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World's Largest Mountain Carving
"My lands are where my dead lie buried." - Crazy
Horse Crazy Horse was born on Rapid Creek
in the Black Hills of South Dakota in about 1842. While at Fort
Robinson, Nebraska, under a flag of truce, he was stabbed in the back by
an American soldier and died September 6, 1877.
Crazy Horse was never known to have signed a
treaty or touched a pen. This memorial is not so much a real
likeness as a memorial to the spirit of Crazy Horse - to his people.
With his left hand thrown out and pointing in answer to the question
asked by a white man, "Where are your lands now?" he replied, "My lands
are where my dead lie buried."
The Crazy Horse Memorial was started in 1947 by
Korczak Ziolkowski, who was of Polish descent, and born in Boston on
September 6, 1908. He was asked by Lakota Chief Henry Standing
Bear to carve Crazy Horse so that the white man might know that the red
man had heroes, too. Mr. Korczak had worked on Mt. Rushmore and
won first prize for a sculpture titled "Paderewski: Study of an
Immortal" at the 1939 New Yorks World's Fair. When he started on
the mountain in 1949 he was almost 40 and only had $147 dollars to his
name. Knowing that he would never finish in his lifetime, he left
three detailed books , his wife Ruth, and ten children to carry on the work when he died
October 20, 1982. He is buried in the mountain. The Crazy
Horse Memorial is a not a federal or state project and continues on with
money donated by visitors and tourists.
The carving is now 563 feet high by 641 feet
long.
This is a small sculpture of what the mountain
(behind the sculpture) will look like when completed.
Crazy Horse Memorial -
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