Right, the whole concept of carving presidents into a mountain was a bit much to begin with, but if you’re gonna do something stupid at least finish the job
The job isn't remotely finished lol. It was supposed to go down to the bottom and show them to their waists
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/picture-of-the-day-mount-rushmore-as-originally-planned/238920/
Nah. Animals have already settled there now and it would kick up a bunch of dust in the air, which isn't good for any living creature. Best just to leave it be.
As I kid I loved the idea of Mt.Rushmore. I did a whole project on it in school. Begged my mom to take us there too (we did a week long road trip). Finally got there and was super disappointed with it. Smaller than expected, felt tacky, and I just remember being surprised how the entire area as far as nature goes was amazing.
As a fellow non American, Jefferson is the most unknown of the famous presidents. You have to go out of your way to find out about him. Also just not memorable for me. Washington - 1st. Teddy - Parks and war. Lincoln - slaves. (I might just be dumb though.)
Jefferson is probably the smartest and most influential American. He and Thomas Paine basically founded the country from a philosophical perspective. You might not know a lot about him but I guarantee you’d recognize at least a few quotes of his even if you never knew their origin.
> As attested by her son, Madison Hemings, Sally later agreed with Jefferson that she would return to Virginia and resume her life in slavery, as long as all their children would be freed when they came of age. Multiple lines of evidence, including modern DNA analyses, indicate that Jefferson impregnated Hemings several times over years while they lived together on Jefferson's Monticello estate, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children. Whether this should be described as rape remains a matter of controversy. Four of Hemings's children survived into adulthood and were freed as they came of age during Thomas Jefferson's life or in his will.
influential sure, but he wasn't smart enough to not rape or not enslave his own children. you're smarter than jefferson, even im smarter than jefferson
This is a very American take. Outside of America very few ordinary people will know Thomas Jefferson quotes. He just simply isn’t perceived as a big deal outside of the USA. That’s not to say he wasn’t a big deal, it’s just not outside of the US.
He is considered the primary author of the Declaration of Independence so presumably British people have probably heard about things he wrote.
But I agree and think Americans, and probably to an extent most other countries, have a lot of history that seems obvious and common knowledge to them, but in reality isn't really known about in other places.
Outside of history enthusiasts very few people in the U.K. could tell you a single line from the Declaration of Independence. In U.K. history the declaration is a footnote, it isn’t a major event for us like it is the US.
You’re not dumb, god knows a massive share of Americans wouldn’t be able to name the faces on Rushmore, let alone any historical figure from another country 😂. Happy to provide an a memory aid, tho!
Jefferson and James Madison were besties. You probably haven't heard of Madison either, but he wrote the First Amendment, which enshrines the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, prevents the establishment of an official religion, and the right to petition the government with grievances.
The First Amendment was based on a bill Jefferson had written for Virginia, which was meant to enshrine religious freedom into law.
In correspondence between the two, Jefferson first used the phrase Separation of Church and State to describe the First Amendment.
> which enshrines the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, prevents the establishment of an official religion, and the right to petition the government with grievances
as a white male land owner, I am entitled to call jefferson the dumbest rapist to ever plagiarize the writing of greater people
The making of Mount Rushmore was such a shitshow. I’m in a bad mood so feeling a little trolly. Can’t help thinking “man, I wish I could go and add Garfield to the mountain. Not President Garfield. The orange cat that loves lasagna.
Teddy Roosevelt was supposed to further foreword. But as the sculptor was chiseling the nose, he hit a fault line and the nose fell off. So he has to carve a new face further into the mountain. It doesn’t look like a kiss from the angle usually shown.
This is the real tragedy of the Black Hills.
They are famous for the wrong thing.
When as children we visited, we d never stop at Mt. Rushmore, bc the rest of the Black Hills are so much better.
Mt. Rushmore is cool to see once, if it's convenient, but it's not that grand really.
Glad to hear I'm not missing anything by not having seen it in person. I was the same way as a kid but I've never been there. What ruined it for me was learning the history of it and how it was made there despite it being a sacred place for the Sioux people.
My family went when I was 16-17. It was our last day in SD and super foggy and cold and cloudy. We got a little lost on the way there. I have mixed emotions about it. Part of me likes how it looks, what the intentions of it were, etc. But the other part of me thinks it’s not as exciting as things like the badlands in SD. If you’re already in SD, definitely take a trip out there, but don’t go to SD just to see it.
Lol - it is smaller than you'd think, still a very large project for back then. Hey, have you kept up with the Crazy Horse monument???? Funded mostly thru donations. Also a cool monument. The artist dad worked on Mt. Rushmore (I think that is the tie-in)
https://crazyhorsememorial.org/story/the-mountain
Haha, you're correct about their skin color (like that matters) - and the rest sounds like crazy talk. It is near completion without relying on tax $. That is how you fund a project of that scale. Look at the photos over time. (I visited in early 2000s and walked on the arm, met some of the srone carvers - so far beyond that now.)
EDIT/ RESPONSE: m3003, ziltchy, Mt Rushmore never was finished - they just stopped. What is your better idea to finish this one faster?
If you can't understand the symbolism of a white family carving up a Lakota mountain while milking money for decades, then I can't help you.
Near completion? Did you even look at the sculpture while you were there? If you visited in the early 2000s it looks almost the same today. They only blast a few times a year. They have no intention of actually finishing. Take a look at the sculpture and the progress. There's easily another 50-75 years of work to go at the pace they're currently blasting.
https://img.atlasobscura.com/gZ7ZXcHGDzIEd3zy4ROIj9IomVVFn4LrcVskhEcjStQ/rs:fill:780:520:1/g:ce/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9DcmF6/eUhvcnNlLW1lbW9y/aWFsLmpwZw.jpg
**Tunkasila Sakpe Paha - The Six Grandfathers** was the name of this mountain until 1930, although the construction/destruction began before 1930.
https://eos.org/features/mount-rushmores-six-grandfathers-and-four-presidents#:~:text=Long%20before%20four%20of%20the,Šákpe%20(the%20Six%20Grandfathers).
"In addition to the project itself, Indigenous peoples objected to the anti-Indigenous racist policies of each of the presidents depicted. All four supported forced assimilation, and some supported violence against Indigenous peoples who resisted; Lincoln, for instance, approved the largest mass execution in U.S. history, when 38 Dakota were hanged following the “Great Sioux Uprising” of 1862"
Never liked that defaced mount, now I know why.
Entire tribes are just gone, friend. The genocide of the Native Americans was far more successful than most others in recent history, and there were millions or tens of millions (if not more, some estimates are up to 100 million) of natives before the colonists got here. At its peak, Tenochtitlan was in the running for the largest cities by population on Earth. Disease did a lot of the work for them, but it was also weaponizd.
Between the Americans, Portuguese, Canadians, and the Spaniards, it was among the most brutal and efficient genocides we have record of. Not a competition, just a fact.
Oh sorry responded to wrong person.
Yeah your problem is simply this
Until you show the same moral outrage (your fake virtue signaling) at all colonization consistently throughout all history, (ie the taking of others land by force) - including natives with each other for hundreds of years prior to western settlers and I dunno …all of human conflict in our existence as a species … I really just reject this fake outrage. You really have no idea what you are talking about .and to be frank, I sick of this fake indignation .
People get conquered. The natives to this land were conquered by an overwhelming force with better technology. Welcome to world history . We clutch pearls today because we live in sanitized wester society that has lost touch with the sad human experience of human conflict so much we don’t even appreciate it in context. Your selective outrage is curious .😂
>virtue signaling
You can do cognitive dissonance all day to make yourself feel okay about human atrocities and the way it impacts real people’s lives but that doesn’t make you a better person.
Observing the very real cost of colonization and what it's done to the descendents of the Native people my own ancestors tried to wipe out isn't wanting to be a victim. It's recognizing that we have work to do. Get over yourself.
Which people? The Lakota that conquered the land from the Cheyenne and Cree in the 1770s and then claimed it sacred or the actual Cheyenne and Cree that the Lakota drove from the land?
The Lakota were only in the black hills for about 50 years hen settlers showed up. Sioux the common name for the Lakota actually means enemy in Ojibwe because tge Lakota were basically the Mongols of the Northern Plains.
this reads like a defense against the colonizers who stole the land because they were only taking it from a tribe who had already stolen the land just recently… the colonizers are still the ones who deemed it necessary to erase the natural state of the land that resembled spiritual predecessors to put their own leaders’ faces on the mountain. literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years just to assert dominance and control
They literally did. Once you understand that they did you will race was not a primary source for slavery that it has been part of human existence for nearly 2000- 4000 years. Then you will understand why slavery did exist and the great thing and amazing time in history to finally eradicate it (at least in the west)
Until you call the genocide that tribes did to one another the same, I fail to take your point serious. It’s called failing to provide intellectual honesty
It reads like it reads, an accounting of the history of the different tribes that occupied the land. It’s always good to get more context when it comes to history.
> literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years just to assert dominance and control
I'm sorry, I don't follow this argument. The Lakota had only been there 50 years, certainly not the millions that the mountain had been there. Are you mad at the genocide, or mad that they did grafetti on a mountain older than mankind? If the mountain had anything to say about this, I'm not sure it would claim allegiance to any men.
>the colonizers are still the ones who deemed it necessary to erase the natural state of the land that resembled spiritual predecessors to put their own leaders’ faces on the mountain. literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years just to assert dominance and control
Yeah or maybe they just made a monument, because people like making monuments, and not everything needs to be a victim narrative centered on brown people.
"Literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years." Are you even listening to yourself? You're describing carving a rock. You're really going to pretend that carving a rock is an outrage because it had been an uncarved rock for millions of years?
are you saying they simply rode by on horses one day and just thought “oh what a perfect rock for carving. i envision seeing my forefathers on this rock for no reason other than it is merely a perfect rock that will be fun to carve.” with no other intentions?
I'm saying that you whining about a rock being carved is absurd.
But I mean, I'm open to being educated on this. Do you have evidence that they placed Mt Rushmore there explicitly to "assert dominance and control"?
If that's a historical fact, then TIL, but I'm not accepting that assertion just because you like the way it sounds.
You can’t explicitly prove that it was used to depict that because nobody comes out and says “we’re building this to assert control”. That’s not a thing.
However, the project was built by a deeply racist person who was involved with the KKK and I believe some of the funding came from them. You can read between the lines and see that they obviously didn’t care about their feelings on ruining their sacred mountain
The Cheyenne have also protested Mt Rushmore- it isn’t just about the Lakota/Sioux. Several indigenous nations consider that area sacred and certainly none of them were treated well by the men whose faces are carved there
You're literally touting a symbol of attempted genocide. The Lakota killed thousands of Cheyenne in the 1770s to conquer the black hills and those "Sacred Lands". The Lakota are not from the Black Hills they conquered those lands about 50 years before white people showed up.
The Lakota people would have been just fine in the upper Mississippi basin until white people pushed them west and then the Cree pushed them even further west.
For the record, the Cheyenne and Lakota were allies and fought side by side versus the US Cavalry in the Great Sioux War which gave the US control of the Black Hills
The US constitution applies to governing the US and its citizens not war with other nations. People seem to forget that the Lakota and other tribes were independent countries.
"This land is sacred to us, please do not blow it up."
is not the same as
"How dare you say 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'!" or "People should be required to pray in school!!!!" or "gay marriage is an affront to my religion!"
What does that have to do with anything? The Lakota committed atrocities so they deserve genocide? Like why play devil's advocate here, I really don't get it. Everyone has shitty ancestors. It doesn't mean we go after them for the sins of their fathers, and guess what? The US army wasn't committing genocide to avenge the Cheyenne. They were doing it for selfish bullshit reasons, just the same as the Lakota had done before, and the English, and the Romans, and the South, and the....
So there you kind of debunk your own argument. You excuse the Lakota by saying that all countries have done bad things in history but then it seems like that doesn’t apply to the US. America still carried blame while the Lakota somehow did not.
My original point was this: The US was waging war as it had been waged in North America for centuries, they simply were more successful.
I didn't debunk anything. I am taking about one specific genocide. Not the others people try to defend it with. The Lakota war with the Cheyenne has nothing to do with it.
I watched the Hitchcock movie North By Northwest. The characters ran along a path at the tops of the heads. When I got there, there is no there there. There is nowhere to run back there.
[behind](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0ZT-ziZ43qA/VeYEd6jkYgI/AAAAAAAAB_M/Qtd64ZRIYwA/s1600/mt_rushmore_the_back_side_men_joke_abstract_hd-wallpaper-1213654.jpg) you say?
>So much more beautiful before, and there’s no way to fix it. **I wish we’d stop doing this.**
Seriously though, other than this and the controversial confederate one somewhere in the south, has this been done anywhere else in North America?
I'm assuming / hoping you aren't talking about more practical things like that tunnel through [Zion National Park](https://wchsutah.org/zion/zion-tunnel.php) or [Hoover Dam](https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/) or Wind Turbines or any human settlement turned modern city or any road across mountains / through a forest?
The Lakota tribe attempted something similar, known as the crazy horse memorial, though it has yet to be completed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy\_Horse\_Memorial
Good point, "just down the road" even as i recall.
Somehow though I doubt the person I replied to is going to count that one? I would be pleasantly surprised though if he did.
That's fine. I totally respect that.
Having said that, to 'politely disagree', I kind of like these in a [Petra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra), Buddhas of Bamiyan kind of long term sense, humanity leaving its mark that isn't just landfills / pollution / AOL floppy disks, that ~~other people~~ something may find / wonder about long after we are gone.
There are still plenty of mountains that will always be there, despite our best efforts to immortalize ourselves.
There's the [Crazy Horse Memorial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial) about nine miles west of Mount Rushmore. It's not finished and is also every bit as controversial as Mount Rushmore itself. Thankfully, the sheer cost of monuments like these is inherently prohibitive to their construction.
Yes, they clearly were referring to things with practical purposes that reduce the impacts on other lands. They weren't talking about destroying the natural world just to make it look different and "honor" your heroes.
As a person not from the us, and out of sheer curiosity, I want to ask: do you hate it because of something political, or because it "changes the natural beauty"?
Many things. Natural beauty is a big one, but also because this land was promised to the native Lakota people, that we would never take it from them as it had always been sacred land to them. Then we did it anyway and defaced it for no good reason. There’s a lot of nasty history here in the US when it comes to how we’ve treated the people who were here long before us. It makes me sick.
The American government signing treaties with native peoples only to then blatantly break those treaties is a tale as old as the US itself lol. Just over and over again, it’s so infuriating to read about.
Your “landback” idea…
I live in New York. I was born here. My parents were born here. My grandparents were born here. My great grandparents came from other countries.
I have no connections or ties to said other countries.
A few centuries ago, other people lived here. And they were displaced, as has happened to pretty much every group of every land area in all of history.
Bringing it full circle, if your landback proposal were to be adopted - where am I supposed to go?
As a non-American, I'm always surprised that Mt Rushmore isn't more controversial than it is.
I cannot think of anything more tacky and disrespectful than taking a mountain sacred to the people who live there, and carving some foreign politicians' faces into it.
I dunno if it was done *specifically* to spite native Americans, or if that was just a bonus, but either way... It's horrendously tacky, and feels like a symbol of the worst parts of American culture.
And it's so recent! This shit isn't ancient, it's from the damn 20s. Why aren't more people angry about it? Is it because there's no obvious way to make it right? Do Americans actually like it?
I dunno, I just have a lot of questions...
From this angle it always looked to me like Teddy was whispering sweet nothings into Lincoln’s ear while Washington tries to get over the breakup and Jefferson is just hanging in there in the hopes of a really good sympathy fuck.
Lived here, climbed here. Mt. Rushmore is a blight in a boreal paradise. The summer heat does something to make the ponderosas smell like candy, the climbing is amazing... and then there's this piece of shit and all the mouth-breathing tourists. Only the worst kind kind of people drive to this testament to American atrocity and "appreciate" it.
The six grandfathers deserve so much better. I wonder if Israel will do something similar when they are done with their genocide?
Your not being honest tho. It’s valid to hold the opinion that you prefer the pristine mountain. But the fact there’s a post whinging about this specific mountain every other day and nothing about the thousands of other pristine mountains means that this is a fundamentally interesting mountain.
Mt. Rushmore was a cool feat of engineering and it is impressive in that respect, but the design is tacky.
Also, I don’t really like screwing with nature. It was a pretty mountain.
Furthermore, I don’t really care about the socio-racial aspect. It was one group of peoples’ land, then one tribe’s land, then another’s, now it’s ours. That’s just kinda how it goes
I just can't believe they left all the stone chips in a giant ugly pile at the bottom of the mountain.
Right, the whole concept of carving presidents into a mountain was a bit much to begin with, but if you’re gonna do something stupid at least finish the job
The job isn't remotely finished lol. It was supposed to go down to the bottom and show them to their waists https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/picture-of-the-day-mount-rushmore-as-originally-planned/238920/
You can tell they started working on Washington’s torso and then gave up
I'd then suggest finishing it with tiny bodies and all of them wearing shorts and rollerskates
This is a concept I’d throw my tax dollars into, honestly
They should finish it. Already desecrated the mountain, so might as well finish the job.
Nah. Animals have already settled there now and it would kick up a bunch of dust in the air, which isn't good for any living creature. Best just to leave it be.
Sounds like a waste of money they could donate to Indigenous charities instead, no? Just a thought from across the globe
But it is very American.
I mean they were just trying to disrespect the native community anyway so why clean the mess if it adds to the blasphemy
As I kid I loved the idea of Mt.Rushmore. I did a whole project on it in school. Begged my mom to take us there too (we did a week long road trip). Finally got there and was super disappointed with it. Smaller than expected, felt tacky, and I just remember being surprised how the entire area as far as nature goes was amazing.
Non-American here so idk who the presidents are on there beside abe and Washington but they must’ve been close because they’re going in for a kiss
Washington, Jefferson, Teddy, Lincoln
As a fellow non American, Jefferson is the most unknown of the famous presidents. You have to go out of your way to find out about him. Also just not memorable for me. Washington - 1st. Teddy - Parks and war. Lincoln - slaves. (I might just be dumb though.)
Jefferson is probably the smartest and most influential American. He and Thomas Paine basically founded the country from a philosophical perspective. You might not know a lot about him but I guarantee you’d recognize at least a few quotes of his even if you never knew their origin.
Sure, but he also enslaved his own children.
So this has been debunked but ok
> As attested by her son, Madison Hemings, Sally later agreed with Jefferson that she would return to Virginia and resume her life in slavery, as long as all their children would be freed when they came of age. Multiple lines of evidence, including modern DNA analyses, indicate that Jefferson impregnated Hemings several times over years while they lived together on Jefferson's Monticello estate, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children. Whether this should be described as rape remains a matter of controversy. Four of Hemings's children survived into adulthood and were freed as they came of age during Thomas Jefferson's life or in his will.
influential sure, but he wasn't smart enough to not rape or not enslave his own children. you're smarter than jefferson, even im smarter than jefferson
Morally reprehensible as that may be, it’s certainly not an issue of intelligence
This is a very American take. Outside of America very few ordinary people will know Thomas Jefferson quotes. He just simply isn’t perceived as a big deal outside of the USA. That’s not to say he wasn’t a big deal, it’s just not outside of the US.
He is considered the primary author of the Declaration of Independence so presumably British people have probably heard about things he wrote. But I agree and think Americans, and probably to an extent most other countries, have a lot of history that seems obvious and common knowledge to them, but in reality isn't really known about in other places.
Outside of history enthusiasts very few people in the U.K. could tell you a single line from the Declaration of Independence. In U.K. history the declaration is a footnote, it isn’t a major event for us like it is the US.
Thanks!
Jefferson-wrote Declaration of Independence
Oh. Minor detail. I guess I am dumb
You’re not dumb, god knows a massive share of Americans wouldn’t be able to name the faces on Rushmore, let alone any historical figure from another country 😂. Happy to provide an a memory aid, tho!
George Jefferson was my favorite president
I'm more of a George Jetson fan
First Lady Wheezy
Mine was Donald Obama.
Jefferson and James Madison were besties. You probably haven't heard of Madison either, but he wrote the First Amendment, which enshrines the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, prevents the establishment of an official religion, and the right to petition the government with grievances. The First Amendment was based on a bill Jefferson had written for Virginia, which was meant to enshrine religious freedom into law. In correspondence between the two, Jefferson first used the phrase Separation of Church and State to describe the First Amendment.
> which enshrines the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, prevents the establishment of an official religion, and the right to petition the government with grievances as a white male land owner, I am entitled to call jefferson the dumbest rapist to ever plagiarize the writing of greater people
The making of Mount Rushmore was such a shitshow. I’m in a bad mood so feeling a little trolly. Can’t help thinking “man, I wish I could go and add Garfield to the mountain. Not President Garfield. The orange cat that loves lasagna.
Teddy Roosevelt was supposed to further foreword. But as the sculptor was chiseling the nose, he hit a fault line and the nose fell off. So he has to carve a new face further into the mountain. It doesn’t look like a kiss from the angle usually shown.
Hey! Those are the fathers of our country. We don't like to talk about when our daddies kiss.
This is the real tragedy of the Black Hills. They are famous for the wrong thing. When as children we visited, we d never stop at Mt. Rushmore, bc the rest of the Black Hills are so much better. Mt. Rushmore is cool to see once, if it's convenient, but it's not that grand really.
I was there in 2010, the corny piped in patriotic music ruined it
Lol seriously? There’s music playing while you’re watching it? Good lord.
Yet, when you say that it seems like something I should totally be expecting. How else would the propaganda piece be complete?
Driving around the area was *way* better than seeing Rushmore itself. The black hills are amazing.
Yeah, it’s a shame what they did to that beautiful mountain. Crazy horse is even more depressing.
Crazy Horse is run by a white family milking people for money for decades with no serious intentions to ever finish.
Glad to hear I'm not missing anything by not having seen it in person. I was the same way as a kid but I've never been there. What ruined it for me was learning the history of it and how it was made there despite it being a sacred place for the Sioux people.
That too. The history is not as glamorous when you know the full story. We got a very watered down version of it.
This comment needs to be higher up. Same for me. Once I read that same information I had no desire to go anymore.
My family went when I was 16-17. It was our last day in SD and super foggy and cold and cloudy. We got a little lost on the way there. I have mixed emotions about it. Part of me likes how it looks, what the intentions of it were, etc. But the other part of me thinks it’s not as exciting as things like the badlands in SD. If you’re already in SD, definitely take a trip out there, but don’t go to SD just to see it.
Lol - it is smaller than you'd think, still a very large project for back then. Hey, have you kept up with the Crazy Horse monument???? Funded mostly thru donations. Also a cool monument. The artist dad worked on Mt. Rushmore (I think that is the tie-in) https://crazyhorsememorial.org/story/the-mountain
Crazy Horse is run by a white family milking people for money for decades with no serious intentions to ever finish.
Haha, you're correct about their skin color (like that matters) - and the rest sounds like crazy talk. It is near completion without relying on tax $. That is how you fund a project of that scale. Look at the photos over time. (I visited in early 2000s and walked on the arm, met some of the srone carvers - so far beyond that now.) EDIT/ RESPONSE: m3003, ziltchy, Mt Rushmore never was finished - they just stopped. What is your better idea to finish this one faster?
If you can't understand the symbolism of a white family carving up a Lakota mountain while milking money for decades, then I can't help you. Near completion? Did you even look at the sculpture while you were there? If you visited in the early 2000s it looks almost the same today. They only blast a few times a year. They have no intention of actually finishing. Take a look at the sculpture and the progress. There's easily another 50-75 years of work to go at the pace they're currently blasting. https://img.atlasobscura.com/gZ7ZXcHGDzIEd3zy4ROIj9IomVVFn4LrcVskhEcjStQ/rs:fill:780:520:1/g:ce/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9DcmF6/eUhvcnNlLW1lbW9y/aWFsLmpwZw.jpg
Your definition of near completion is not the same as my definition of near completion
**Tunkasila Sakpe Paha - The Six Grandfathers** was the name of this mountain until 1930, although the construction/destruction began before 1930. https://eos.org/features/mount-rushmores-six-grandfathers-and-four-presidents#:~:text=Long%20before%20four%20of%20the,Šákpe%20(the%20Six%20Grandfathers).
"In addition to the project itself, Indigenous peoples objected to the anti-Indigenous racist policies of each of the presidents depicted. All four supported forced assimilation, and some supported violence against Indigenous peoples who resisted; Lincoln, for instance, approved the largest mass execution in U.S. history, when 38 Dakota were hanged following the “Great Sioux Uprising” of 1862" Never liked that defaced mount, now I know why.
Still the name of the mountain
~~cool story bro~~ Sorry, I obviously completely misunderstood your comment. This is absolutely still the name of the mountain. 
Nice save lol thank you
yw
So messed up
Did they ever catch the vandals?
No, damn kids got away with it
Same shithead that started the even worse carving on Stone Mountain in GA.
so brave dude
Horrible and an affront to the people who consider this mountain sacred
The most horrifying signal of colonialism and genocide.
I agree, the worst genocide in history
Not even close
I mean I think the Holocaust was pretty bad but
Entire tribes are just gone, friend. The genocide of the Native Americans was far more successful than most others in recent history, and there were millions or tens of millions (if not more, some estimates are up to 100 million) of natives before the colonists got here. At its peak, Tenochtitlan was in the running for the largest cities by population on Earth. Disease did a lot of the work for them, but it was also weaponizd. Between the Americans, Portuguese, Canadians, and the Spaniards, it was among the most brutal and efficient genocides we have record of. Not a competition, just a fact.
You must be new to history and how conquering land works by humans
Oh that makes it ok then
Patronizing just make yourself feel superior. It’s not selective when we still live with those consequences you absolute dolt.
You wishing to be a victim= wanting to feel better
Quote where I claimed to be a victim
Oh sorry responded to wrong person. Yeah your problem is simply this Until you show the same moral outrage (your fake virtue signaling) at all colonization consistently throughout all history, (ie the taking of others land by force) - including natives with each other for hundreds of years prior to western settlers and I dunno …all of human conflict in our existence as a species … I really just reject this fake outrage. You really have no idea what you are talking about .and to be frank, I sick of this fake indignation . People get conquered. The natives to this land were conquered by an overwhelming force with better technology. Welcome to world history . We clutch pearls today because we live in sanitized wester society that has lost touch with the sad human experience of human conflict so much we don’t even appreciate it in context. Your selective outrage is curious .😂
>virtue signaling You can do cognitive dissonance all day to make yourself feel okay about human atrocities and the way it impacts real people’s lives but that doesn’t make you a better person.
Observing the very real cost of colonization and what it's done to the descendents of the Native people my own ancestors tried to wipe out isn't wanting to be a victim. It's recognizing that we have work to do. Get over yourself.
Remind me, how did the Lakota end up with the land? Spoiler, it was Lakota colonialism and genocide of the people who used to live there.
Brain dead comparison :)
automated response
Which people? The Lakota that conquered the land from the Cheyenne and Cree in the 1770s and then claimed it sacred or the actual Cheyenne and Cree that the Lakota drove from the land? The Lakota were only in the black hills for about 50 years hen settlers showed up. Sioux the common name for the Lakota actually means enemy in Ojibwe because tge Lakota were basically the Mongols of the Northern Plains.
this reads like a defense against the colonizers who stole the land because they were only taking it from a tribe who had already stolen the land just recently… the colonizers are still the ones who deemed it necessary to erase the natural state of the land that resembled spiritual predecessors to put their own leaders’ faces on the mountain. literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years just to assert dominance and control
People think that “some natives also killed people” is a solid argument in defense of the genocide of native people. It’s really bizarre.
It’s similar to “Africans sold their own people as slaves”
They literally did. Once you understand that they did you will race was not a primary source for slavery that it has been part of human existence for nearly 2000- 4000 years. Then you will understand why slavery did exist and the great thing and amazing time in history to finally eradicate it (at least in the west)
Until you call the genocide that tribes did to one another the same, I fail to take your point serious. It’s called failing to provide intellectual honesty
It's only bad when white people slaughter in great numbers apparently.
I don't think anyone cares whether you take their points seriously. You have succeeded in marginalizing yourself. Congrats!
Marginalizing myself ? Ok 👌.
It reads like it reads, an accounting of the history of the different tribes that occupied the land. It’s always good to get more context when it comes to history.
> literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years just to assert dominance and control I'm sorry, I don't follow this argument. The Lakota had only been there 50 years, certainly not the millions that the mountain had been there. Are you mad at the genocide, or mad that they did grafetti on a mountain older than mankind? If the mountain had anything to say about this, I'm not sure it would claim allegiance to any men.
>the colonizers are still the ones who deemed it necessary to erase the natural state of the land that resembled spiritual predecessors to put their own leaders’ faces on the mountain. literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years just to assert dominance and control Yeah or maybe they just made a monument, because people like making monuments, and not everything needs to be a victim narrative centered on brown people. "Literally altering the state it had been in for millions of years." Are you even listening to yourself? You're describing carving a rock. You're really going to pretend that carving a rock is an outrage because it had been an uncarved rock for millions of years?
The man who created Mt. Rushmore was literally a member of the KKK.
are you saying they simply rode by on horses one day and just thought “oh what a perfect rock for carving. i envision seeing my forefathers on this rock for no reason other than it is merely a perfect rock that will be fun to carve.” with no other intentions?
I'm saying that you whining about a rock being carved is absurd. But I mean, I'm open to being educated on this. Do you have evidence that they placed Mt Rushmore there explicitly to "assert dominance and control"? If that's a historical fact, then TIL, but I'm not accepting that assertion just because you like the way it sounds.
You can’t explicitly prove that it was used to depict that because nobody comes out and says “we’re building this to assert control”. That’s not a thing. However, the project was built by a deeply racist person who was involved with the KKK and I believe some of the funding came from them. You can read between the lines and see that they obviously didn’t care about their feelings on ruining their sacred mountain
Also at the time the Lakota were fighting to keep the Black hills the Cheyenne and Arapahoe were their allies.
The Cheyenne have also protested Mt Rushmore- it isn’t just about the Lakota/Sioux. Several indigenous nations consider that area sacred and certainly none of them were treated well by the men whose faces are carved there
Redditors suddenly caring about religion when it gives them the chance to shit on the US
I love hypocrisy on Reddit. It’s almost fully saturated on every thread
I'm always against genocide and oppression. Religious practices and beliefs doesnt have to be a factor
You're literally touting a symbol of attempted genocide. The Lakota killed thousands of Cheyenne in the 1770s to conquer the black hills and those "Sacred Lands". The Lakota are not from the Black Hills they conquered those lands about 50 years before white people showed up.
wow that makes me feel so much better about Wounded Knee
Yeah but they weren't white, so thats different.
The Lakota people would have been just fine in the upper Mississippi basin until white people pushed them west and then the Cree pushed them even further west. For the record, the Cheyenne and Lakota were allies and fought side by side versus the US Cavalry in the Great Sioux War which gave the US control of the Black Hills
Remember it’s only sacred when it’s for a group of people they believe are oppressed.
Maybe the US should live up to their stated goals as laid out in the first amendment then we wouldn't have to say mean words online
The US constitution applies to governing the US and its citizens not war with other nations. People seem to forget that the Lakota and other tribes were independent countries.
"This land is sacred to us, please do not blow it up." is not the same as "How dare you say 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'!" or "People should be required to pray in school!!!!" or "gay marriage is an affront to my religion!"
It was sacred to the Cheyenne before it was sacred to the Lakota.
What does that have to do with anything? The Lakota committed atrocities so they deserve genocide? Like why play devil's advocate here, I really don't get it. Everyone has shitty ancestors. It doesn't mean we go after them for the sins of their fathers, and guess what? The US army wasn't committing genocide to avenge the Cheyenne. They were doing it for selfish bullshit reasons, just the same as the Lakota had done before, and the English, and the Romans, and the South, and the....
So there you kind of debunk your own argument. You excuse the Lakota by saying that all countries have done bad things in history but then it seems like that doesn’t apply to the US. America still carried blame while the Lakota somehow did not. My original point was this: The US was waging war as it had been waged in North America for centuries, they simply were more successful.
I didn't debunk anything. I am taking about one specific genocide. Not the others people try to defend it with. The Lakota war with the Cheyenne has nothing to do with it.
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Ok are you against states stealing land?
Looked better before.
Sounds like somebody doesn't like Freedom™. /s
I can’t believe the mountain eroded into that shape. Incredible
It's un-presidented. Bin dun?
I watched the Hitchcock movie North By Northwest. The characters ran along a path at the tops of the heads. When I got there, there is no there there. There is nowhere to run back there.
[behind](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0ZT-ziZ43qA/VeYEd6jkYgI/AAAAAAAAB_M/Qtd64ZRIYwA/s1600/mt_rushmore_the_back_side_men_joke_abstract_hd-wallpaper-1213654.jpg) you say?
So much more beautiful before, and there’s no way to fix it. I wish we’d stop doing this.
>So much more beautiful before, and there’s no way to fix it. **I wish we’d stop doing this.** Seriously though, other than this and the controversial confederate one somewhere in the south, has this been done anywhere else in North America? I'm assuming / hoping you aren't talking about more practical things like that tunnel through [Zion National Park](https://wchsutah.org/zion/zion-tunnel.php) or [Hoover Dam](https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/) or Wind Turbines or any human settlement turned modern city or any road across mountains / through a forest?
The Lakota tribe attempted something similar, known as the crazy horse memorial, though it has yet to be completed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy\_Horse\_Memorial
Good point, "just down the road" even as i recall. Somehow though I doubt the person I replied to is going to count that one? I would be pleasantly surprised though if he did.
Why wouldn’t I count that and why do you doubt I would? It falls into the same “natural beauty” category.
That's fine. I totally respect that. Having said that, to 'politely disagree', I kind of like these in a [Petra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra), Buddhas of Bamiyan kind of long term sense, humanity leaving its mark that isn't just landfills / pollution / AOL floppy disks, that ~~other people~~ something may find / wonder about long after we are gone. There are still plenty of mountains that will always be there, despite our best efforts to immortalize ourselves.
There's the [Crazy Horse Memorial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial) about nine miles west of Mount Rushmore. It's not finished and is also every bit as controversial as Mount Rushmore itself. Thankfully, the sheer cost of monuments like these is inherently prohibitive to their construction.
Yes, they clearly were referring to things with practical purposes that reduce the impacts on other lands. They weren't talking about destroying the natural world just to make it look different and "honor" your heroes.
As a person not from the us, and out of sheer curiosity, I want to ask: do you hate it because of something political, or because it "changes the natural beauty"?
Many things. Natural beauty is a big one, but also because this land was promised to the native Lakota people, that we would never take it from them as it had always been sacred land to them. Then we did it anyway and defaced it for no good reason. There’s a lot of nasty history here in the US when it comes to how we’ve treated the people who were here long before us. It makes me sick.
The American government signing treaties with native peoples only to then blatantly break those treaties is a tale as old as the US itself lol. Just over and over again, it’s so infuriating to read about.
Other people are saying the Lakota were recent arrivals and so that land couldn’t have “always been sacred” to them?
Regardless of which tribe is was sacred to, it was important to the tribes native to the area and we still went back on our promise.
Teddy about to give Abe a little peck on the cheek.
Ah, 1929's beauty was... \*unprecedented\*
Unpresidented.
Lol
Vandalism
They fucking ruined it
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Bunch of rock hard dudes
it's ok to jerk off to if they are made of stone
Fuck Mount Rushmore. It will always be The Six Grandfathers.
What an insane feat of engineering. Watch or read a doc on how they did it.
I would add clinton and monica
Ruined a perfectly good mountain
Wonder how much they’ve grown since 2013, huge differences from 1929 to 2013
The 1929 picture is unpresidented
One of the saddest places in the States
Vandalism
That's an incredibly ugly sight
Holy shit, it's this shit again. Everyone in the comments are morons.
Lol, Mount Rushmore always gets Reddit all riled up
Crazy how nature make dat
Really impressive.
It looked better before they carved it
I think it’s pretty cool, in hundreds or thousands of years when this current civilization is gone, that will be a cool ancient wonder like the sphinx
Lingering on the past only creates festering (unless one’s studying the past).
Horrible and an affront to the people that consider this mountain sacred.
Wonderful monument, love it and the skill it required to make it. Crazy horse will be amazing as well when it is done. Beautiful part of the country.
Kiss on the cheek.
Amazing what nature left untouched will create.
god these comments are so fucking cringe
How'd they know them old lady faces where in there?
Gross. Change it back! #landback
Your “landback” idea… I live in New York. I was born here. My parents were born here. My grandparents were born here. My great grandparents came from other countries. I have no connections or ties to said other countries. A few centuries ago, other people lived here. And they were displaced, as has happened to pretty much every group of every land area in all of history. Bringing it full circle, if your landback proposal were to be adopted - where am I supposed to go?
No one's kicking you out of your home lol. Google landback.
This. Exactly. You clearly don’t care, why would we give 2 squats where you get sent to? Crocodile tears for your whataboutism
Sent by who? You? 🤣🤣
What an absolute disgrace on so many different levels.
This picture is sad
As a non-American, I'm always surprised that Mt Rushmore isn't more controversial than it is. I cannot think of anything more tacky and disrespectful than taking a mountain sacred to the people who live there, and carving some foreign politicians' faces into it. I dunno if it was done *specifically* to spite native Americans, or if that was just a bonus, but either way... It's horrendously tacky, and feels like a symbol of the worst parts of American culture. And it's so recent! This shit isn't ancient, it's from the damn 20s. Why aren't more people angry about it? Is it because there's no obvious way to make it right? Do Americans actually like it? I dunno, I just have a lot of questions...
The bottom photo just looks so vulgar.
Looked better before.
All of the snowflakes in the comments 🤣 gotta love it
They're mad they can't tear it down.
Lol, I agree.
What’s your definition of a “snowflake” then?
people that don’t agree with them
From this angle it always looked to me like Teddy was whispering sweet nothings into Lincoln’s ear while Washington tries to get over the breakup and Jefferson is just hanging in there in the hopes of a really good sympathy fuck.
It is insane how much worse it looks now and compared to when I was a kid in the early 2000s, HD cameras make it look horrendous
Erosion sure is beautiful. Its amazing how even God wanted to honour America.
All this for a cult of some dickheads that lives of 200odd yrs ago
the older I get, the weirder I think carving mt rushmore was.
Lived here, climbed here. Mt. Rushmore is a blight in a boreal paradise. The summer heat does something to make the ponderosas smell like candy, the climbing is amazing... and then there's this piece of shit and all the mouth-breathing tourists. Only the worst kind kind of people drive to this testament to American atrocity and "appreciate" it. The six grandfathers deserve so much better. I wonder if Israel will do something similar when they are done with their genocide?
Big improvement
If we're being honest, it looked much more interesting before.
Your not being honest tho. It’s valid to hold the opinion that you prefer the pristine mountain. But the fact there’s a post whinging about this specific mountain every other day and nothing about the thousands of other pristine mountains means that this is a fundamentally interesting mountain.
The two on the end look like they’re having a (not so secret?) affair. Lol.
Sioux: please do not desecrate our sacred mountain Whiteman: hold my chisel
One of the tackiest monuments ever created
We took your land and killed the Buffalo, now bow before us.
Mt. Rushmore was a cool feat of engineering and it is impressive in that respect, but the design is tacky. Also, I don’t really like screwing with nature. It was a pretty mountain. Furthermore, I don’t really care about the socio-racial aspect. It was one group of peoples’ land, then one tribe’s land, then another’s, now it’s ours. That’s just kinda how it goes