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In the Black Hills region of South Dakota stands a massive American monument, the faces of four US presidents blasted into the side of a mountain. George Washington represents the birth of the nation. Thomas Jefferson represents its growth. Theodore Roosevelt development and Abraham Lincoln preservation. Mount Rushmore National Memorial hosts more than 2 million visitors each year who gaze upon the stoic stone faces of our forefathers and feel… proud. Proud of what we’ve accomplished as a country. Proud of our freedom, our liberty which these four men fought hard to help us achieve. But not everyone looks upon those faces with pride and patriotism. For some Americans, it’s more like a deeply seeded festering resentment, anger, outrage, and sadness. Because what most of those 2 million visitors do not know, what they do not learn during their visit to the park, is that the mountain upon which those faces were carved is sacred land, stolen from native people during the Black Hills gold rush of the 1870s. But not only was it stolen, it was desecrated, destroyed, defaced. Because, you see, the mountain was already a memorial, the Six Grandfathers, who stood side by side, stoically watching over Lakota lands until they were erased by the faces of their enemies. Let’s fix that.

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. November is Native American Heritage month in the US and so I’m going to be shedding light on some Native American history this month. I did not expect to get quite so red hot blazing mad while researching Mount Rushmore, I can tell you that. I always considered it a relatively boring national monument. It wasn’t exactly on my bucket list, sorry, but it wasn’t. To be honest, I didn’t know all that much about it. I didn’t really care. Until I saw an old photo of the mountain before Mount Rushmore was carved into its side, a photo captioned “the six grandfathers.” And there they were without any dynamite or jackhammers. Just there, in the stone, natural, beautiful, with Mother Earth as the sculptor. And now, I cannot look at a picture of Mount Rushmore, the carvings of the four presidents, without seeing the six grandfathers behind them, beneath them. And Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln - their faces seem so obtrusive, so forced, so unnatural, oppressive, like a Tower of Babble, challenging God, challenging nature. It’s almost obscene to me now and terribly, terribly sad when you consider the symbolic significance of carving White European American presidents on top of a sacred indigenous site. Especially when you consider some of the things those presidents did, what they stood for, and how it contributed to the absolute destruction of the indigenous way of life.

My next door neighbors recently visited Mount Rushmore. They’re a retired couple, super sweet people, and they were so excited. They went on this week-long trip out to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and when they got back they were so excited to tell us all about it. They brought back these little replicas of the four heads, of the carvings for my boys, little souvenirs. It was really sweet. And the whole time I’m smiling and nodding and say “wow, that’s really cool,” but inside all I can think about is the six grandfathers, the desecration of the six grandfathers and how they had no idea and how they didn’t learn about that on their trip. And so, we gotta fix this guys. This is a serious injustice, this monument that tricks people into feeling proud of their country when, if they knew the full story of how it came to be, I don’t think they’d be very proud at all. It’s a trick. I felt tricked when I learned the truth and I was mad. So I’m pulling back the veil today. Let’s expose Mount Rushmore for what it truly is.

Thousands of years before European Americans even knew the Black Hills of South Dakota existed, the area was inhabited by indigenous groups, mostly the ancestors of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe people. The Black Hills became especially sacred to the Lakota people who formed the western branch of what would come to be called the Sioux Nation. According to Donovin Sprague, head of the history department at Sheridan College in Wyoming and a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in a National Geographic article, the Black Hills region was the quote “center of the universe for our people,” end quote. He explains how the region was spiritually important and that Six Grandfathers Mountain was a place of prayer and devotion for native people. Six Grandfathers Mountain or Tunkasila Sakpe Paha came to be when a Lakota medicine man named Nicolas Black Elk had a vision of ancestral spirits who appeared to him representing the six sacred directions - west, east, north, south, above, and below. According to a Readers Digest article by Melba Newsome, quote “these directions were said to represent kindness and love, full of years and wisdom, like human grandfathers,” end quote. But before that, this place was already sacred. The Lakota believed that a cave in this mountain was where their people originally emerged, their place of origin, the center of the universe.

So when white Americans began expanding into this territory in the 1800s, this sacred land came under threat. Americans expanded westward by using physical violence, just forcing their way in with guns, or by attempting to negotiate with indigenous people. And this was tough because signing contracts and treaties and things, this was not part of their culture. This was not how they did things. You didn’t make marks on a piece of paper and suddenly the land had passed to someone else. They had no concept of that. And that cultural difference was quite often intentionally exploited. And Native Americans were often swindled or forced by the threat of physical violence to give up their land as we saw with Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 which kicked off the Trail of Tears, that’s episode 5. But the Lakota were not going down without a fight. This land meant everything to them and they weren’t signing it away. Between 1866 and 1868, the Lakota and their allies, the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, successfully defended their land from the encroaching US government. And this period of skirmishes ended with the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. In this treaty, the US gave the Lakota people exclusive rights to the Black Hills region in perpetuity, meaning forever. But they weren’t just being nice. The US decided they didn’t really want the land anyway. It was super rocky, not very habitable. The treaty called it quote “unfit for civilization” and quote “Permanent Indian Territory.”

But then, something happened soon after that made the US want the Black Hills region very badly. Gold. They found gold. And they were like “wait, what? Nevermind! Forget the treaty. Forget the whole perpetuity thing. Scratch all that” and they completely violated the treaty and took the land, confining the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho people to reservations. Christina Gish Hill, an associate professor of anthropology at Iowa State University says in that National Geographic article quote “What happened with the Black Hills is so clearly theft in relation to the U.S.’s own laws,” end quote. After that, prospectors and accompanying settlers rushed into the area looking for gold. In 1884, a wealthy white lawyer from New York named Charles Rushmore visited for a hot minute, hoping to purchase a tin mine and for some reason that I will never understand, the mountain’s name was changed from the Six Grandfathers to Mount Rushmore. I really don’t get it. He had nothing to do with the mountain or the area or the later sculptures. He literally just visited for sec and they were like “hey you’re rich and white and have an important sounding name, we’ll name that mountain after you.” I wish I was kidding but that is very close to what actually happened. Charles Rushmore explained all of this in a letter he wrote in 1925 to Doane Robinson who I’ll introduce you to better soon but was basically the brainchild behind the Rushmore sculptures and he had written to this Rushmore guy trying to figure out why the mountain was called that. And here’s what Rushmore wrote back quote “Dear Sir: My friend, Mr. Lawrence F. Abbott, of The Outlook, has handed to me your letter of October 10, 1925, relating to the project of sculpting Rushmore Mountain, or Rushmore Rock, in the Black Hills of South Dakota; and, since then, I have seen a copy of your letter of November 28, 1925, to Mr. Julian Blount, of Redfield South Dakota, concerning the naming of the mountain.
No doubt it will interest you to have accurate data on that subject. In your letter to Mr. Blount you say: "Rushmore Rock was named for Mr. Rushmore, a lawyer of Philadelphia who was interested in the Etta Mine." I am the lawyer in question, though of New York City, and not of Philadelphia. Late in 1883 the discovery of tin in the Black Hills was brought to the attention of a group of gentlemen in New York City and excited their interest. I was a youthful attorney at the time, and was employed by these gentlemen early in 1884 to go to the Black Hills and secure options on the Etta mine, and other cassiterite locations. My mission required me to remain several weeks in the Hills, and to return there on two or three later occasions in that year and in 1885. Part of my time was spent among prospectors at Harney, and at a log cabin built in that neighborhood. In my life among these rough, but kindly, men I conformed to their ways, and, may I say it with becoming modesty, was in favor with them. I was deeply impressed with the Hills, and particularly with a mountain of granite rock that rose above the neighboring peaks. On one occasion while looking from near its base, with almost awe, at this majestic pile, I asked of the men who were with me for its name. They said it had no name, but one of them spoke up and said "We will name it now, and name it Rushmore Peak." That was the origin of the name it bears, and, as I have been informed, it is called Rushmore Peak, Rushmore Mountain and also Rushmore Rock. Some time after the incident above narrated I was told that the name and identification of the Rock, or Mountain, was recorded in the Land Office in Washington at the instance of some of the good friends referred to, but I have never sought to verify this feet.
As you well say in your letter to Mr. Abbott this Rock is unique and lends itself admirably to a national monument of the kind you have suggested. I trust you may succeed in carrying out the proposed design. Very truly yours, Charles Edward Rushmore” end quote.

He’s very nonchalant about having an American national monument named after him for no reason at all. But let’s go back because we’ve gotten way ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to the violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie in the 1870s after they found gold. The Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, they are NOT happy about this, obviously, and they aren’t just going to let it happen. They start attacking. I mean, what would the US military do if China rolled up and went to, I don’t know, literally anywhere, and were like “we’re taking this land, we’re going to dig for gold here, you have to go stay over there.” They would not just be like okay, we’ll go stay on the reservation. Do whatever you want. I promise you that. They would not. They would attack to defend the land. And that’s what the Sioux people did. This is when we have Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse leading the various Sioux tribes against the US Army in South Dakota. And they’re actually winning you guys. The Sioux defeat General George Armstrong Custer and his troops at the Battle of Little Bighorn AKA Custer’s last stand AKA what it’s called by the Sioux people, the Battle of Greasy Grass. They win that battle. They defeat the US Army in 1876, the country’s centennial year which the US is not happy about. This is not how they wanted to reign in their one hundredth anniversary of being awesome by having their butts handed to them by the Sioux over in South Dakota. They’re furious, their pride is hurt, tails are between legs and they muster all of the power and might of the US military now. This is serious. The Sioux have poked the bear. And after that victory at Little Bighorn, Greasy Grass, it is all downhill for the Sioux alliance culminating with the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 which was the last major defeat of Native Americans by the US military. According to a PBS American Experience article quote “In his bestselling 1970 history of Native Americans' experiences in the West, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown explains that the "battle" was actually a massacre where hundreds of unarmed Sioux women, children, and men were shot and killed by U.S. troops,” end quote.

And so with that final blow, that final massacre in 1890, the Black Hills region, the Six Grandfathers Mountain so ingloriously renamed after some random lawyer from New York became the property of the US government, in their eyes at least, but that legal battle endures to this day. Enter Doane Robinson who wrote that 1925 letter to the Rushmore guy trying to figure out why the heck the mountain was named after him. Robinson was the state historian of South Dakota at the time and Mount Rushmore, the carvings of the faces, was his idea. But it wasn’t an original one. He had gotten this idea from another attempt to carve faces into the side of a mountain down in Georgia. This monument carved into Stone Mountain in Georgia still exists. It was commissioned by the president of the United Daughters of the Confederacy as a Confederate memorial and it depicts Confederate president Jefferson Davis as well as generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas Stonewall Jackson. This project was funded, of course, in part by the Ku Klux Klan because who else would want to glorify the men who fought to keep Black Americans enslaved. And this group in charge of the Stone Mountain project hired a sculptor named Gutzon Borglum. Borglum had carved a bust of Abraham Lincoln that still sits in the rotunda of the US capitol building that brought everyone to their knees and so the KKK and Daughters of the Confederacy hired him to carve their dystopian heroes into the mountain in Georgia. According to the National Park Service quote “The head of Lee was unveiled in 1924. Soldiers in the audience who served with the Confederate leader were moved to tears by the likeness. However, trouble had been brewing between Borglum and the businessmen directing the project, [I like how they’re like “businessmen” not KKK members. They were just businessmen] and Borglum was abruptly dismissed. He destroyed his models in order to protect his design and this so angered the directors that a warrant was issued for his arrest and he was forced to flee Georgia. Borglum's head of Lee was removed when another artist was engaged and none of his work survived when the carving was finally finished in 1970. However, the spirit of his original design remains,” end quote.

And so although this artistic endeavor ended very badly for Borglum, it caught the attention of Doane Robinson who wanted to do something similar in South Dakota. But Robinson hadn’t narrowed it down to US presidents, he actually wanted it to be an ode to the west including depictions of Lewis and Clark as well as Lakota leader Red Cloud. Yes he wanted to put an indigenous leader on the monument. But Borglum was like “no, no, no that’s no good. We’re doing US presidents and it’s going to be an ode to American exceptionalism.” And so he picked presidents that had a part in American growth and expansion. George Washington who led the revolutionary war, establishing the country, symbolized its birth as a nation. Thomas Jefferson who authorized the Louisiana Purchase symbolized westward expansion. Theodore Roosevelt who negotiated the Panama Canal, uniting east and west, and led during a time of rapid economic growth represented development. And Abraham Lincoln who held the country together during the Civil War represented preservation. It was also Borglum who chose the rock face of the Six Grandfathers Mountain for these sculptures, either not knowing or not caring about its sacred relevance to the native people.

Over the next 16 years, Borglum negotiated funding from the federal government for this massive project. He totally took over. In the end, Doane Robinson, wasn’t even really involved. The federal government agreed to fund it and set up this 12 person panel, like a commission, and Robinson wasn’t even considered for a position on the panel. The National Park Service says quote “One notable exclusion from the new Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission was Doane Robinson. The one person most responsible for conceiving the idea and who supported it for so long, Robinson's name was inexplicably not even on the list of potential candidates to serve on the commission. He continued to support the project and generously offered, "Let me help where I can." Soon, feeling unnecessary, Robinson started to drift away from the Rushmore project,” end quote.

And so with funding secured, the carving begins. This involved over 400 workers repelling down the 500 foot rock face of the mountain with dynamite, chisels, and jackhammers. Over 90% of the project was carved using dynamite. The National Park Service explains quote “Before the dynamite charges could be set off, the workers would have to be cleared from the mountain. Workers in the winch house on top of the mountain would hand crank the winches to raise and lower the drillers. If they went too fast, the drillers in their bosun chairs would be dragged up on their faces. To keep this from happening, young men and boys were hired as call boys. Call boys sat at the edge of the mountain and shouted messages back and forth assuring safety. During the 14 years of construction not one fatality occurred. Dynamite was used until only three to six inches of rock was left to remove to get to the final carving surface. At this point, the drillers and assistant carvers would drill holes into the granite very close together. This was called honeycombing. The closely drilled holes would weaken the granite so it could be removed often by hand. After the honeycombing, the workers smoothed the surface of the faces with a hand facer or bumper tool. In this final step, the bumper tool would even up the granite, creating a surface as smooth as a sidewalk,” end quote. Which like, okay I get it, but how do you make it look like George Washington’s face? Every source is just like “yeah the dynamite and the honeycombing” but like, it looks like him. So, from what I understand, after the workers blew things up and removed approximately what needed to be removed, then sculptures came in and did more of the detailed work needed to actually capture the likeness of the presidents.

Now at one point when they are nowhere near done, Borglum gets all grandiose and he starts scheming about this new idea to construct a secret room behind the president’s heads. Now really, he wanted to carve an inscription all across the mountain telling the history of the United States but realized that there wasn’t enough room to carve the words large enough for people to actually read them. So he pivots and he’s like the secret hall, the vault, the room, whatever. He starts blasting a 70 foot tunnel out of the rock face behind the heads that he is hoping will house important US artifacts like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. He’s calling it the Hall of Records. But he doesn’t actually okay this with the US government which is funding the project. He just goes rogue. And when they find out their like “whoa, ho, no. Nope just go back to carving the heads. Just finish the heads dude.” Because it’s 1938 now and war is looming in Europe. The threat of having to enter World War II is very real and they are spending money carving heads into a mountain which actually seems real dumb and like a terrible decision financially when you factor in the possibility of a very expensive war in the future. But, on the flip side, the project was part of FDR’s new deal which was a series of projects that hired out of work Americans during the Great Depression to try to stimulate the economy. They were like oh you don’t have a job? Come carve Abe Lincoln’s face into this mountain for absolutely no reason at all. But now there’s a war looming and they’re getting a little worried about all the money they’ve been spending at Mount Rushmore instead of on tanks and guns and stuff. And so Borglum has to abandon the hall of records idea and go back to carving the faces. And to this day there is an unfinished tunnel carved into the rock behind the president’s heads at Mount Rushmore. But in 1998 they put a titanium box in their a repository of records that contains sixteen panels inscribed with the story of how Mount Rushmore came to be carved, who carved it, why those four presidents were chosen, and a short history of the United States. The National Park Service says quote “This repository is not accessible to visitors but is left as a record for people thousands of years from now who may wonder how and why Mount Rushmore was carved,” end quote. How very sentimental. Although it does seem like they left quite a bit out, doesn’t it? Like the bit about how it used to be called the Six Grandfathers and how the US stole it from the indigenous people, whom they then massacred, that part.

Unfortunately Borglum never actually finished the project. His health started to deteriorate and he died in March of 1941, leaving his son to complete it. But in the end, funding ran out, and they had exhausted the carvable surfaces of the mountain’s face. It was declared finished on October 31st, 1941 despite being very clearly unfinished. They never carved the torsos of the presidents as they had intended to do and they left a huge pile of rubble at the base of the mountain, they never cleared it away. They were just like “eh, it’s good enough, we’ll call it done” and it opened as a National Memorial to visitors just unfinished to this day.

But as anyone who has cared to listen knows, the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho people, the Sioux have never been cool with this. Mount Rushmore, the Six Grandfathers was stolen from them. It was theirs for thousands of years. They had successfully defended it in the 1860s and it was ceded to them in the Treaty of Fort Laramie forever in perpetuity. And then the US just completely defied the treaty and seized it after gold was discovered and used force, military might for decades to continue to hold the land they had stolen, carved their leaders into it. How incredibly insulting is that? Like a child writing their name selfishly all over stolen possessions so their little brother won’t take them back. And then, we have to look at the choice of these men of whom Borglum said quote “let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were,” end quote. So what manner of men were they? Mount Rushmore certainly glorifies them, their achievements, their accomplishments, their bravery and determination. But how might an indigenous American view these four men? How might a Black American view them? George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both enslaved people by the hundreds even though they knew, admitted that it was morally wrong. Thomas Jefferson called slavery “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot” and yet he personally enslaved as many as 600 people in his lifetime. That’s the manner of man he was. George Washington believed that Native Americans had no choice but to assimilate into American society or face extinction. The Iroquois Confederacy called him “Town Destroyer” because of his military campaigns against their villages. That’s the manner of man he was. Theodore Roosevelt is remembered quite fondly for all the work he did to establish National Parks in the US, and I love a national park, don’t get me wrong, but in order to do that, he forcibly removed Native Americans from around 86 million acres of their ancestral lands. He was not a friend to native people. He’s often incorrectly credited with coining the phrase “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” and while that’s not exactly what he said, the real quote isn’t much better. What he actually said in 1886 was quote “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian,” end quote. That’s the manner of man he was. Talk about moral principle. And then Abraham Lincoln, I’m a Lincoln fan myself for a lot of reasons but even he dispatched the military to Minnesota in 1862 to put down a Dakota Uprising and ordered the executions of 38 Dakota men, the largest mass execution in US history. So, you can imagine how indigenous Americans might feel about Lincoln after that. That was the manner of man he was.

Not to hate on our Presidents you guys, I know these four did a lot of great things and I know that it’s because of their leadership that I live in the country I do today and that I have the freedom and the wonderful life that I have. I know that and I’m very grateful. But, I think it’s important to look at both sides of the coin. They did some great things. They also did some very hurtful things. Things that, while transforming my life for the better, shaping an incredible future for white Americans, was destroying the way of life for indigenous Americans who were just trying to defend themselves, defend what was rightfully theirs. And as grateful as I am for what I have been handed, it would be wrong not to acknowledge who it was taken from. Back to my China analogy from earlier can you imagine, can you even imagine a future where the faces of Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, whatever have been demolished and replaced with the faces of Chinese leaders? Do you think Americans would take that sitting down? Or would there be uprisings? Because that is what we did to the native people of South Dakota. And then, when they fought back, we said they had no moral principle and we authorized their executions and we put our faces where theirs once were.

In 1980, a festering legal dispute between the Sioux Nation and the US government finally reached the supreme court. In this landmark case, the United States vs. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court ruled that the United States had unlawfully taken the Black Hills region of South Dakota from the Lakota people. They decided that the Lakota were entitled to 17.1 million dollars in damages. But, the Lakota refused to take the money. They didn’t want the money. They wanted the land back. In their minds, it was never for sale. And so by offering them money, compensation, the US is just trying to buy land that was never for sale. That money is still on the table and has reached over a billion dollars today but the Lakota continue to refuse compensation. And so that conflict continues. They just want their land back, their sacred land, the center of their universe.

But so what do we do? How do we fix this? A lot of ideas have been proposed. Some, including some indigenous leaders and Borglum’s own great granddaughter, have called for the removal of Mount Rushmore altogether just get rid of it. Some have suggested that additional faces be added, including important indigenous leaders, as Doane Robinson initially planned. Others are in favor of keeping the monument but using it to educate people about the real history of the American West, what really happened, not the whitewashed version. Gerard Baker is in that camp. In 2004 Baker became the first Native American superintendent of Mount Rushmore. And from the very beginning, he made it his mission to educate visitors about the history of the mountain, the real history, before Borglum started blowing up the rock face, before the gold was discovered. According to a Native Hope blog entry quote “That is exactly what Baker did. He erected a teepee at the monument. One day he saw 20-30 visitors standing around the teepee—many asking each other about the structure and its purpose at Mount Rushmore. [Baker] took this as an invitation to educate the group. He spoke about the history of the land and the people, soon the group grew to a crowd of nearly 200. The simple placement of the teepee started what today is the Heritage Village where the traditions and customs of the Native people are highlighted,” end quote. In a documentary for PBS, Baker says quote “It's not just a teepee here. We're promoting all cultures of America. That's what this place is. This is Mount Rushmore! It's America! Everybody's something different here; we're all different. And just maybe that gets us talking again as human beings, as Americans,” end quote.

And that’s where I want to end today because I could never have said it better than Gerard Baker “This is Mount Rushmore! It’s America! Everybody’s something different here; we’re all different” and that’s okay. It’s about respect, respecting differences. And if we had learned that lesson sooner, Mount Rushmore would still be the Six Grandfathers, watching over the sacred Black Hills with their wisdom and their natural beauty, carved throughout millenia by the hands of Mother Earth herself. But there they are, the unnaturally harsh angles and shorn surfaces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln, looking out across the land as a testament to the lessons we’ve learned and how far we have come and a reminder of the journey ahead.

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.

Information used in this episode was sourced from the National Park Service, National Geographic, PBS, Readers Digest, Ted Ed, Native Hope, and Iowa State University. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.

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