Crazy Horse Memorial
From the Epoch Times:
Almost everyone has heard of Mount Rushmore. But far fewer know that just 8 miles away, work is now taking place on the world’s largest sculpture—orders of magnitude larger than that homage to American presidents. The carving is called Crazy Horse, and its roots are a world apart from modern-day politics. It’s so enormous that if you were to pile the four presidential heads of Mount Rushmore on top of one another, they wouldn’t even reach halfway up the colossal work in progress.
This memorial is truly epic. Its carving began 75 years ago and was sparked by an unlikely friendship. Chief Henry Standing Bear, a local Native American, was a legendary character in Native culture; this visionary Lakota Indian, a great public speaker and thinker, was passionate about finding new ways of preserving his people’s history and tradition. But it was his cousin, a war hero by the name of Crazy Horse, who was revered by the Lakota as a truly iconic warrior.
When Standing Bear caught wind of plans to build a memorial in honor of Crazy Horse in Nebraska, he appealed to the one spearheading the project. The rightful place for such a carving, he said, was the Black Hills in western South Dakota, which are considered sacred by the Lakota. This small, isolated mountain range covered in pine forest is the oldest in the United States, and Native Americans have inhabited the region for almost 10,000 years.
It’s hard to know just when—or whether at all—the Crazy Horse Memorial will be finished. If it eventually is, it would measure 641 feet (195 meters) long and 563 feet (171 meters) high; and the dream started by Standing Bear and Mr. Ziolkowski 76 years ago, will at long last be realized.
Almost everyone has heard of Mount Rushmore. But far fewer know that just 8 miles away, work is now taking place on the world’s largest sculpture—orders of magnitude larger than that homage to American presidents. The carving is called Crazy Horse, and its roots are a world apart from modern-day politics. It’s so enormous that if you were to pile the four presidential heads of Mount Rushmore on top of one another, they wouldn’t even reach halfway up the colossal work in progress.
This memorial is truly epic. Its carving began 75 years ago and was sparked by an unlikely friendship. Chief Henry Standing Bear, a local Native American, was a legendary character in Native culture; this visionary Lakota Indian, a great public speaker and thinker, was passionate about finding new ways of preserving his people’s history and tradition. But it was his cousin, a war hero by the name of Crazy Horse, who was revered by the Lakota as a truly iconic warrior.
When Standing Bear caught wind of plans to build a memorial in honor of Crazy Horse in Nebraska, he appealed to the one spearheading the project. The rightful place for such a carving, he said, was the Black Hills in western South Dakota, which are considered sacred by the Lakota. This small, isolated mountain range covered in pine forest is the oldest in the United States, and Native Americans have inhabited the region for almost 10,000 years.
It’s hard to know just when—or whether at all—the Crazy Horse Memorial will be finished. If it eventually is, it would measure 641 feet (195 meters) long and 563 feet (171 meters) high; and the dream started by Standing Bear and Mr. Ziolkowski 76 years ago, will at long last be realized.
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