Carving Crazy Horse

“Fire in the hole!” shouts mountain carver Casimir Ziolkowski.

Boom! In a single dynamite blast, 500 tons of granite are blown to rubble. That’s a lot of rock, yet only a tiny step toward completing the world’s largest sculpture: the image of Crazy Horse astride a horse, cut from Thunderhead Mountain in South Dakota’s Black Hills.

People around the world know about this carving, which will stand 563 feet high and be more than twice the length of a football field. About 1.2 million visit annually. Few folk realize, though, that the project is a family affair.

Boston-born Korczak Ziolkowski, Casimir’s dad, came to the Black Hills in 1939 as an assistant sculptor at Mount Rushmore, 17 miles up the road from Thunderhead Mountain. The same year, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear contacted Korczak and proposed another type of mountain memorial.

“My fellow chiefs and I,” wrote Standing Bear, “would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too.”

Crazy Horse is remembered among his people as a fierce warrior and visionary leader who was committed to preserving the traditional Lakota way of life.

Korczak had achieved an international reputation in art circles, but decided, a few years later as his 40th birthday approached, that he’d devote the rest of his career to a great Crazy Horse likeness. From 1949 until his 1982 death, the sculptor typically worked with only mountain goats for companions, dynamiting, drilling, and bulldozing away 7.4 million tons of rock to rough out the three-dimensional carving. He knew he wouldn’t come close to completing the work in his life, so he drew up detailed plans for continued sculpting.

“I told Korczak I’d keep the nonprofit organization behind the sculpture going,” says his 74-year-old widow, Ruth, who has certainly kept that promise. “But I can’t carve a mountain.”

It turns out, though, some of the couple’s adult offspring can. Casimir blasts and runs a bulldozer across narrow granite ledges. His sister, Monique, recognized as a fine sculptor in her own right, takes precise measurements from models and calculates how much granite to cut from the mountain.

Meanwhile, down below, another sister, Anne, has been the force behind the Indian Museum of North America, built literally in the mountain’s shadow and displaying art and artifacts representing native cultures across the continent. Casimir’s sister Jadwiga works closely with her mother, raising funds not only for the sculpture, but also for a scholarship program that helps young American Indians attend college. Other siblings handle land management and attend to the needs of 1.2 million visitors annually—a mountain of a job in itself. Seven of 10 grown Ziolkowski children—all in their 30s and 40s—are part of the effort.

“We didn’t tell them they had to do this,” Ruth says. “They believe in it. Every one of them went off and did something else for a while, but seven came back here.”

The family thinks everyone having a separate area of responsibility helps them get along. And, Ruth adds, “Everybody goes to his or her own home at the end of the day. No one should be together 24 hours a day unless they’re husband and wife.”

Crazy Horse’s face, measuring 87.5 feet, was completed in 1998. “That’s created the most wonderful enthusiasm,” Ruth says. “Visitors say, ‘There’s his face!’ It’s quite a contrast to the early years when people would look around and ask, ‘Which mountain are you carving?’”

A question the family has never been able to answer is when the entire sculpture will be done. Certainly not in Ruth’s lifetime, and maybe not in any of the children’s lifetimes, either. Nothing on this scale’s ever been attempted; all four Rushmore presidents would fit within the space where Crazy Horse’s head and flowing hair will be.

The effort now is as valuable as the finished carving will be in the future, Black Hills residents say.

“We white people haven’t done enough to heal a broken relationship,” says Larry Luitjens, a high school teacher and coach in Custer (pop. 1,800), the town nearest the mountain, ironically named 125 years ago for Crazy Horse’s mortal enemy. “We haven’t done enough, but the Ziolkowski family is making a giant gesture.”

Paul Higbee is a freelance writer in Spearfish, S.D., and a regular contributor to American Profile.

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