colorado. The government also agreed to prevent its own citizens from
trespassing on Indian land, and stated that no future land cession would
occur unless 75% of the adult males in the tribe agreed to it. To the
Lakota this meant that they had won the war and that the U.S. was forced
to respect their territorial boundaries (16).

Subsequent events, however, make clear that the U.S. government had
wanted the treaty only to stop a costly war, take a break from the
fighting, and elaborate a better strategy for taking the Lakota lands.
Since professional hunters were destroying the buffalo at a steady pace,
the U.S. government understood that it was only a matter of time until
the Lakota economy would be destroyed making the tribe much more
vulnerable to conquest. The fact that this was the government’s plan can
be clearly understood from this comment contained in the 1872 Annual
Report by Francis A. Walker, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs;
“Temporizing as an expedient in government may be either a sign of
weakness and folly or it may be a proof of the highest wisdom.” And in
the case of the tribes whose independent buffalo-hunting days were
numbered anyway “…. temporizing may be the highest statesmanship.” (17)

American interests had no patience for a long wait so in 1874, just six
years after the signing of the treaty, a military expedition under the
command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer went into the
Black Hills and discovered gold. The announcement of the discovery would
inevitably lead to a massive gold rush. The titles of the newspaper
Yankton Press & Dakotaian euphemistically announced “Prepare for Lively
Times.” (18) The “lively times” began with the invasion of gold-seeking
squatters trespassing into the Black Hills. When the Lakota began
targeting the miners, the government made an attempt to legally buy the
Black Hills from the Lakota in 1875. While some Lakota were willing to
discuss with the government, others refused all negotiations and
threatened to shoot anyone signing land away (19).

Unable to gather the necessary number of signatures the government
decided to dispense with legal technicalities. The mentality at the
roots of the next step undertaken by the government is perfectly summed
up in this passage from the Bismark Tribune; “The American people need
the country the Indians now occupy; many of our people are out of
employment; the masses need some new excitement….An Indian war would do
no harm, for it must come, sooner, or later.” (20) In November 1875,
President Grant violated the treaty by secretly ordering that the army
should not try to stop the miners from entering the Black Hills as
supposedly they were required to do according to the treaty. The smoking
gun showing this violation is contained in a letter written by General
Sheridan to General Terry detailing the presidential orders (21).

Further illegal actions followed when under pressure from popular
demands requiring the opening up of Lakota lands to settlers, the
administration decided to find an excuse to start another war with the
Lakota. The tribes were accused of depredations against settlers in
Montana. Never mind that according to the law this did not constitute a
reason for violating the treaty. The excuse was indeed painfully thin,
but the political climate of the times was such that no one fussed too
much over Indian legal rights (22). At a later date, President Grant
himself readily admitted this much when he wrote that treaty had not
been defended because “…the avarice of the white man [is] such that an
effort to remove the miners would only [have resulted] in the desertion
of the bulk of the troops sent to remove them.” (23) Which is a nice way
of saying that we have to violate the law because we are greedy. That is
who we are and no legal constraints can change this fact.

Earlier in his career, Grant had expressed himself even more bluntly by
saying that the interests of the settlers were to be protected “even if
the extermination of every Indian tribe was necessary to secure such a
result.” (24) Such genocidal fantasies were shared by other elite
members of the military. General William Sherman in a letter to Grant
had written: “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux,
even to their extermination, men, women and children. Nothing less will
reach the root of the case” (25). The popular press echoed these
sentiments. The Kansas Daily Tribune argued: “There can be no permanent,
lasting peace on the frontier till these devils are exterminated” (26).
The Board of Health of a Black Hills town took this advice to heart when
it commended a man who had brought Indian scalps (which were sold for $
300 each) because they argued that murdering Indians was beneficial to
the health of the settlement (27). The paradox of admitting that the law
was on the Indian side while dreaming of their extermination did not
seem to trouble too many people in the 1870s. Annie Tallent, the only
female member of the first group of gold-seekers to reach the Black
Hills, mused: “Ignoring the ethical side of the question, should such
treaties as tend to arrest the advance of civilization, and retard the
development of the rich resources of our country, ever have been entered
into?” (28)

In light of all these comments it should be clear that the treaty had no
chance to stand against the prevailing apology of Manifest Destiny that
seemed to be widely popular in the United States at that time. The war
therefore started again, but the military had again misjudged the
situation. The conflict, in fact, had come at a time when some of the
Lakota and Cheyenne were still strong enough to fight back. The main
battle of this war resulted in a disastrous defeat of the U.S. Army on
June 25th 1876 at a place called Little Big Horn. George Armstrong
Custer, the man who had discovered gold in the Black Hills and helped
precipitate the war, was killed along with hundreds of his troops when
they tried to attack an Indian camp and were defeated by a combined
force of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. The victory, however, was
short-lived. The buffalo herds were indeed almost completely destroyed
and within a year all the Lakota and Cheyenne in the United States had
to surrender for lack of food. Just to make sure that the Lakota would
not think of rebelling, Crazy Horse, the main Lakota leader of
resistance was the target of a successful political assassination within
months of his surrender. A similar destiny awaited the other pillar of
Lakota resistance, Sitting Bull, when he returned from his exile in
Canada a few years later.

With the Lakota defeated, the government made another “legal” attempt to
acquire title to the Black Hills. Despite threatening Indians with
starvation and with possible violence, and despite considerable evidence
of fraud, the 1877 Manypenny Commission managed to gather the signatures
of less than 10% of the Lakota adult males, far short of the 75%
required by the law. However, demonstrating that math is an opinion,
Congress ratified the document and created the illusion that the U.S.
government had “legally” acquired the Black Hills. A few years later, in
1890, the Lakota regained some hope that things could go back to the way
they were thanks to a religious movement called the Ghost Dance.
Originated among the Paiute tribe in Nevada, the Ghost Dance movement
predicted that this world was coming to an end, and the dead among the
Indians would be resurrected and would return to live on earth along
with the buffalo herds. To make sure the Lakota would not cultivate such
delusions, the U.S. Army thought well to massacre over 300 unarmed
ghost-dancers at Wounded Knee, in what was to be the last chapter of the
Indian wars. It was in this way that the land out of which the Shrine of
Democracy would be carved a few decades later was acquired.

*Gutzon Borglum: The Man behind Mount Rushmore *

In 1885, long before becoming the site of the monument, Mount Rushmore
received its name from a visiting New York lawyer, Charles Rushmore
(29). Mr. Rushmore, however, did not contribute to the monument anything
more than his name and some generous financial donation. The heart and
the meaning of the monument, however, are inseparable from the ideas of
its creator, Gutzon Borglum. This is a topic that most official
histories of Mount Rushmore do not like to dwell upon and instead prefer
to focus on Borglum’s determination and on his artistic ability. One of
the details that most of his biographers like to leave out is the fact
that Borglum at one point was a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Considering that among its members the KKK counted President Harding and
Chief Justice Edward White, Borglum was very much a man of his times
(30). A firm believer in the superiority of the Nordic European “race,”
he often condemned the Southern European “mongrel races.” In his own words:

“They [the Nordic Races] are the builders of world empire….it may safely
be said that all invention, analytical science, deductive philosophy
have been pushed forward by these venturesome peoples, who have subdued
savages, beautified…the richest, most comfortable, best established,
most sought portion of the earth… America has been peopled by these
free, independent thinking races.” And just a few lines later, he even
went so far as to argue that the problem with slavery was that “….it has
been the character of the cargo that has eaten into the very moral fiber
of our race character, rather than the moral depravity of Anglo-Saxon
traders” (31).

Considering these ideas, it is not surprising to discover that when he
was invited in 1915 to create a monument to the Confederacy in Georgia
at Stone Mountain, the place where the Klan would experience its 20th
century rebirth, Borglum was thrilled. The project, however, eventually
fell through because of disagreements between himself and the directors
of the memorial association, and because of the internal factionalism
that was plaguing the Klan (32). Right after this disappointment,
Borglum was invited to South Dakota in 1925. In the following years,
Borglum managed to raise money through the local chamber of commerce,
private donors, and finally by the U.S. treasury, which provided the
bulk of the funds. Besides sculpting the faces of the four presidents,
Borglum planned to carve in the mountainside in letters three feet high,
a 500-word heroic history of the United States. Had this project
proceeded, the meaning of Mount Rushmore would perhaps be less
ambiguous. Borglum, in fact, wanted the official theme of the monument
to be the territorial and political growth of the United States. He
conceived his task to be the “providing a formal rendering of the
philosophy of our government into granite on a mountain peak” (33). In
Borglum’s mind, the reason why the four presidents were particularly
important was because they had all greatly contributed to the expansion
of the United States. Washington was the unifier, the father of the
country. Jefferson gained his place on the mountain not so much for the
ideals proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence but because of the
Louisiana Purchase. Lincoln was chosen for having managed to keep the
Union together at a critical time (Borglum apparently saw no
contradiction in building monuments to confederate soldiers and to the
man they had fought against.) And Theodore Roosevelt won the honors for
being a personal friend of Borglum as well as for the commercial
expansion of American interests obtained by securing Panama (34). In
other words, Mount Rushmore was conceived to be a monument to Manifest
Destiny. In this sense, the purpose of Mount Rushmore can be linked to
that of another famous piece of art located in the state of South
Dakota, the 1910 painting “The Spirit of the People” by Edwin
Blashfield. This painting shows an angelic figure flying in the sky
above the wagons of the pioneers pointing the way west. On the earth
underneath her armed men are pushing some Indians further west to make
room for the expansion of “civilized” society. The fact that this
painting was displayed until 1997 in the governor’s office may reveal
that in some part of the country the spirit of Manifest Destiny is far
from dead.

*Lakota Perceptions of Mount Rushmore *

In the HBO documentary “Paha Sapa: The Struggle for the Black Hills”, a
Lakota high school honor student states: “Mount Rushmore is the ugliest
monument I have ever seen” (35). This is as good as any one-liner ever
gets to sum up the feelings of the Lakota towards Mount Rushmore. It
certainly is more politically correct than Lakota activist James
Weddell’s own one liner (“I hate that fuckin’ thing”), but not any less
clear in its message (36).

These statements would certainly be surprising and offensive to the
majority of non-Indians who revere the monument. They probably would not
understand why would anyone dislike the “Shrine of Democracy.” I recall
sharing a meal with several non-Indian guests at a Bed and Breakfast
during my last visit to the Black Hills in 2001. It was just a day or
two after Independence Day, and naturally the conversation flowed to the
events of the previous days. Everyone but me had spent the evening at
Mount Rushmore to see the Independence Day fireworks. In a ritual that
is a classic for Mount Rushmore, they had all gathered to sing the
National Anthem with a hand over their hearts. Tears began to appear at
the edge of a lady’s eyes as she recalled how moved she was by the
“spirit of patriotism that one can feel there.” The other guests were
more restrained but unanimous in their deep appreciation for the
monument. They all exploded in spontaneous clapping when someone asked
the only child present for breakfast what she thought of Mount Rushmore
and she said; “It is the most beautiful monument because it is a
monument to freedom.” It is very hard to imagine these people being able
to see Mount Rushmore through a Lakota perspective.

The universal Lakota dislike for the monument, however, should not be
surprising in light of the extensive historical background presented
earlier. The Black Hills were and still are the most sacred lands of the
Lakota and of the Cheyenne. The Cheyenne culture hero, Sweet Medicine,
received the teachings that have shaped Cheyenne society ever since at
Bear Butte, one of the main peaks of the Black Hills. The vision of
Black Elk, the famous Lakota holy man whose life was immortalized in the
classic Black Elk Speaks, took place in the Black Hills. Even down to
the present, Lakota and Cheyenne tribal members come to these mountains
to practice their religious rituals and to gather medicinal herbs.
During a Sun Dance ceremony, Lakota elder Sidney Keith (now deceased)
declared “We don’t need a church. We don’t need a building. We have the
Black Hills and everything is sacred there.” (37)

The Lakota pressed in court their claim to the Black Hills throughout
the 20th century in a long legal battle that reached its climax in 1980
when the Supreme Court acknowledged the illegality of the government’s
actions and awarded over $ 100 million to the Lakota. Despite being
among the poorest people in the United States (in 2000, at a time when
statewide unemployment was 2.3%, the Pine Ridge Reservation had an
unemployment rate between 73% and 85% and was ranked as the poorest
county in the country), the Lakota refused the money. What they wanted,
in fact, was not money but to have their Black Hills back (38). James
Weddell, a member of the only subdivision of the Lakota that accepted
the per-capita distribution, has consistently refused to cash his check
even when he did not have money for a Christmas gift for his daughter,
or when he badly needed a good attorney but could not pay for one. “I
could never take that money. Our ancestors have gone to war for the
Hills. I love the Black Hills and could never sell them out, no matter
the price” (39).

Considering how attached the Lakota feel to the Black Hills, Mount
Rushmore is to them nothing but a slap in the face. The United States
violated its own laws to take their lands, and then commissioned a
racist sculptor to blast their sacred mountains to pieces in order to
carve in it the faces of the leaders of the conquering nations. The
message is not ambiguous to the Lakota. It is a statement of power and a
glorification of conquest. Throughout history, conquerors have often
appropriated the sacred places of the defeated to celebrate conquest.
Muslim and Christian conquerors routinely would destroy the temples of
their victims (sometimes each other) and place their own centers of
worship on it. It is for this reason that Lakota author Elizabeth
Cook-Lynn writes: “To the Sioux, the faces on Mount Rushmore seem to
exemplify the political criminality of the United States rather than the
democratic ideals and virtues to which so much lip service is paid”
(40). In a very funny chapter of his autobiography entitled “Sitting on
Top of Teddy Roosevelt’s Head,” Lakota holy man John Fire Lame Deer has
this to say:

What does this Mount Rushmore mean to us Indians? It means that these
big white faces are telling us, “First we gave you Indians a treaty that
you could keep these Black Hills forever… Then we found the gold and we
took this last piece of land, because we were stronger, and there were
more of us than there were of you, and because we had cannons and
Gatling guns… And when you didn’t want to leave, we wiped you out, and
those of you who survived we put on reservations. And then we took the
gold out, a billion bucks, and we aren’t through yet. And because we
like the tourists dollars, too, we have made your sacred Black Hills
into one vast Disneyland. And after we did all this we carved up this
mountain, the dwelling place of your spirits, and put our four gleaming
white faces here. We are the conquerors.” And a million or more tourists
every year look up at those faces and feel good, real good, because they
make them feel big and powerful, because their own kind of people made
these faces and the tourists are thinking: “We are white, and we made
this, what we want we get, and nothing can stop us.” Maybe they won’t
admit it to themselves, but that’s what many of them are thinking deep
down inside. And this is what conquering means. They could just as well
have carved this mountain into a a huge cavalry boot standing on a dead
Indian. (41)

In addition to all these factors, another element of the monument that
many Lakota despise are the presidents themselves. Washington is perhaps
the recipient of the least amount of scorn. He is simply not
particularly liked for his brutal military record against the Indians
during the Seven Years War and for his racist comments about Indians
being “beasts of prey” different from wolves only in shape (42).

Besides referring to Indian peoples in the Declaration of Independence
as “merciless Indian savages,” Jefferson is particularly disliked for
being a prime strategist of the policy to remove Indians west of
American settlements. In Jefferson’s own words, the American government
had little choice but “to pursue [the Indians] to extermination, or
drive them to new seats beyond our reach.” (43) Considering that most
people who are targeted for “extermination” do not hold the greatest
sympathies for those planning to carry out the program, it is easy to
see why Jefferson is not a beloved figure in most Indian communities.
Expecting otherwise would be like asking Jewish people to find something
endearing in Eichmann.

Lincoln is the target of Lakota hatred for having signed on December 6,
1862, the executive order by which 38 warriors belonging to the Santee
(a tribe related to the Lakota) were hanged in the biggest legal
execution in U.S. history. Some say that Lincoln had been generous since
the military tribunals had ordered over 300 Santee to be hanged for
rebelling, but the Lakota have failed to appreciate the effort. Rather,
some of them have noticed the bitter irony that no comparable execution
of Southern soldiers took place during the Civil War despite the fact
that Confederate soldiers were not any less guilty of rebellion and
violence than any of the Santee warriors (44).

Theodore Roosevelt is disliked for multiple reasons. One has to do with
the fact that his career had been launched by the newspapers owned by
the Hearst family who had made their fortune thanks to their extensive
mining operation in the Black Hills (45). One may argue that this does
not have much to do with the president himself, but Roosevelt had other
blemishes on his record. In one instance he had called the 1864 Sand
Creek massacre of a peaceful camp of Cheyenne elders, women and kids “as
righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.”
(46) On another occasion he commented that the extermination of the
Indians “was as ultimately beneficial as it was inevitable. Such
conquests are sure to come when a masterful people, still in its raw
barbarian prime, finds itself face to face with the weaker and wholly
alien race which holds a coveted prize in its feeble grasp. ” And in
another declaration, which is safe to say was not what earned him a
Nobel Peace Prize, he said: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only
good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I
shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth” (47).
If this was not enough, Roosevelt also contributed to the expropriation
of Indian lands by opening up thousands of acres of Indian land in the
Dakotas as well as in other parts of the country to white settlement (48).

In recent years, some conservative enthusiasts have proposed to add the
face of Ronald Reagan to Mount Rushmore. From an Indian point of view,
considering the record of the other four presidents on the mountain in
regards to Indigenous issues, it would perhaps be fitting. Displaying a
similar degree of sensitivity to Indian issues as the other four
presidents, when he was asked by students in Russia about the treatment
of Indians at the hands of the U.S. government, Reagan replied that they
had nothing to complain about. He further argued:

“Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them in that
wanting to stay in that kind of primitive lifestyle. Maybe we should
have said, no, come join us; be citizens along with the rest of us….And
so, I don’t know what their complaint might be.” (49)

Besides the obvious racist tone of this statement, Reagan’s historical
revisionism betrays either an incredible ignorance or plain dishonesty.
His suggestion that the main fault of the U.S. government was giving
Indian people too much choice rather than pushing them on the road to
becoming “civilized” would be laughable, if it was not tragic. During
the late 1800s and good part of the 1900s, most American Indian
religious practices where outlawed. Indian children were forcibly
separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools were they were
beaten if they spoke their own language. Indigenous economic, political
and social systems were destroyed in order to facilitate a process of
forced assimilation. Is this the choice that Reagan was talking about?

Maybe this should not be surprising. Reagan after all is a president who
gave his wholehearted support to the European-descended elite of
Guatemala that for years has defended its power and economic interests
by using murder and torture against the Indigenous majority of the
country. In 1986, during the height of the Reagan presidency, the
Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States noted
that in Guatemala 100,000 people (almost entirely Maya Indians) had been
the victims of political assassinations over the previous fifteen years
and 40,000 more had “disappeared.” Given Guatemala’s relatively small
population size, this would be the equivalent to the wiping out of four
million people in a country with a population like the United States.
Just so that mere numbers do not dull our perceptions, let us get a
visual image of what exactly the Guatemalan military would do when
Indigenous people did not comply with the government’s expropriation of
their lands. This particular case refers to a massacre of 352 Indians
that took place in 1982.

At 1:00 pm, the soldiers began to fire at the women inside the small
church…Then they returned to kill the children… The soldiers cut open
the children’s stomachs with knives or they grabbed the children’s
little legs and smashed their heads with heavy sticks. (50)

Under the Reagan presidency, the government whose death squads committed
this massacre along with several other repressive regimes in Central
America received much military aid to carry out their work. The military
aid—Reagan argued—was necessary to help those struggling for freedom.
Stating that the wealthy elite of a country defending their economic
interests by massacring poor Indigenous peasants are freedom-fighters is
the kind of perverse logic that would fit very well on a monument called
“the shrine of democracy” that is built on stolen land. Unfortunately
for Reagan fans, it looks like despite his tremendous popularity with
Rushmore visitors, his face will not be added to the monument because
the mountain is too unstable to fit a fifth face. Too bad because from a
Lakota viewpoint, this would have truly been the icing on the cake of
hypocrisy.

This powerful symbolic quality of Mount Rushmore perhaps explains the
reason why when, in the early 1970s, American Indians began to voice
their grievances in a more forceful manner than they had done for
decades, Lakota activists chose the mountain for a major demonstration.
At the end of August of 1970, a group of activists staged an occupation
of the mountain in order to draw attention to the government’s
expropriation of some land in the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation and
about the taking of the Black Hills as a whole. The occupation was
repeated in June 1971, but unlike the previous year this time the
activists were arrested and dragged off the mountain.

In the following years, the FBI began a campaign to squash the rise of
American Indian activism with the methods that their counterintelligence
program (COINTELPRO) had previously used against the Black Panther
Party, anti-war activists, and civil rights figures such as Martin
Luther King and Malcolm X. One of the cornerstones of COINTELPRO was to
make activists come across in the media as dangerous criminals in order
to justify a violent crackdown against them. It is in this light that we
should view the FBI memos detailing Indian plans to send a “suicide
squad which is extremely well trained in military and guerrilla tactics”
to blow up Mount Rushmore on July 4, 1975 (51). On June 26, 1975, on the
Pine Ridge Reservation, a shootout between the FBI and American Indian
Movement (AIM) members erupted which led to the death of one Indian and
two FBI agents. After a very shady trial tainted by plenty of evidence
of FBI misconduct, the court convicted Leonard Peltier, who is easily
the most famous American Indian political prisoner today. On June 27, a
bomb went off at four in the morning in the parking lot at Mount
Rushmore and destroyed the glass windows of the visitor center but did
no other damage. This seemed to confirm the FBI warnings about the
activists’ plans to demolish the mountain. However, the fact that the
bomber made no attempt to attack the actual monument, and that AIM never
claimed responsibility (something that they always did for all of their
actions,) makes one wonder who really was behind the bombing. In any
case, far from producing the suicide squad promised by the FBI, AIM
simply staged a demonstration a few days later on July 4 and that was
the end of their protests at Mount Rushmore (52).

In addition to the very dramatic AIM protests of the 1970s, Lakota
people have also expressed their feelings about Mount Rushmore in ways
demonstrating that they have not lost their sense of humor. James
Weddell describes: “I’ll tell you about a very sacred Lakota ritual.
I’ve participated in it a few times and I was spiritually uplifted every
time. A brave warrior will climb to the top of those big faces, pull
down his pants and piss on top of their heads. Very uplifting stuff,
really. A beautiful Lakota ceremony.” (53) Besides Weddell, several
Lakota have boasted of this act, which perhaps expresses Lakota
attitudes toward the monument more than any words or any protest can
ever convey (54).

*Crazy Horse Mountain *

Among the various complaints that the Lakota have about Rushmore is what
Lame Deer calls the “…disregard for nature which makes him [white
people] desecrate one of our holy mountains with these oversized pale
faces” (55). Lakota elder Birgil Kills Straight argues that since every
cubic inch of Black Hills country is sacred land, doing man-made
modification to the natural beauty of the place is a sacrilegious act
(56). If this is the case, it is interesting to analyze how the Lakota
respond to the other monumental rock-carving project that exists in the
Black Hills just a few miles away from Mount Rushmore. The work on Crazy
Horse Mountain was started in 1947 by Polish sculptor Korczak
Ziolkowski. The project, which is privately financed and is still in
progress, is similar to Mount Rushmore (blasting a mountain to create a
sculpture that emerges out of it) but its subject, the Lakota leader
Crazy Horse, obviously caters to a very different audience.

Whereas the Lakota opposition to Mount Rushmore is nearly universal,
there is much ambiguity among the Lakota regarding Crazy Horse Mountain.
Many Lakota are opposed to it just as much as they are opposed to Mount
Rushmore because they view any destruction of Black Hills nature,
regardless of the purpose, as desecration. In an article published in
the Indian-run magazine Indian Country Today Oglala medicine man Rick
Two Dogs states: “In the Lakota way of thinking, to us it would be more
beautiful if left a natural mountain.” And later he adds: “They always
said the spirit of Crazy Horse didn’t approve of it. Crazy Horse would
be the first to tell you he didn’t want no mountain made in what they
thought was his likeness.” (57) Lakota spiritual leaders Fools Crow and
Godfrey Chips are also against the project and John Fire Lame Deer
agrees with them: “ The whole idea of making a beautiful wild mountain
into a statue of him is a pollution of the landscape. It is against the
spirit of Crazy Horse.” (58) Many of the opponents to the project point
to the fact that during his lifetime Crazy Horse was a very modest man
who never allowed anyone to take his picture and is therefore unlikely
to have approved of a work destroying a mountain for the sake of
portraying his image. Even the fact that the finished project is
supposed to include the building of a university and medical center for
Indian peoples leaves some like Lakota anthropologist Bea Medicine and
activist Charlotte Black Elk skeptical (59).

On the other hand, the Cherokee John Gritts, who served as member of the
Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Board of Directors, argues that it is
good to have a place to learn about Indian life for non-Indian people
who do not know anyone on any reservation (60). Other supporters point
to the fact that originally it was a Lakota, tribal councilman Henry
Standing Bear, who invited Ziolkowski to build the monument by writing
him “My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man
has great heroes too.” (61) Even today this sentiment is shared by some
Lakota. Jim Weddell says: “It’s strange. Blasting the mountains bothers
me but in a racist state like South Dakota it’s good to see these
rednecks foaming at the mouth at the thought that the Crazy Horse
sculpture will dwarf the faces of Mount Rushmore.” (62) This tension
between a firm opposition to the typically Western impulse to dominate
nature which is evident in both Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Mountain
and the positive political significance of having a great monument to an
Indian leader in the middle of a very racist state is likely to continue
dividing the Lakota for generations to come.

*Conclusion *

Other than for the silent protest of the Lakota “pissing ritual” that
Weddell referred to and for the more visible but brief AIM protests of
the 1970s, few public actions have been taken against Mount Rushmore.
The fact that there is any opposition to the monument at all is
something that the vast majority of visitors will never even be aware
of. Mount Rushmore is an icon of colonization, is built on land that the
Supreme Court agrees was taken illegally, and is a slap in the face to
the religious traditions of those tribes who hold the Black Hills
sacred. But this is certainly not part of the official meaning that the
monument has in the eyes of millions of Americans. Throughout the world,
major scandals tend to happen when places that are religiously
meaningful to some people are destroyed by others. How could this happen
in the middle of the United States and go by relatively unnoticed? Part
of the answer lays in the fact that while man-made sacred places
(churches, temples, etc.) are protected by the international laws,
natural sacred places are rarely recognized by those who come from
non-animistic traditions that are used to consider nature only as a
resource to be exploited. Just a few years ago, the international
community reacted in horror when the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
destroyed centuries old Buddhist statues. What happened at Rushmore is
very similar, but it was achieved through the opposite process. The
United States did not destroy man-made sculptures that were sacred to
the Lakota. Rather, they destroyed a sacred mountain by building in it
man-made sculptures.

Other answers to the question may have to do with the small numbers and
equally small political weight that the people affected, the Lakota, can
muster. Part of it may be motivated by the fact that most people are
apathetic and do not care too much for what does not affect them
immediately. Large numbers of people in the United States thought little
of the fact that the rationale for the most recent war in Iraq turned
out to be hollow, so why should they worry about something like Mount
Rushmore? Another reason has to do with the extreme attachment that
people feel toward certain symbols. Once a certain symbol is associated
with values like patriotism and freedom, many people will defend it
tooth and nail no matter how little the symbol in question may truly
represent the ideal of freedom. But ultimately, the bottom line may have
to do with raw power. Conquerors gain the right to do what they want.
History is after all truly written by the winners, and in this case the
winners decided to write their history, quite literally, in stone.

*REFERENCES *

1. Larner p. 92 
2. Ibidem p. 274 
3. Speech quoted in Taliaferro p. 227 
4. Ibidem p. 280-281 
5. Rapid City Journal 7/5/1991 in Larner p. 274 
6. Sundstrom p. 3 
7. Goodman p. 14, Charlotte Black Elk in Little Eagle June 25, 1996. 
8.Lakota educator Carole Anne Heart in Little Eagle June 25 1996, and Paha 
Sapa documentary, and Goodman p. 10 for picture. 
9. Weddell interview. 
10. Matthew King in Little Eagle June 25, 1996. 
11.White, Lazarus, Calloway, passim. Utley quoted in Gonzales. 
Donald Worster and William K. Powers quoted in Bordewich. 
12. Goodman passim, Weddell Interview. 
13. The Thoen Stone can be found in the Adams Museum in Deadwood. The 
complete text is quoted in Lazarus p. 73. 
14. Lazarus, p. 73. 
15. Lewis and Clark diaries quoted in White. 
16. The complete text of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty is quoted in Lazarus p. 
439-455 
17. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1872, 8 quoted in Utley, p. 
92. 
18. Yankton Press & Dakotaian, 9/10/1874. 
19. Utley p. 126 
20. Bismark Tribune 6/17/1874 quoted in Larner p. 77 
21. Letter of Sheridan to Terry as quoted in Lazarus p. 343 
22. Utley p. 127 
23. quoted in Lazarus p. 94-95 
24. Ibid. p. 55 
25. Larner p. 66 
26. Lazarus p. 39 
27. Lazarus p. 86 
28. Tallent. 
29. Larner p. 89 
30. Out of Many p. 718, Larner p. 199 
31. Larner p. 218 
32. Ibid. p. 194, 225 
33. Ibid. p. 12 
34. See Larner and Taliaferro passim 
35. Paha Sapa documentary 
36. Weddell Interview 
37. Moore p. 32, Black Elk Speaks passim, Sidney Keith speech 1995. 
38. Many authors cover this. For example see Lazarus passim. 
39. Weddell Interview 
40. Gonzales p. 146. 
41. Lame Deer p. 82 
42. Stannard p. 119 Larner p. 280 
43. quoted in Stannard p. 120 
44. Gonzales p. 145, Larner p. 59 
45. Larner 147, 159-162 
46. Dyer p. 79. 18 
47. Quoted in Stannard p. 245 
48. Gonzales p. 145 
49. Reagan speech, 1988 
50. quoted in Stannard p. xiv 
51. quoted in Matthiessen p. 202-203. For material about the Mount Rushmore 
occupation see Means, Matthiessen, Taliaferro, and Larner, passim. For primary sources providing COINTELPRO documents see Wall, passim. For a general discussion of COINTELPRO see Matthiessen, passim. 
52. Matthiessen, Larner, Taliaferro passim. 
53. Weddell Interview 
54. Means p. 170, Lame Deer 80 
55. Lame Deer 80 
56. Birgil Kills Straight in Paha Sapa documentary. 
57. Little Eagle July 29, 1996 
58. Lame Deer p. 85 
59. Indian Country July 22, 1996. 
60. Little EagleJuly 29, 1996. 
61. Ibidem 
62. Weddell Interview 

*Primary Sources: *

-1868 Fort Laramie Treaty 
The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty forms the foundation of the Lakota claim to the Black Hills. This treaty makes clear that Mount Rushmore is built on stolen land. Copies of the entire text of the Treaty have been printed in several books. I refer to the complete text as presented in Lazarus. 
-Paha Sapa: The Struggle for the Black Hills. 1992. 
This is an HBO documentary entirely dedicated about modern Lakota feelings about the Black Hills. Some parts focus on Mount Rushmore and about the protests that occurred there. 
-Thoen Stone 
This is a stone kept in a museum in Deadwood, South Dakota. It contains the engravings left by an early American explorer who was being hunted down by the Lakota people for trespassing in the Black Hills in the 1840s. This may be interesting to highlight the Lakota possessiveness’ toward the Black Hills. The text of this has been published in several books. I use the complete text quoted in Lazarus. 
-Goodman, Ronald. Lakota Star Knowledge: Studies in Lakota Stellar Theology . 
Rosebud: Sinte Gleska University, 1992. 
This is an oral history project coordinated by a Lakota university. 
Among other things it contains various oral traditions regarding the Black Hills as recorded from Lakota elders. 
-Tallent, Annie D. First White Woman in the Black Hills. Mitchell: Educator 
SupplyCo., [1889] 1923. 
This is the edited diary of a pioneer woman who came to the Black Hills during the 1874 gold rush that caused the war between the U.S. government and the Lakota. 
-James R. Weddell, phone interview by Daniele Bolelli, March 21, 2005. 
Weddell belongs to the Yankton tribe, the only subdivision of the Lakota to have accepted the money awarded by the Supreme Court in 1980 in compensation for the illegal taking of the Black Hills. Weddell is one of only two Yanktons to have refused to cash the Black Hills’ claim check. He has been an activist for his people throughout his life. 
-Sidney Keith speech given during the Sun Dance at Green Grass (S.D.), August 
1995. Sidney Keith was the leader of the Sun Dance ceremony that a Lakota community held at Green Grass every year since 1970. This quote comes from a speech that Keith delivered during one of the pauses of the ceremony. 
-Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1872, contained in Utley 1993, 
p. 92. 
-Ronald Reagan “Remarks and a question-and-answer session with the 19 
students and faculty at Moscow State University (May 31, 1988),” 
Administration of Ronald Reagan. Washington, D.C., 1988 p. 703-712 
A speech by former President Ronald Reagan in which he discusses the relationship between the United States and American Indian peoples. 
-“A College on the Mountain an Impossible Dream of Sculptor?” Indian 
Country Today. Oneida (N.Y.): July 22, 1996. Vol. 16 Issue 3 pg. B1. 
-Little Eagle, Avis. “A Fortunate Foundation: A View from the Mount”. Indian 
Country Today. Oneida (N.Y.): July 29, 1996. Vol. 16 Issue 4 pg. B1. 
-Little Eagle, Avis. “Crazy Horse Memorial: Rising Up from the Sacred Paha 
Sapa” Indian Country Today. Oneida (N.Y.): July 2, 1996. Vol. 16 Issue 1 pg. B1. 
-Little Eagle, Avis. “Paha Sapa: Sacred Birthplace, Birthright of the Sioux 
Nation” Indian Country Today. Oneida (N.Y.): June 25, 1996. Vol. 15 Issue 52 pg. B2. 
-Yankton Press & Dakotaian, 9/10/1874. 
-Bismark Tribune 6/17/1874 quoted in Larner p. 77 
- Sheridan to Terry as quoted in Lazarus p. 343 

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Revision” Western Historical Quarterly 11 (1980): 17-36. 
-The Black Elk Reader (ed. Clyde Holler). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 
2000. 
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Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century. New York: Doublday, 1996. 
-Calloway, Colin. One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before 
Lewis and Clark. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. 
-Dyer, Thomas G. Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race. Baton Rouge: 
Louisiana State University Press, 1980. 
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Pocket Books, 1976 [1972]. 
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Out of Many: A History of the American People (Volume 2). Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice Hall, 2003 (4th edition). 
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Wounded Knee and the Struggle for Indian Sovereignty. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 
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Mouth Press/ Nation Books, 2002. 
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States, 1775 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. 
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Autobiography of Russell Means. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. 
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Publishers, 1996. 
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Oglala Sioux. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988 ed. 
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Martin’s Press, 1999. 
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York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 
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Berkley Books, 1996. 20 
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Mount Rushmore. Public Affairs: New York, 2002. 
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