Monday, September 18, 2023, was a very special day for my photographer and his wife. When Tom’s alarm rang at 6:00am, the first thing my companions did was wish their twin grandsons, Bo and Rory, a happy ninth birthday. The morning became even more special when I heard Tom say he wanted to make another visit to Mount Rushmore; that decision was primarily due to the fact there weren’t many clouds in the sky over the Mountain View Lodge – which was a hair over ten miles from the famed memorial.
At eight o’clock, we were in the van and on our way towards one of the most beautiful landmarks and historically significant memorials in the country – Mount Rushmore. Even though I knew what to expect at the memorial, I also knew the view we had two years earlier would be hard to beat. During our visit in October 2021, the sky was completely cloudless, and the giant sculpted heads of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln absolutely “popped” out of the deep, blue backdrop.
While I love visiting Gutzon Borglum’s creation, which began on October 4, 1927, and was deemed “complete” on October 31, 1941, the best part for me was getting a chance to once again admire the 60-foot-tall handsome face of Thomas Jefferson. That may seem superficial, and perhaps it was. After all, seven Presidents have visited the monument since Calvin Coolidge’s dedication in 1927 and on that day, I’d get another opportunity to stand in the footprints of FDR, Ike, Bush 41 and 43, Clinton, Obama, and of course, Donald J. Trump – who believes his face should be added to the mountain.
Without further ado, I’d like to invite you, my dedicated viewers, to see the images from my visit to Mount Rushmore National Memorial on September 18, 2023 – as well as some historical images from the past. This post will undoubtedly surprise all of you.
As we walked along the Presidential Trail and admired the giant sculpted faces of the four Presidents, there were moments when darkness that fell over my enthusiasm. We were on land held sacred by the Plains Indians such as the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sioux, who used the area for centuries as a place to pray and to gather food, building materials, and medicine. The Lakota called the mountain “Six Grandfathers”, which symbolized their ancestral deities as the six directions – north, south, east, west, above (sky), and below (earth). In the late 1800s, expansion by the United States into the Black Hills led to the Sioux Wars. However, in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the U.S. government had granted exclusive use of all the Black Hills, including Six Grandfathers Mountain, to the Sioux Nation in perpetuity – in other words, forever. But less than a decade later, the United States broke the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1877 and asserted control over the area, which led to the mass invasion of settlers and prospectors in search of gold. The Native Americans were betrayed, and to this day, still want their land back. And part of me doesn’t blame them one bit – a deal is a deal and our beloved government reneged on that signed treaty. But no matter what, that mountain will never look the same as it did prior to 1927 when Six Grandfathers was desecrated. My initial thoughts, as Tom carried me along the trail, was compensation for the Sioux seemed the logical solution – even though that mountain where we walked was priceless.
In 1980, the United States Supreme Court ruled the Sioux Nation had been ripped-off by the government and did not receive just compensation for their land that was illegally taken. That year, the Supreme Court proposed $102 million for the loss of the Black Hills. In 2021, that amount with accumulated interest was nearly $2 billion, but representatives for the Sioux Nation said their people would not accept a settlement. “We won’t settle for anything less than the full return of our lands as stipulated by the treaties our nations signed and agreed upon.”
Most times in the past I’ve sided with the Indigenous people because of the manner in which they were treated in their own country. However, in the situation with Mount Rushmore and my admiration for the Presidents, I felt the need to fly the flag of Donald J. Trump – which in most instances is rare. During his visit to the historic memorial on July 4, 2020, Trump said in his speech: “Today, we pay tribute to the exceptional lives and extraordinary legacies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. I am here as your President to proclaim before the country and before the world: This monument will never be desecrated — these heroes will never be defaced, their legacy will never, ever be destroyed, their achievements will never be forgotten, and Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom.”
Over and over during our visit, I thought about President Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech. However, the more I digested his words, the less I believed he was right – especially given Donald’s track record of caring for anyone but himself. As much as I admire the four Presidents depicted on the memorial, including my namesake, three of them had flaws when it came to their empathy for the Indigenous tribes on our continent.
George Washington, a symbol of American freedom and liberty, once said: “Indians and wolves are both beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape.”
Thomas Jefferson, the man who once wrote of independence from tyranny, said: “If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi… in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them all.”
The Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, wrote to General Sibley on December 6, 1862: “Ordered that of the Indians and Half-breeds sentenced to be hanged by the military commission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lt. Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain Bailey, and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Friday the nineteenth day of December, instant, the following names, to wit…” However, while that text appears to shed a dark light on Lincoln, he actually had compassion for most of the 303 Sioux warriors who were sentenced to death. After careful deliberation and thought, he pardoned all but 38 of the Native Americans – and those 38 had committed massacres not associated with battles, and according to Lincoln, at least two of them had “violated females”. In 1862, most people regardless of race would have faced the death penalty for those same crimes had they been found guilty in a court of law. Which made me wonder whether or not the condemned Sioux warriors had their day in court or a fair trial. The execution of those 38 American Indians in Minnesota initiated the largest mass hanging in American history.
And Theodore Roosevelt, who lived in the Dakota Territory for several years where he got a first-hand look at the Indigenous people of the land. Roosevelt said in an 1886 lecture entitled “Ranch Life in the West: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
Mount Rushmore National Memorial was titled the “Shrine of Democracy” by its creator Gutzon Borglum. But Native Americans, on the other hand, call it the “Shrine of Hypocrisy” because the memorial’s construction desecrated their sacred Six Grandfathers Mountain, which was illegally taken from them.
As the three of us walked through the Avenue of Flags on our way back to the van, I turned and saw the majestic faces on Mount Rushmore one final time. I looked up and stared into the sculpted eyes of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln – but at that moment, the mountain meant something entirely different to me. Mount Rushmore was no longer the symbol of American freedom, liberty, and patriotism. Instead, it represented deception, oppression, and treachery.
I believe the United States government must pay the Sioux Nation all the money owed; and at the same time, return all of the land in the Black Hills as agreed upon in 1868 – including Six Grandfathers Mountain. When the mountain is back in the hands of its rightful owners, let them do with it what they may. Maybe the Lakota Sioux will destroy the sculpted heads and let nature attempt to return the mountain to its natural beauty – which would likely take over 100,000 years. Another option would be for the Native Americans to keep the Presidential sculptures in place as a visual symbol of the greed and deception our government has become over the years. At the same time, the Lakota Sioux would also keep all of the profits from tourists. Or a third, and perhaps best option, would be to enhance the memorial in a way that would be the best of both worlds. They’d leave the sculpted heads in place, but at the same time, they would symbolically tell the U.S. government to “KISS the Presidents Goodbye” and praise Haokah, the Sioux Nation’s God of Thunder.
