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 and 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. Fifty years later, workers began etching into the Lakota’s sacred Six Grandfathers 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 rock face 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 honored 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.