Crazy Horse: The Wild West for Kids (Legends of the Wild West)

Crazy Horse: The Wild West for Kids (Legends of the Wild West) — page 3 — Although the face of Crazy Horse was completed and dedicated in 1998 the entire work is far from completion Yet the monument to Crazy Horse is not without its critics many of them Lakota It is being carved out of land considered sacred by some Native Americans Lame Deer a Lakota medi cine man remarked The whole idea of making a beautiful wild mountain into a statue of him is a pollution of the landscape It is against the spirit of Crazy Horse Russell Means a famous Na tive American activist also criticized the creation of the sculp ture Crazy Horse’s story continues to relegate us as a people to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries said Means People think Indian people are relics we do not exist in the present That makes it easy for non-Indians to say Oh lo the poor In dian and we love his romantic image and we are sorry for what our ancestors did to him but we can continue to do it to these Indian people today with impunity The Crazy Horse Memorial located in the Black Hills of South Dakota is being carved out of Thunderhead Moun tain It has been under construction since 1948 If fin ished it will be the world’s largest sculpture (cid:17)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:100)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:30)(cid:45)(cid:28)(cid:53)(cid:52)(cid:1)(cid:35)(cid:42)(cid:45)(cid:46)(cid:32)

Crazy Horse: The Wild West for Kids (Legends of the Wild West) — page 4 — So even in death Crazy Horse continues to inspire people and excite argument Who was this Lakota warrior and why does he still capture the imagination of twenty-first-century America A Mysterious Warrior Crazy Horse is one of the greatest of Native American heroes but much about his life is a mystery It is not easy to write his biography Crazy Horse was quiet and shy He rarely spoke in public or participated in public ceremonies He almost never took part in councils treaty sessions or any kind of meetings with whites or Native Americans He was a feared and respected warrior but he did not brag about his war deeds He did not leave behind any letters diaries speeches or account books to tell his side of the story The longest recorded statement by him is barely 200 words For almost his whole life Crazy Horse avoided whites He lived the life of a Lakota warrior raiding and hunting on the Northern Plains For about the first 35 years of his life it is dif ficult to determine what he said or felt His biography can only be assembled from the memories and oral tradition of the La kota people Truth telling and the oral historical tradition are important in Native American cultures Storytellers had fantas tic memories for remembering minute details Yet many times they related their stories of Crazy Horse 25 to 50 years after the events they described Their descriptions and recollections are crucial but they are not always accurate Sometimes reliable Native American eyewitnesses even contradict each other The mid-nineteenth-century Lakota like most preindus trial people were not obsessed with dates and statistics It is almost impossible to determine the year of Crazy Horse’s birth The chronology of the events of his life is often jumbled People have told some stories so many times that the stories (cid:47)(cid:35)(cid:32)(cid:1)(cid:40)(cid:52)(cid:46)(cid:47)(cid:32)(cid:45)(cid:36)(cid:42)(cid:48)(cid:46)(cid:1)(cid:50)(cid:28)(cid:45)(cid:45)(cid:36)(cid:42)(cid:45)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:100)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:18)

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