Who Speaks for Crazy Horse?
New Yorker,
by
Brooke Jarvis
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
9/22/2019 1:30:02 PM
The street corners of downtown Rapid City, South Dakota, the gateway to the Black Hills and the self-proclaimed “most patriotic city in America,” are populated by bronze statues of all the former Presidents of the United States, each just eerily shy of life-size. On the corner of Mount Rushmore Road and Main Street, a diminutive Andrew Jackson scowls and crosses his arms; on Ninth and Main, a shoulder-high Teddy Roosevelt strikes an impressive pose, holding a petite sword.
As one drives farther into the Black Hills—a region considered sacred by its original residents, who were displaced by settlers, loggers, and gold miners—the roadside attractions offer a vision
Reply 1 - Posted by:
BeatleJeff 9/22/2019 1:49:30 PM (No. 186527)
Neil Young?
13 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Italiano 9/22/2019 2:58:51 PM (No. 186559)
Well said, #1. Or Elizabeth Warren.
5 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Highlander 9/22/2019 3:01:14 PM (No. 186560)
Why do these articles have to be sooo looong?
5 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
hershey 9/22/2019 3:06:29 PM (No. 186565)
I hope they put obammie in an outhouse...
1 person likes this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
DARling 9/22/2019 3:26:28 PM (No. 186574)
Yawn. I would have rather seen the presidents' sculptures spoken of in the first paragraph. I looked them up and they are incredible. The Crazy Horse face looks like a super-grouchy George C. Scott. It is not close to being completed, despite decades of generous donations. Kind of like sending money to a third-world nation. It appears that the original sculptor's family has been in charge of this and should be made to account for where the donations went.
7 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
RuckusTom 9/22/2019 3:30:45 PM (No. 186576)
It's so confusing these days. Were the "Indians" referenced in the article Injun "Indians" or, ah, er, Indian "Indians"? /s
2 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Wendybird 9/22/2019 4:21:35 PM (No. 186592)
Accounts of American Indians always catch my eye. An earlier American Indian hero was Tecumseh, born in 1768. A wonderful read, combination of fact and imagination by Allan Eckert, “A sorrow in our Heart”, will give most readers a different view of the seizure of the land we call the United States, from the American Indians.
4 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
samoasam 9/22/2019 4:44:48 PM (No. 186601)
Hey Brooke, you obviously have a problem with this monument. You obviously have a problem with the settlement of the West, white people, the statues in Rapid City, and the rest of our country's achievements. I Remind you that you work, live, and play in NYC and Manhattan-- which was bought from the Indians for $23. How do you sleep at night??
8 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Ketchuplover 9/22/2019 6:34:26 PM (No. 186651)
The writer doesn't really get it. If you've ever driven across SD from east to west, you will see why so much of the tourist dollar is coveted in the western part. Everything else is barren. And so you have your Wall Drug signs advertising free ice water. And your Reptile Gardens signs proclaiming a place where you can watch a rattlesnake get milked. And your Cosmos site where natural laws of nature are topsy-turvy. And your Missile Museum and Bear Country and The Gutzon Borglum Story, etc. The people need to make a living. I live in Minnesota and just took some friends and visited the area last March. Although they were Chinese, they looked in awe at the giant presidential heads carved in the mountain, never once uttering an epithet about white male arrogance. We didn't want to pay the rip-off prices at the Crazy Horse Monument, so we just drove to an area where you could see it in the distance from the road - - and that was good enough for us. The point is -- you can sit in your NYC skyscrapers and look down upon the flyover country as an arrogant sage, but you'll never understand Midwestern "God's Country" life and I feel sorry for you because of that.
10 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
DVC 9/22/2019 6:42:24 PM (No. 186653)
Well said, #9.
We flew out to Rapid City a few decades ago and rented a car, drove to Mt. Rushmore on the 4th of July.
There was the Marine Band there playing a concert of patriotic favorites as we sat in bleachers with the band in front, and the giant sculptures in the back, against an impossibly blue sky on a perfect day. A few local polticians made short, patriotic speeches and more Marine Band wonderful music.
A wonderful time, at a wonderful place. And then, the hole had just been made for the Crazy Horse statue, and we looked from a roadside vista, too. Good to see that the head is making progress, all private money, as I understand it.
See America, it is beautiful and wonderful. We took some Ukrainian friends to Yellowstone, a rodeo at Jackson, Arches Park, Mesa Verde and our cabin in the mountains of Colorado. They had a great time, and they saw THE REAL AMERICA, not the concrete canyons infested with foreigners that are NYC.
3 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
snakeoil 9/22/2019 6:43:02 PM (No. 186655)
Did the statue of Slick have its pants on? Crazy Horse certainly is a more honorable warrior than Sitting Bull who sold out and joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Wish I could live long enough to see the finished work which looks impressive.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
EQKimball 9/22/2019 8:51:38 PM (No. 186699)
"Decades from now when the statue is completed?" The sculpture of a head with no body and no horse has been the same for the past 25 years. It is the private project of a single family that charges admission and parking to tour a nice Indian "museum" (gift shop and cafeteria}, look at photos of an "Indian University" that holds classes only in the summer, and meanwhile has proudly turned down offers by the federal government to finish the project as it did with Mt. Rushmore. At the present rate, my grandchildren will not live to see the completion of Crazy Horse.
1 person likes this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 9/22/2019 9:25:09 PM (No. 186710)
I wondered the same thing, #3, unless writer gets paid by the word, or by the page.
0 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Michaelus 9/23/2019 6:11:50 AM (No. 186809)
I love how people repeat the BS that the Black Hills were "sacred" to the Sioux. The Sioux arrived there later than the French trappers. The Sioux pushed the Cheyenne out of that area and were busy exterminating them when the Americans arrived. The Cheyenne had pushed out the Kiowa before that.
2 people like this.
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