Atoll journal uploaded 05th August 2026 describes the current and historic background to the monumental memorials in the U.S Black Hills, that are the four famous Presidents of Mount Rushmore and the lesser-known depiction of Crazy Horse on nearby Thunderhead Mountain.

It is an ironic morality tale and antonym of two polar opposites in the famous, sacred ‘Pahá Sápa’ of South Dakota: One relates to the well-known Narcissistic Personality Disorder of a sitting U.S President, famous draft-dodger and gold-digger, who still seeks his unworthily immortality caved onto the face of  the ‘Shrine of Democracy’ that is Mount Rushmore – despite it being neither justifiable, feasible nor ever-likely; The other relates to the unassuming modesty and quiet dignity of a famous, indigenous Northern Plains Native American war hero, who shunned the limelight throughout his life, but who died as a result of his Governments’ lust for gold over their cultural morals – and yet still ended up being slowly personified and carved on the rock face of Thunderhead Mountain over the last 78-years.

Prologue: Heroic Failure and Little Bighorn

As the United States celebrated its Semiquincentennial on 4^th July 2026, another important anniversary a hundred years younger passed earlier on 25-26th June. This marked the 150th year since the legendary Battle of the Little Bighorn of 1876 was fought and lost by the U.S Cavalry. Less well known to modern generations perhaps, this battle from infamy is embedded in the psyche and iconography of my boyhood generation of baby boomers brought up on their staple of Westerns.

Here, top “Indian Fighter” Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer of the 7th Cavalry and all of his detachment column of 210 men died valiantly when cut off and circled  by at least 2,000 Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in “Custer’s Last Stand”. As part of ‘The Great Sioux War’, Custer had been in pursuit of Sitting Bull, the spiritual and political leader of the wider Sioux nations of the Great Plains. But it was his second in command, the younger Crazy Horse who functioned as his tactical military leader and “shirt wearer” in the infamous battle that day. What followed was one of the most controversial fights in U.S. history – as it is notable for both the noble arrogance and heroic failure of Custer and the tactical astuteness and superior fire power of Crazy Horse.

To Speak with Forked Tongue

The constructed Hollywood metaphor of the idiom “Pale Face speaks with forked tongue” rightly belongs to the category of binned racism of Pseudo-Native-American or ‘Noble Savage’ tropes of “Red Indians” now happily long lost. Rather ashamedly, it is the stylised, generalised imitation of Indigenous speech once popularised by the 20th-century Western staples like Errol Flynn as Custer in ‘They Died with Their Boots On’ (1941). However, ignoring this lazy cultural appropriation, the meaning itself of the ‘White Saviour’ being in power whilst being duplicitous, hypocritical, and lying of course holds truth both historically as well as today – even if the metaphor used of a “forked tongue” dates back centuries to a literary tradition more influenced by biblical imagery of a serpent engineering the loss of Eden from innocents.

It would be nice to think we are long past such religious obsession over moral temptation, but perhaps not in the current case of a rediscovered ‘Wild West’ of America seen today more than 250-years on. As it celebrated this important anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Government of President Donald J. Trump continues to act with blatantly disingenuous, self-serving intent that immorally encourages and rewards financial conflict-of-interests. Critics argue that Trump has “blurred his public duties with his family’s personal profit-making activities.” Senator Elizabeth Warren (more of her later) has even requested Department of Justice inquiries into this and has accused him of picking the pockets of American consumers.

Ironic then that the 1776 Declaration of Independence contains the famous phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident”, whilst the text of the U.S. Constitution still omits the word “truth” all together – even though it has had 27 Amendments since being first signed in 1787.

Perhaps then there can be no surprise then that this incumbent POTUS’s approach to his own public truth is deliberately manipulated – often being characterised by Trump’s repeated dismissal of “Fake News” of political conspiracy in favour of his populist, Republican narratives. In doing this, he also regularly frames American history through his traditional White, European, and Christian nationalist lens: Most famously evidenced when he once publicly claimed of the pioneer settlers, that “our ancestors tamed a continent”. Add to this his dismissing of Senator Warren’s claim of native ancestry “They call her Pocahontas”, spoken whilst he stood directly beneath a portrait of President Andrew Jackson – the architect of the infamous forced Indian Removal Act and Trail of Tears.

No surprise then that his ongoing priorities are of ‘Dismantling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’; ‘Civil Rights Enforcement’; and ‘Immigration and Border Control’ using bodies like The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The sense of an approaching dystopia and fall of a once democratic Empire (one that famously inspired the French Revolution) seems real and imminent. It used to be that ideas of Enlightenment could overthrow Kings, but seemingly not here – at least not right now.

Then, like all vainglorious dictators, Trump is desperate for his absolute power to be replicated across the land using his name, face and architecture. Whether his grand “Trumphal Arch”, White House Ballroom or in etching his name or likeness onto civic and cultural institutions, it all accounts to being the same vanity project. His ultimate of course would be the realisation of a vision expressed to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem early in his presidency, that having his face also carved onto the face of Mount Rushmore National Memorial was his “dream.” Hopefully, him seeing himself a worthy contemporary to stand for posterity alongside great Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln will remain his pipe dream forever. Despite this, Republican lawmakers have still attempted to introduced measures, such as a Congress Bill as recently as January 2025, directing the National Parks Service to explore the addition of his likeness on the monument. At the time of writing, that Trump may be currently more preoccupied currently with his plans to detonate away the mountain of hard granite in Pickaxe Mountain, Iran is perhaps the saddest irony.

Take Me Back to the Black Hills

But it seems Mount Rushmore, like it’s strategic position in the Black Hills mountain range, is forever set to court controversy and be linked to an undermining of indigenous native American tribes. Doris Day in Calamity Jane in 1953 had once sung to be taken back to the beauty of the “Black Hills of Dakota”, but her historical portrayal, and that of Wild Bill Hickok in the film musical, again undermined that with its usual dismissive portrayal of savage “Injuns”. It is a stereotype that has persisted.

That the Black Hills (literal Lakota Sioux translation of Pahá Sápa) are a series of sacred pegmatite granite landmarks spanning across western South Dakota and parts of northeast Wyoming, and are still within the Lakota reserve is still overlooked. They are seen to this day by the Lakota as being at “the heart of everything that is”.  Pahá Sápa overlooks all of their sacred areas and burial grounds. Also part of this sacred reserve, the name of Mount Rushmore is an unsurprising political affectation. Actually named Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe Pahá in Lakota language this translates to “Six Grandfathers Mountain”. That name represented the six sacred directions of their universe of West, East, North, South, Above (the sky/heavens) and Below (the earth). Forgotten by seemingly all but the Lakota perhaps, their mountain was part of the illegal land grab, when the U.S. government seized all of the sacred Black Hills region back from the Sioux Nation in 1877 after gold was discovered. In doing so, the Government violated their own Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. In this, the U.S government had already guaranteed the Black Hills to the Sioux in perpetuity. The Treaty supposedly closed the territory to white settlement “for as long as the river flows and the eagle flies”.

Desecration of a Sacred Mountain or New Shrine of Democracy?

It proved to be a meaningless guarantee, with the altruism violated when gold was suddenly discovered in the hills and the Black Hills Gold Rush in 1874 ensued. The source of that discovery was the military expedition of Colonel George Armstrong Custer no less. His death soon-to-come in battle at Little Bighorn of course followed this initial spark to ignite The Great Sioux War of 1876-77. The winter campaign of the relentless U.S. Army destroyed indigenous camps, cutting off food rations, and forced mass surrenders. Once ratified, agreement and military appropriation was to be enforced within 3 years.

Subsequent to this, in 1885, Mount Rushmore was eventually renamed after wealthy NY lawyer Charles E. Rushmore. Then much later in the 1920s, state historian Doane Robinson began to propose the mountain as the ultimate opportunity for South Dakota to increase tourism through the Black Hills. The sculptor Gutzon Borglum was later hired to create a colossal monument to literally “honour the West’s greatest heroes, both Native Americans, and pioneers.” But Borglum preferred a Nationally significant monument and so eventually convinced state historians to only use the faces of U.S. notable presidents instead to symbolise the first 150 years of American history. He also rejected the originally designated site of naturally eroded rock columns called the ‘Needles’ . He claimed individual Western heroes would look like “making totem poles of these wonderful spires”. Native American groups, local historians, and civic leaders were deeply offended. But momentum was set and the new location shifted to Rushmore, where the monument was soon to become an ultimate ‘Shrine of Democracy’ and one where Borglum famously declared, “America will march along that skyline”. Once complete, it was to feature the 18-meter granite faces of its four prominent U.S. presidents blasted and carved directly into a mountainside. Begun in 1927, its scope and procurement was naturally affected and compromised by first the Great Depression and then the Second World War, before being finally completed 14-years later in 1941.

Counter Memorial: Crazy Horse on Thunder Mountain

After Crazy Horse had orchestrated his victory at Little Bighorn River on June 25, 1876, he later forced the U.S. to double its calvary on the Great Plains. After this, the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors faced insurmountable odds in the years following. Known as The Great Sioux War, this intensified as the U.S. Army rounded up all indigenous tribes, forcing them to live on undesirable reservation lands. It ultimately led to the tragic, forced marches as part of the wider Trail of Tears of the 1830’s, where thousands of Native people died from cold, hunger, and disease.

But it was Crazy Horse rather than Sitting Bull that remained the symbol of proud resistance. His name was passed down to him from his father – although his true Lakota name was actually Tȟašúŋke Witkó ( translating literally to “His-Horse-Is-Crazy”). So it was that by 1939, and just two-years before completion of Mount Rushmore, a Lakota Chief called Henry Standing Bear selected Crazy Horse as the ultimate symbolic figure to represent all Native American heroism and resistance. As such, he invited as counterpoint to Gutzon Borglum the Polish American sculptor Korczak Ziółkowski to start his ‘counter-memorial’ project. The  brief set by Standing Bear was for Ziółkowski to carve a Native hero to counter Mount Rushmore, explicitly stating he wanted the white man to know “the red man has great heroes, too”. It was to depict Oglala Lakota (one of the seven major bands of the Lakota nation) warrior Crazy Horse riding his horse and pointing to his seized tribal lands.

Thunderhead Mountain was eventually selected by Ziolkowski and Lakota elders in 1948 for its massive granite scale and its deeply embedded spiritual status. The design portrays Crazy Horse emerging seamlessly from the rock, riding a steed and pointing outward. This posture immortalises his famous quote regarding his displacement: When asked by a victorious white man mockingly “Where are your lands now, Crazy Horse?” he replied whist pointing across his spiritual lands of Pahá Sápa “My Lands are where my dead lie buried.”

The mountain here was known as Thunderhead Mountain long before blasting commenced due to the heavy, dark storm clouds (thunderheads) that frequently gather around its summit. In Lakota cosmology, Thunderhead Mountain is also considered a living deity as a sacred dwelling place for Wakinyan (the Thunderbird or Thunder Beings). In ancient, indigenous tradition, thunder and lightning are seen as the voice and presence of the Wakinyan. These are their sacred winged guardians of the west bringing both life-giving rains and awesome destruction in equal measure. To them, because the sun sets in the west, this direction signified the close of day and the end of a life cycle. The Wakinyan hold intense sacred power in Sioux cosmology, representing their ultimate protective and elemental forces. These spirits naturally held an exceptionally personal connection to Crazy Horse too of course. As a youth, he reportedly went into the Black Hills to seek a vision. He was blessed by the Wakinyan who he claimed granted him supernatural protection in battle. He wore a sacred stone behind his ear and never allowed himself to be photographed, trusting entirely in this spiritual power.

Comparisons

Even if they share geology and historical provenance, the long completed Mount Rushmore and the still ongoing Crazy Horse Memorial on Thunderhead Mountain differ sharply in logistics, methods, timeframes, and funding of course: Mount Rushmore cost about $1 million ($14 million adjusted) using federal funds over 14 years, whereas Thunderhead is a private, multi-decade non-profit project relying on visitor revenue and donations without government money.

Mount Rushmore used 400 workers and dynamite for 90% of the rock removal from 1927 to 1941, stopping at the presidents’ heads due to funding. Thunderhead began in 1948 under sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski using similar granite blasting, but with an open-ended timeframe spanning generations, heavy modern equipment like cranes, and self-generated visitor centre and gift shop funds

The exact total cost spent on the Crazy Horse Memorial since 1948 is not publicly disclosed in a single master figure, as the project is privately managed by a non-profit foundation.

However, the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation has accumulated assets of circa $130 million in net assets and reportedly generates approximately $14.5 million in annual revenue. But it is often pointed out in response to critics that only a small portion of the millions raised each year directly goes into physical rock blasting. Millions of dollars are spent annually maintaining the on-site Indian Museum of North America, a satellite university campus.

Postscript

Today both memorials of Mount Rushmore and Thunderhead Mountain sit within the same geographic footprint as the Custer State Park reserve. Mount Rushmore sits just across the northern border in adjacent Pennington County whereas Thunderhead Mountain is located directly inside Custer County itself.

That they are both awesome examples of immense technical and sculptural ambition (especially with both started well before the digital age), cannot be disputed. The biggest question (still unresolved of course) is how the linked cultural appropriation and desecration of tribal lands will ever be adequately addressed and compensated – if ever.

But for the Lakota people, Mount Rushmore is viewed as a desecration of sacred land and a symbol of broken treaties, whilst Thunderhead Mountain, with its location of the Crazy Horse Memorial, originated from a cooperative Native-led effort to honour indigenous heritage – albeit it still carries complex, mixed views within the broader tribal community regarding mountain carving on the spiritual land of the Pahá Sápa Black Hills.

To this day, many traditional Lakota—including some direct descendants of Crazy Horse himself—still vehemently oppose the Crazy Horse Memorial. Like their Six Grandfathers Mountain, they view the blasting of Thunderhead Mountain also with dynamite as the literal mutilation and destruction of a sacred site where the Wakinyan live. Native activist Russell Means famously captured this opposition by comparing the massive carving to carving up Mount Zion in Israel to honour Hebrew prophets.

In 1973 the so-called Wounded Knee Occupation, was a 71-day armed standoff where American Indian Movement (AIM) activists and local Oglala Lakota people seized the historic South Dakota town, of the same name, to protest tribal corruption and broken U.S. treaties like at Fort Laramie. Then, in a landmark 1980 case United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills were indeed stolen. The court awarded over $100 million in compensation. That the Lakota tribes have refused to accept the money for over 40 years is to their cultural credit – they state that the land was never for sale and demanding its physical return instead.

Today, both Custer and Crazy Horse are remembered and celebrated: Each September marks the annual Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup & Arts Festival, which takes place just south of the national monument of the Little Bighorn Battlefield. Custer State Park is South Dakota’s first, largest, and most celebrated state park and wildlife reserve, spanning over 71,000 acres of wilderness nestled in the Black Hills and primarily located within Custer County. Geographically slightly separate, but linked to this under unified regional tourism strategies, the Crazy Horse Memorial Night Blast lights up Thunderhead Mountain annually with fireballs and pyrotechnics – but on sculptor Korczak Ziółkowski’s birthday ironically. This is followed a month later in early October with Native American Day celebrations of traditional dance, song, and art – also hosted at the Crazy Horse Memorial.

Fast-forward, the questions remain of course, will the Crazy Horse Memorial ever be finished and will Trump ever get his way to force through his own ultimate presidential effigy?

The jury is still out on the latter. But with National Parks Service experts reported as saying that geological fractures in the rock and engineering constraints make carving an additional President’s face practically impossible, there is hope his posturing will go no further.

The prospect for Crazy Horse Memorial is most positive perhaps, although the most complex aspects of the project (his huge horses head, leg and tunnelled undercuts) are largely un-started after 78 years. Let us hope the accumulated assets and income of the Memorial Foundation continue to prosper. However, with current U.S federal debt sitting near $39.75 trillion, weighed against an annual Gross Domestic Product of roughly $32 trillion – as well as imminent inflation and downturn in the offing, public appetite for the charitable endeavour may also begin to dwindle.

As for the outcome of the Supreme Court ruling in favour of the Sioux Nation of Indians, I guess only time will tell. But the moral high ground (literally the whole of Pahá Sápa Black Hills) is theirs.

But in the end, the simple elemental difference between Trump and Crazy Horse, other than the glaringly obvious ones, is that whilst Trump is the boorish United States President, born with entitlement and wealth, he desperately needs to seek plaudits and garner attention through a constant craving for publicity and praise. In stark contrast, Crazy Horse was a self-made great man, leader and figurehead of a nationally persecuted indigenous nation, but who personally eschewed all personal attention and fanfare throughout his life, as well as at the very height of his fame.

It is of course well-documented that there are no known photographs of Crazy Horse (although there are many of Sitting Bull and other Chiefs). When once asked if he could be photographed, he famously replied to the photographer: “My friend, why should you wish to shorten my life by taking from me my shadow?”

True class they say is timeless.