Crazy Horse Misha: I have a question. sir. It may sound strange. hut I’m sure that I saw another face in another mountain near here. Guide: Good question. Fm sure you mean another great monument. the monument to Crazy Horse. Mark: What is this Crazy Horse? Guide: Not what. hut who. Crazy Horse is the name of a great Native American chief. It’s a very sad story, but one that should be told. Long ago when the European settlers hadn’t vet arrived, the area was populated by Native Americans from the Sioux tribe. They led a simple. peaceful life and hunted buffalo for food. The Sioux belie\ ed in the power of nature and worshipped their gods the way their parents and grandparents had done for thousands and thousands of years. For them, the Black Hills were a very sacred area. When the Europeans came. things started to change. They killed more buffalo than the Sioux had ever done and soon the Indians didn’t have enough food to eat. Across the country the Europeans took all the good land and moved the Native American tribes into “reservations” . These were areas of dry land that the Europeans didn’t want. In the reservations the Indians had to give up their wandering way of life. At first the Sioux seemed to be luckier than other tribes: the Black Hills area wasn’t very attractive to the Europeans, so in the Treaty of 1868 the US government promised that territory to the Sioux forever. However, the promise wasn’t kept for long: very soon gold was found in the Black Hills, and thousands of prospectors flooded into the area. The US government forced the Sioux to leave their land. That left the Indians with no choice: they started a war against the occupiers. Crazy Horse was a Sioux chief who led his tribe in the war. To his people he was a real hero: brave, handsome and fair. He earned their respect not only by his skill in battle hut also by his determination to preserve their traditional way ol\Iifc and culture. But the Sioux were defeated in the war. In fact. their defeat at the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 was the last major defeat of Native Americans by white men on this continent. It was more of a massacre than a battle. Hundreds of unarmed Sioux women. children and men were shot and killed by US troops. So you all can imagine that when white men came into the Black Hills in 1927 and dynamited the faces of the four presidents into the sacred Black Hills. it was a deep insult to the Sioux, who still lived in the area. In 1939 Sioux Chief Standing Bear decided to create a Native American memorial in the Black Hills. He asked the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to carve a huge statue of Crazy Horse into another mountain in the Black Hills. There was no government funding for this project, so the sculptor used his own money to buy a big piece of the mountain. When the sculptor died, his family went on with the project. So far only Crazy Horse’s face is ready but when the whole statue is completed. it will be much bigger than any of the Mount Rushmore faces. On top of the mountain there will be the huge figure of a Native American rider on a white horse, who even after his death guards the sacred hills of South Dakota. the area which the Sioux still consider their own. Rob: Excuse me, sir. Just one quick question. Is there a cave under the Crazy Horse Monument? Guide: I’m not sure about that, but it’s possible. There are a lot of caves in the mountains. The gold miners stopped digging there after it became more difficult to find gold in the caves.
