Crazy Horse Memorial

World’s largest Mountain-carving in progress on Black Hills of South Dakota (USA)

Man’s ambition finds no bounds. It is very true of a sculptor called Korczak Ziolkowski (a polish American orphaned at the age of one but determined to fulfill the mission handed out to him by the Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear for a mountain carving in honour of the North American Indian esp. a Native Hero called Crazy Horse in Black Hills of South Dakota.

History of the Hero as written by the Sculptor:

Crazy Horse was born on Rapid Creek in the Black Hills in 1842. He defended his people and their way of life in the only manner he knew. While at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, under a flag of truce, he was stabbed in the back by an American soldier due to which he died September 6, 1877 at the age of 35. The treaty of 1868 signed by the President of the United States was not acted upon. In fact the said treaty promised meat, clothing, tents and necessities for existence which they were to receive for having given up their lands and gone to live on the reservations. To a derisive question raised by a white man “Where are your lands now?” he seems to have thrown out his left hand pointing and replying with the words, “ My lands are where my dead (brethren) lie buried” as shown in the scale model and in the work progressing accordingly.

Korczak started the project in the year 1948 with only $174 in his pocket at the age of 40. Over the years he battled financial hardship, racial prejudice, injuries and advancing age. A strong believer in the free enterprise system, Korczak felt Crazy Horse should be built by the interested public and not the tax payer. What a Himalayan wish and vow on the part of a single family to accomplish such a big gigantic project – the largest mountain carving undertaken so far in the world? Since his death in 1982 his wife Ruth and their children continue to see exciting progress being made with each passing year. Workers are now (in 2010) blocking out the 22 storey-high horse’s head. The painted outline shows the 45 –foot ear and the 16 foot-wide eye, some 260 feet below the head of Crazy Horse.