On The Road
Dispatch 1 - Crazy Horse Memorial
Subject: On the Road with Bob & Virginia
From: "Bob Schmitz" <robruth777@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:05:38 - 0700
To All:
Thursday 1-10-07.
Today was Crazy Horse day. Crazy Horse belonged to the Oglala tribe.
The Oglala was one of the seven branches of the Sioux Nation. Red
Cloud was the Oglala tribal chief, while Crazy Horse was an Oglala
war chief. Crazy Horse wanted no part of a reservation that would
severely restrict the way of life that all Indians had cherished for
decades. He never signed nor would be a part of any treaty with the
U.S. government.
The Crazy Horse monument is a memorial being created to honor Chief
Crazy Horse, as well as the North American Indian, who fought to
keep their land after the U.S. government broke treaties. It is
being created in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Red Cloud, in 1891 said: "They made us many promises, more than I
can remember – They never kept but one; they promised to take our
land and they took it!"
The Crazy Horse project is quite an undertaking. It started in 1948,
and although rate of progress has accelerated in recent years, I
seriously doubt it will be finished B4 I leave this earth. To give
you an idea of the magnitude of the project, the size of the head is
87.5 ft. from top to bottom, and the entire finished memorial will
be approximately 563 ft. high and 641 ft. long. The entire sculpture
on Mt. Rushmore is 185 ft. across and 150 ft. tall. What is nice is
that NO FEDERAL FUNDS are being used on the Crazy Horse project. It
is financed primarily by admission fees, $10.00 per person, and
supplemented by private donations
The Polish American sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski, (now that's a real
Polish name, Toni) who started the project has since died, but his
wife, Ruth, and eight (8) of their ten (10) children are continuing
with the work, using his scale models and three books of detailed
plans. Hopefully, the photos I will attach will come thru. The one
of the picture in a frame, shows the mountain that was the start of
the project. What an imagination Korczak must have had.
If you can take any more of the various things that we see that are
interesting to us, I will keep you posted as we go On The Road.
Brother Bob
Photos
