July 3, 2020.
A group of protestors block the road leading to Mt. Rushmore.
They demand the permanent closure of the famed memorial and the return of the Black Hills
to the Oceti Sakowan - the Great Sioux Nation.
Instead, 21 protestors are arrested, with some facing up to 16.5 years in prison.
It’s the latest in a centuries-old conflict surrounding Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills.
This is a case of theft.
How was Mt. Rushmore stolen?
To know that, you have to know the history of the Black Hills.
Covering 5,000 square miles and at an elevation of 7,242 feet, the Black Hills are among the
oldest mountain ranges in the world - predating much of the Alps and the Himalayas.
It is estimated that humans have lived among these granite mountains and the surrounding
pine forests since 11,500 B.C.
For almost 300 years, it was home to the Arikara, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa, and Arapahoe tribes.
European expansion and tensions with the Chippewa forced the Sioux tribe to also move into the
area, following the buffalo into the Great Plains.
They mastered the wild horses and fought the other Nations to claim the land as their own.
Led by Standing Bull, the Sioux completed their migration from Minnesota in 1775, just
as the first shots of the American Revolutionary War were fired.
The most favored and sacred of the land was the Black Hills, the Paha Sapa.
Lakota tradition claims the first of their people lived happily in the Hills thousands
of years before Standing Bull’s arrival.
The nature of their appearance also squares with Lakota views on the cycle of life: a
circle, a constant loop representing birth, death, and birth.
For the Sioux, these hills are crucial to their culture as it is perceived to be the
center of the universe.
The early-20th-century Sioux holy man and scribe Black Elk described a vision that brought
him to the top of Harney Peak, summing up the Lakota’s view of the Hills: “I was
standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop
of the world.
And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw...And
I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as
daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter
all the children of one mother and one father, and I saw that it was holy."
The Sioux enjoyed their land, unbothered by the colonists except for the occasional French
trader.
Until President Thomas Jefferson completed the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
828 thousand square miles were purchased from France, including the whole of what would
later be called South Dakota - the land of the Sioux - the home of the Black Hills.
Because of US expansion to the west, the area inhabited by the Sioux got progressively smaller.
This continued even after 1868 when the tribe was allocated land by the government under
the name of the Great Sioux Reservation.
By 1912, only one-third of the land allotment of the Great Sioux Reservation remained in
the hands of the tribe.
Their land and their culture were being stamped out as their religious customs were soon banned;
the Sioux children that went to school had their braids chopped off and were punished
for speaking their native tongue.
But the new century brought a new generation of Sioux, one educated on how US laws work.
When new land grabs were attempted by the government, delegates were sent to Washington
to formally complain, present alternatives, and generally delay proceedings through bureaucracy.
A new organization, the Society of American Indians, kept the claim on the Black Hills
alive.
They appealed to Congress to allow the Court of Claims to hear their grievances by stressing
the American values of “equality and justice.”
They asked to review the old treaties and other legal documents pertaining to the Black
Hills, explaining, “Obtaining this knowledge we can best and sooner...become independent
citizens of this great United States.
Their appeals struck a chord with South Dakota’s official historian Doane Robinson, who wrote
an article in 1911 defending the Sioux in their claim of the Black Hills, writing, “They
have no thought that they can regain possession of the Hills but they think they have an equitable
claim against Uncle Sam for the value of the property.”
An investigative council was formed in Sioux country, and the search for a lawyer to best
represent their case and bring it to court began.
In December 1921, a quartet of lawyers was selected, and on May 7, 1923, lead attorney
Ralph E. Case, an American man born and educated in the Sioux Territory, filed 24 Sioux compensation
claims in the Court of Claims - including an official claim on the Black Hills.
Case cautioned the Sioux that it would be many years before they would hear a final
decision - in fact, it would take another two decades.
In the meantime, a special project was developing in the area.
Having been designated a national forest in 1907, the Black Hills had become a tourist
attraction.
In 1924, Doane Robinson, the man who just 13 years earlier defended the Sioux’s claim
on the Black Hills, dreamed of something even bigger for the area - a monument to be carved
from those natural and unique granite formations...the Needles.
Robinson imagined, instead of towering formations, towering figures of the West carved out of
stone: Lewis and Clark, General Custer, Sacagawea, even Red Cloud himself.
Gutzon Borglum, a sculptor known just as much for his work as he was for his rabid patriotism
and headline-grabbing feuds with the rest of the art community, was deemed worthy for
the job.
Borglum was excited by the idea, though he steered Robinson away from the western heroes.
He imagined an immense tribute to American History, partially due to practicality: it’s
easier to attract financing for a national monument than for a regional one.
The initial idea was for two figures, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, one representing
the birth of the nation, the other its preservation, standing side-by-side from tip to toe.
But there was another issue: the Needles themselves were too difficult a canvas on which to work.
At the recommendation of forest ranger Theodore Shoemaker, Borglum surveyed an area known
to the settlers as Cougar Mountain - and to the former Sioux residents as the Six Grandfathers.
So named because the formation was said to resemble the six deities central to their
people’s creation, the same six deities who Black Elk purported to have spoken to
in his vision.
Like much of the Black Hills, it was a holy, awe-inspiring place to the people who once
lived there.
Borglum, likewise, was awed by the mountain.
On August 16, 1925, he planted the American flag on top of the mountain, officially decreeing
it the site of his memorial.
He also excitedly announced to the world that instead of two, he would be sculpting four
Presidents: Washington, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt.
Jefferson was selected because of the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the territory, expanding
the country; and Roosevelt...well, Borglum was a friend and longtime supporter, as was
South Dakota’s former governor and current senator Peter Norbeck.
The excuse they gave was that Roosevelt gave the country the Panama Canal, which, as Borglum
said, “joined the waters of the great East and West seas.”
Each of the Presidents were significant for the Sioux, as well.
Washington may represent the birth of the nation, but that very birth drove northeastern
tribes into Sioux territory, pushing them across the Missouri River and into the Black
Hills.
Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase suddenly claimed Sioux territory, including the Black
Hills, as America’s own.
Lincoln personally looked into a military tribunal that had condemned 303 Sioux to death;
torn between making an example and not being a sadist, he compromised - 38 men were hanged,
the largest public execution in American history.
And Roosevelt was instrumental in limiting education on the reservations, and had once
said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians,
but I believe nine out of every 10 are.”
These were the men whose visages would be forever carved into the sacred mountain.
Still, the Sioux made the best of it: Lakota Chief Luther Standing Bear campaigned for
Crazy Horse to be added to the monument, while holy man Black Elk and his family began pageants
on site that recreated aspects of their culture for the tourist crowd - or, if not quite recreated,
at least satisfied the customers’ expectations.
Money issues and world events meant a lot of starting-and-stopping on the project.
In 1930, Charles E. Rushmore, a New York-based lawyer whose visit to the Black Hills in 1890
prompted locals to jokingly call the mountain by his name, contributed $5,000 to fund the
memorial’s construction.
The colloquial name of Mt. Rushmore was now official made official.
Despite such contributions and the public backing from Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert
Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, financial straits, Borglum’s death, and the inevitable
Second World War necessitated the project to be declared over, while still unfinished,
in 1941.
Instead of full bodies, an immense Hall of Records, and a carved dedication to the USA
in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase, the Mt. Rushmore memorial would remain just four
faces.
Just one year later, 19 years after the initial filing, the Court of Claims dismissed the
Sioux nation’s Black Hills claim.
Lawyers on behalf of the tribe would continue to bring the claim back to court and Congress,
while activists turned their attention toward the memorial defacing the Six Grandfathers.
In 1970, 150 Sioux demonstrators came to Mt. Rushmore at the height of its tourist season.
While some played traditional music and others distracted rangers, twenty occupied the top
of the mountain, airing grievances that told the whole history of US betrayal and listing
the crimes of the four presidents whose giant faces sat beneath them.
Another group climbed those faces a year later, and were arrested.
The demands each time were simple: honor the Treaty of 1868 and return the Black Hills.
While the government considered it too late to return the territory, the next Claims Court
decision, in 1979, overturned the 1942 one - the court awarded $105 million to the Sioux,
including interest.
The decision was upheld in 1980 by the Supreme Court, who awarded the nation $106 million.
In fact, a number of decisions for compensating the Sioux have been passed - and all have
been rejected.
The Sioux do not ask for money, they demand the land that is rightfully theirs to be returned
to them.
In 1987 and 1990, congressional bills were proposed that would return the Black Hills
to the Sioux; both were killed swiftly.
Even a United Nations delegation advised returning some of the land to the Sioux.
In a statement from June 2020, Harold Frazier, Chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe,
wrote, “Nothing stands as a greater reminder to the Great Sioux Nation of a country that
cannot keep a promise or treaty than the faces carved into our sacred land.”
For many, there is no justice until the land is returned to the Sioux, and the faces of
the oppressors that adorn Mt. Rushmore are obliterated.