The dark history of Mount Rushmore Ned Blackhawk and Jeffrey D. Means
Between 1927 and 1941, 400 workers
blasted 450,000 tons of rock
from a mountainside using chisels,
jackhammers, and a lot of dynamite.
Gradually, they carved out Mount Rushmore.
Now, the monument draws nearly
3 million people
to South Dakota’s Black Hills every year.
But its façade belies a dark history.
About 10,000 years ago, Native American
people began inhabiting the Black Hills.
The area became especially sacred
to the Lakota people,
who formed the western branch
of what the US called the Sioux Nation.
The Lakota believed one cave
within the Black Hills
to be where they first emerged.
And they named one
of the Black Hills mountain peaks
the Six Grandfathers
after their sacred directional spirits.
But in the 1800s, Lakota access
to this land came under threat.
White settlers in North America
expanded their territories
by using physical violence or negotiating
with Indigenous peoples.
After its establishment in the late 1700s,
the US government ratified hundreds
of treaties with Native American nations.
However, it often broke them
or created them using coercion.
Between 1866 in 1868, the Lakota
and their allies
successfully defended their land
from the U.S. military
and negotiated a new treaty
with the government.
In the 1868 Treaty at Fort Laramie,
all parties agreed that a vast territory,
including the Black Hills,
belonged to the Sioux Nation.
In return, the Lakota would allow
US travelers to pass safely through.
But many aspects of the Treaty
also aimed to assimilate
the Lakota into white culture.
This included incentives to convert
them from hunting to farming,
abandon their nomadic lifestyle,
and wear clothes the US provided.
Meanwhile, just seven years later,
the US broke the treaty
after an expedition found gold
in the Black Hills.
Miners set up camps,
the military attacked and ultimately
defeated the Lakota,
and the US passed legislation
illegally seizing the land.
50 years later,
workers began etching
into the Lakota’s
sacred Six Grandfather’s Mountain.
The project was led by an arrogant
sculptor named Gutzon Borglum,
who had ties to the KKK.
A historian originally proposed that
Mount Rushmore include Western figures—
like Lakota Chief Red Cloud.
But Borglum chose to feature
his own heroes.
By October of 1941, Borglum had died from
surgical complications and work stopped,
though the project was unfinished.
None of the four figures had torsos,
as intended,
and rubble was left piled below.
To the Lakota, the monument
was a desecration.
And the presidents immortalized
on the rockface
all had brutal anti-Indigenous legacies.
Members of the Iroquois Confederacy called
George Washington “Town Destroyer”
for encouraging military campaigns
that burned 50 of their villages in 1779.
Theodore Roosevelt championed
forced assimilation and said,
“I don’t go so far as to think that the
only good Indians are dead Indians,
but I believe nine out of 10 are.”
In 1980, after the Sioux Nation had sued
the US for treaty violations,
the Supreme Court ruled that the
Black Hills had been unlawfully taken,
and the Sioux were entitled
to compensation.
The amount named has since reached
over a billion dollars.
But the Sioux Nation refused
to take the money
and to give up their claim
to the Black Hills,
maintaining that they were never for sale.
So, what should happen to Mount Rushmore
and the Black Hills?
Responses to that question
are wide-ranging.
Some, including tribal leaders
and Borglum’s great-granddaughter,
have called for Mount Rushmore
to be removed.
Others see it as an important
patriotic symbol
and vital aspect of South Dakota’s
economy that should remain.
Many Lakota people want
the 1868 Treaty to be honored
and the now-federally controlled lands to
be returned to their tribal communities.
Others have said that the Lakota
and the US should at least co-manage
parts of the Black Hills.
Currently, there are no plans for change.
The US broke many of its promises
with Indigenous nations
making issues like this common.
Native people have been fighting
for broken treaties to be honoured
for generations,
achieving some major victories
along the way.
Meanwhile, if untouched,
the faces engraved
on the Six Grandfathers Mountain
are expected to remain
for thousands of years to come.