“I see a time … when all the colors of mankind will gather under the sacred tree of life and the whole earth will become one circle again,” the legendary Crazy Horse said four days before his death.
Something amazing happens 17 miles from Mount Rushmore. A monument to a Native American hero has reached the clouds.
Crazy Horse is one of the most iconic Native Americans of all times. His mountainside sculpture is expected to be bigger than the sculpture of the four American presidents at Mount Rushmore. Sculptors have been working on the monument for seven decades, and the construction may be finished within another century.
In 1939, Lakota Chief Standing Bear instructed one of the Mount Rushmore sculptors to make a similar sculpture to his forefather Crazy Horse.
He was a freedom fighter who led his people in the fight against the US federal government. History data shows that Crazy Horse killed General Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn.
“My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know that the red man has great heroes too,” Standing Bear told the renowned Polish-American sculptor Korczak Ziółkowski.
Standing Bear wanted something special, and his idea was close to the impossible. He wanted a huge stone monument that’s bigger than Mount Rushmore. The huge sculpture is made without any government funding.
Ziółkowski was a dreamer, and the idea was born in his head.
“He believed you can do anything in this world. Nothing is impossible as long as you’re willing to work hard enough and pay the price,” his wife Ruth told NPR in 2013.
The monument was expected to be the world’s largest sculpture. Ziółkowski died in 1982. His wife and seven children got involved in the process, and his grandchildren contribute to the construction, too.
In the late 1990s, the face of Crazy Horse was almost finished at the side of the mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This spot has great importance to the Lakota. The Sioux Indians see the hills as the axis mundi or center of the world.
Sculptors have worked on Crazy Horse’s hair in the past two decade. His arm is almost finished, too. In this sculpture, Crazy Horse will ride on a horse whose head will stand 22 stories high.
Ziółkowski ‘s daughter says they are working a decade at a time. The finished monument will be 170 meters high and 195 meters long. You can get a ticket to check out the Crazy Horse’s face and fund the construction of the giant monument.