THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER23, 2019 31
permit, for example, a Crazy Horse laun-
dromat. What if the laundromat used
the name but not the image of the sculp-
ture? I asked. “It would be a discussion,”
she replied. What if the laundromat
owner was Lakota? “It would still be a
discussion.” When there was interest in
putting the Crazy Horse sculpture on
the South Dakota state quarter, the me-
morial said no, because doing so would
have put the image in the public do-
main. Ziolkowski added that she was
used to the controversy that the sculp-
ture provokes among some of her La-
kota neighbors. “It’s America,” she said.
“Everybody has a right to an opinion.”
On the Pine Ridge Reservation, the
site of the killings at Wounded Knee is
marked by a ramshackle sign; a piece of
wood bearing the word “massacre” is
nailed over the original description, which
was “battle.” Pine Ridge is a beautiful
place, rolling prairie under dramatic skies.
As one local man, Emerald Elk, described
it to me, “The hills look like they keep
running on forever, especially the grass
on a windy day.” The reservation is also
very poor. Larry Swalley, an advocate for
abused children, told me that kids in
Pine Ridge are experiencing “a state of
emergency,” and that it’s not uncommon
for three or four or even five families to
have to share a trailer. When I visited
Darla Black, the vice-president of the
Oglala Sioux Tribe, she showed me sev-
eral foot-high stacks of papers: requests
for help paying for electricity and pro-
pane to get through the winter. People
kept stopping by her office to pick up
diapers and what she called “sack lunches,”
meals made up of whatever food gets
donated; that day, the lunch was Honey
Nut Chex Mix, brownies, and gummy
bears. “I think they could do more for
us,” she said, of the memorial. Though
there are exhibits on the reservation, few
tourists make the trip; on the day I was
there, the visitors’ center was empty.
Even among the Lakota, the ques-
tion of who can speak for Crazy Horse
is fraught. Crazy Horse had no surviv-
ing children, but a family tree used in
one court case identified about three
thousand living relatives, and a judge ap-
pointed three administrators of the es-
tate; one of them, Floyd Clown, has ar-
gued in an ongoing case that the other
claims of lineage are illegitimate, and
that his branch of the family should be
the sole administrator. Clown is con-
vinced that, once the legal questions are
settled, Crazy Horse’s family will be owed
the profits that have been made on any
products or by any companies using their
ancestor’s name—a sum that he esti-
mates to be in the billions of dollars. (“I
would probably buy two packs of ciga-
rettes instead of one!” he said, laughing.)
He also expects the family to gain title
to nearly nine million acres that they be-
lieve were promised to Crazy Horse by
the U.S. government, including the land
where the memorial is being built.
“Maybe we’ll let them stay, maybe, to
keep working,” Clown said. When I ex-
pressed doubt that this would come to
pass, Clown laughed. “Hey!” he said, with
a confidence that seemed strangely un-
weighted by history. “It’s their laws.”
One night last June, downtown Pine
Ridge hosted its own memorial to Crazy
Horse: the culmination of an annual tra-
dition in which more than two hundred
riders spend four days travelling on horse-
back from Fort Robinson, where Crazy
Horse died, to the reservation. (“Crazy
Horse rode in there, and he never got to
ride out,” the event’s founder explained.
“We’re going to ride out of there for him.”)
Bryan Brewer, a former president of the
Oglala Lakota Nation, told me that his
brother once went to the memorial to
ask for financial support for the ride. “We
sent him all the way up there,” he said.
“They gave us twenty-five dollars.”
Hours before the riders were expected,
the streets and the pow-
wow grounds were already
packed with spectators on
folding chairs and truck tail-
gates. As the crowd waited,
the sky in the west, over the
Black Hills, turned golden.
Finally, in the blue light of
dusk, the riders arrived. The
onlookers rose to their feet,
cheering wildly, as a stream
of grinning, hollering, or se-
rious-faced young people cantered past.
As always, at the front of the procession
was a simple, profound tribute to Crazy
Horse: a single horse without a rider.S
o much of the American story—as
it actually happened, but also as it is
told, and altered, and forgotten, and,
eventually, repeated—feels squeezed into
the vast contradiction that is the mod-ern Black Hills. Here, sites of theft and
genocide have become monuments to
patriotism, a symbol of resistance has
become a source of revenue, and old sto-
ries of broken promises and appropria-
tion recur. A complicated history be-
comes a cheery tourist attraction. The
face of the past comes to look like the
faces of those who memorialize it.
Every night during the summer tour-
ist season, the Crazy Horse Memorial
hosts an evening program, called “Leg-
ends in Light®.” It lasts twenty-five min-
utes and features brightly colored ani-
mations, projected by lasers onto the side
of Thunderbolt Mountain. Here, too,
the crowd gathered early and waited as
the sky grew dim; finally, with an echo-
ing soundtrack, the show began.
It was difficult to keep up with the
flashing images: tepees, a feather, an
Oglala flag, Korczak Ziolkowski build-
ing a cabin, pictures of famous Native
leaders, from Geronimo to Quanah
Parker. Sequoyah, the Cherokee scholar,
appeared, and a leaping orca, and an
air-traffic controller. “All my life, to carve
a mountain to a race of people that once
lived here?” Ziolkowski’s voice boomed.
“What an honor.” The images flew by,
free of context or explanation. A white
hand shook a red hand, the soldiers at
Iwo Jima raised their flag, the Statue
of Liberty raised her torch, and the
space shuttle transformed into an eagle.
The crowd swayed in their seats, and
the country singer Lee Greenwood’s
voice rang over the half-
carved mountain. “’Cause
the flag still stands for free-
dom,” he sang, “and they
can’t take that away.”
The last word went to
Korczak Ziolkowski, who,
in a recording, delivered a
grand but bewildering quote
that visitors to the memo-
rial encounter many times.
“When the legends die,” he
thundered, “the dreams end. When the
dreams end, there is no more greatness.”
As the sound faded, the lasers shifted
one final time. For a few minutes, a glow-
ing version of Ziolkowski’s vision was
complete, at last, on the mountainside,
and Crazy Horse’s hair flew behind him.
The stars were bright. Cameras were
held aloft. And then it was time to leave
through the gift shop.