Mount Rushmore might be the most recognizable mountain in America, but the story behind those four giant faces is far messier than the postcard version we all grew up with. In this Substack Live, I sat down with journalist Matthew Davis, author of the new book “The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore: A Biography of a Mountain,” to trace that fuller history from the very beginning all the way to the present day.
We get into all of it. We start with the land itself, the Black Hills of South Dakota, home to some of the oldest mountains on the continent and a sacred space the Lakota call “the heart of everything that is.” We talk about who lived there long before the monument, the 1868 treaty that promised the Black Hills to the Lakota, and how the discovery of gold and George Custer’s expedition blew that promise apart. Matt walks us through the hard chapters too, from reservation life to the Battle of Little Bighorn to the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee.
Then we meet the sculptor himself, Gutzon Borglum, a man with deep ties to the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederate carving at Stone Mountain who fled Georgia as a fugitive before dedicating Rushmore. Finally, we bring it into the present, from Trump’s speeches at the memorial to the MAGA movement to the question Matt keeps circling. Is this really the right place to celebrate American ideals?
Stick around. By the end, you’ll never look at Rushmore the same way.
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Resources
Book: “The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore: A Biography of a Mountain” by Matthew Davis. Link in the newsletter to buy via Bookshop.org, which also helps support local bookshops.
The 1868 treaty (Fort Laramie Treaty) between the Lakota and the United States.
Trump’s July 3, 2020 Mount Rushmore speech.
Wind Cave National Park, central to the Lakota origin story and a short drive from Rushmore.
Library of Congress, home to the archives of sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
South Dakota State Historical Society and the archive at Oglala Lakota College, Pine Ridge Reservation.
Wounded Knee historic site, South Dakota.
Stone Mountain, Georgia, site of Borglum’s Confederate carving.
“The Birth of a Nation” (1915 film), tied to the rebirth of the KKK.
Wall Drug, the famous roadside stop in rural South Dakota.
Films mentioned in our chat: the Indiana Jones movies (”Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “The Last Crusade”) and “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” (Nicolas Cage).
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Keywords
Mount Rushmore history, Matthew Davis, A Biography of a Mountain, Gutzon Borglum, Ku Klux Klan, Stone Mountain, The Birth of a Nation, Black Hills, Lakota, Oceti Sakowin, Wind Cave, 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, George Custer, Custer expedition 1874, Black Hills gold rush, Battle of Little Bighorn, Greasy Grass, Wounded Knee massacre, Ghost Dance, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Pine Ridge Reservation, Doane Robinson, Manifest Destiny, American empire, Confederate monuments, Native American history, broken treaties, shrine of hypocrisy, Trump Mount Rushmore speech, MAGA monuments, South Dakota history.
