Mt. Rushmore

Some of you might remember that I'm an Indian and take an interest in things that affected our history and culture. Mt. Rushmore is a pretty controversial thing for many Natives, especially the Sioux. Anyway, I found this article fairly interesting and thought I'd share it.
https://eos.org/features/mount-rush...ffEem3D67DnNpRfjlox5zU7ktyc3ZTNq7HQyNOsZSXjaU

Interesting read. I still believe todays parks would be better if managed by the Native Americans. I'm related to the mound builders in Ohio.

It's a product if it's times nearly 100 years ago. If it didn't exist and was proposed today, I think there would be much debate and soul searching over the where and who would be depicted, and that's not a bad thing. As a society we're much more aware of how we all fit in, and even that is rapidly being rethought, as that era when some were "expected to know their place" fades into history. There is still plenty of the path to be covered but the days when the dominate part of society got to make the rules and the rest were expected to live with it is dying out.

Walt - thanks for posting this. Always fascinates me that we build physical monuments to people, often while ignoring many things they did.

Another take:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/sordid-history-mount-rushmore-180960446/


Walt - what native nation are you a member of? Sovereign nations recognized here in Connecticut are Eastern Pequot, Golden Hill Paugussett, Schaghticoke, Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan.

An *excellent* museum:

http://www.pequotmuseum.org/PermanentExhibits.aspx

Thanks.
Tom M.

This will far exceed Rushmore's scale https://crazyhorsememorial.org/

Thanks Walt, very interesting. I agree with both Mike and Larry. We stopped at both sites coming home from the Austin Healey Open Road Conclave in Lake Tahoe in 2002. My wife bought some really pretty jewelry at the Crazy Horse site.

Funny or I should say odd, my great grandmother was a full blood Delaware Indian who married an Englishman, making me 1/8th, my wife's grandmother who married a Dutchman from Holland was a full blood Cherokee, making her 1/4. The funny part is, we never knew this until we were married for 10 or 12 years and her ancestry and mine came out at a family gathering. :thumbsup: PJ

It is definitely a product of its time. Today I'd hope that the selection committee would be more inclusive and maybe a couple of the originally purposed figures would have been included. I'd also hope that they wouldn't dynamite a sacred site today to attract tourists.

Tom, I've always thought that was interesting also. Often the myth or legend of the man is much more important in the national consciousness than the actual man. I think that's why so many wives tales about men like Washington and Lincoln persist to this day. We either can't or don't want to admit that they were fallible men and not gods.

I am Kiowa and Quapaw. The Kiowa are a plains tribe that originated near Yellowstone and through a few centuries of wandering wound up near where I live today. While they were very nomadic and followed the buffalo and fought far ranging conflicts with many of their neighbors across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, their most sacred sites are near the Wichita Mountains. The Quapaw are originally far from far eastern Oklahoma and Arkansas, in fact Arkansas is named for them. When the French were first exploring the Mississippi and encountered the Caddo they asked about other tribes further north and one of those tribes were who the Caddo called the Arkansa, which was the Quapaw. They lived had three principal villages situated between the Arkansas and Red rivers. After two treaties with the US in 1818 and 1824 they ceded much of their lands in return for a certain amount of goods in perpetuity and land in eastern Oklahoma. Of course those treaties were later ignored under the Jackson administration. Today the tribe is located in the very far northeaster corner of Oklahoma.

The Crazyhorse monument is mind bogglingly large.

Paul, it's always interesting the little things we learn about ourselves and our families as we get older.

In 2017,while staying in Rapid City,SD,on my move to Virginia,
I saw that Mt. Rushmore was nearby,so i decided to go see it.
The road to it is really steep,& towing a car trailer behind a fully
loaded pickup meant I was in low gear a lot,but I made it.
When I got there,I noticed that there was a parking garage blocking
the view,so you have to pay to get a decent view close to it.And since I didn't
have a lot of spare time,decided not to pay to get in.
I ended up going down the road a ways to get a picture.
View attachment 65462View attachment 65463

AngliaGT said:

In 2017,while staying in Rapid City,SD,on my move to Virginia,
I saw that Mt. Rushmore was nearby,so i decided to go see it.
The road to it is really steep,& towing a car trailer behind a fully
loaded pickup meant I was in low gear a lot,but I made it.
When I got there,I noticed that there was a parking garage blocking
the view,so you have to pay to get a decent view close to it.And since I didn't
have a lot of spare time,decided not to pay to get in.
I ended up going down the road a ways to get a picture.
View attachment 65462View attachment 65463

Click to expand...

Doug - has your BCF subscription expired? Many of your photos have disappeared.

Walt - have you read "Monument Wars"? Concentrates on the history of Washington DC, but asks good questions about whether things like statues are really needed by people in general, or just people who have an agenda to push. Eisenhower would be very negative about the new Eisenhower monument just opened in the capital.

Some folks (like me ...) would say, a monument to a person should be the remembrance of what they did, not what they looked like at a given time. As Susan Eisenhower said, a "living memorial", not a static physical thing.

OK - back to my cave.
Tom M.

This isn't intended to be political, just observations on how the world has changed and with our way of judging the past.


Any monument to any person or event risks the future generations saying "what were they thinking" It is hard to not measure the past by the standards of the present. It's one thing to say this is why we don't do whatever it was today, but completely different to judge them solely by the current standards. Recognize what they should have known was wrong in their individual or collective behavior, but not a blanket 21century wouldn't do that so must be bad for all times. But also recognize the good, the steps forward that led to today.


Most of us are men and women of our times, not stepping far, if at all, out of the accepted standards of the era we live in. For the founders, as wealthy and generally educated for their times landowners what they grew up with and considered expected of them framed their worldview. And even with the government they tried to produce, they started out with their monied landowning peers as the ones running and deciding on the future of the country. And things changed as time moved on. For them, stepping outside the standards of their time was difficult I think because their ability to discuss and find other opinions were limited by the media options of the day and the inability to easily communicate with the population as a whole.


Now we have social media and world spanning news delivery and those who see other possibilities to move forward can find those kindred spirits, can share thoughts and ideas about what might be better and more equitable rather than perhaps have just their small circle of friends and be unaware of how their thoughts may or may not resonate with a wider audience. The downside is that those who want to return to the past can also find those sympathetic to their viewpoint. So a double edged sword so to speak.


History as a whole is a complicated thing. Everything that ever happened, good and bad, has led to this moment.

Doug - great photos!

NutmegCT said:

Walt - have you read "Monument Wars"? Concentrates on the history of Washington DC, but asks good questions about whether things like statues are really needed by people in general, or just people who have an agenda to push. Eisenhower would be very negative about the new Eisenhower monument just opened in the capital.

Some folks (like me ...) would say, a monument to a person should be the remembrance of what they did, not what they looked like at a given time. As Susan Eisenhower said, a "living memorial", not a static physical thing.

OK - back to my cave.
Tom M.

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Tom, I haven't read that book, I may have to check it out. I am of the opinion that monuments are always built by men with agendas. I agree with you that Ike would not be a fan of the monument.

waltesefalcon said:

Some of you might remember that I'm an Indian and take an interest in things that affected our history and culture. Mt. Rushmore is a pretty controversial thing for many Natives, especially the Sioux. Anyway, I found this article fairly interesting and thought I'd share it.

Click to expand...

Just a friendly reminder, without injecting my opinion one way or the other in this thread, at the top of this forum (Pub) it says:

The Pub is: Forum to generally shoot the breeze. It is NOT: a debate forum (NO Politics, religion, or controversial topics.) Keep it clean, fun and lite!

This is not to pass judgement on anyone's opinion herein, but a reminder that if we know a topic is "controversial" then maybe this isn't the best place for it.

Thanks.

PS: Hope your foot is healing!

Bas, I didn't necessarily think it'd be controversial here, just interesting. If you think it needs be taken down feel free to do so, there will be no hard feelings.

The foot is going rather slow I've got another three weeks before I see the doc again and hopefully get cleared to be weight bearing and begin PT.

waltesefalcon said:

The foot is going rather slow I've got another three weeks before I see the doc again and hopefully get cleared to be weight bearing and begin PT.

Click to expand...

I feel for ya! Hope you heal as quickly and completely as possible!