100 Years of Mt Rushmore

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Matthew Davis.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Any how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:02):
How are you, sir? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. I
really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Congratulations on the new book, A Biography of a Mountain,
because the fact of the matter is twenty twenty five
marks the one hundredth anniversary of the formative plans I'm
reading here that would ultimately become Mount Rushmore. And this
book sounds like it is as beautiful as it is comprehensive.

(00:30):
But I do have to start the interview off with
one question, because I see here that legislation has been
introduced to include Trump on Mount Rushmore. Now, this is
in no way my trying to get political, but I
really thought that was a joke called this time. All
of this stuff about Trump being added to Mount Rushmore

(00:50):
up until right this instance, sir, I thought was all wise.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Cracks and jokes. Is that for real? Has there really
been legislation introduced for that?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
There has Earlier this year there was legislation introduced to
include President Trump on Mount Rushmore. Now A whether that
legislation gets passed is up for debate, and then b
even if it does. I don't think most geologists and
people who know better than I do in terms of
the space on the mountain will tell you that there
is no room for another face. So even if it

(01:20):
gets passed, I think the mountain as as it is
currently composed would have to be changed to include him
or anybody else for that matter.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, I'll never forget seeing it when I saw It's
just it's it's stunning. It's truly a sight to behold.
And you know I saw it when I was so young.
You know, there's no cell phones. I've got one polaroid
and a photo album in Nevada with my sister, you know.
And I think to your point too, what a lot

(01:48):
of people, the people who would support that, they're not
talking about adding, they're talking about replace.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
They would want someone replaced. What would be your response
to that.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I don't think anyone should be on Mount Rushmore. I
think that that would be a mistake. I mean, I
think the larger, more interesting conversation to have is the
sort of where Mount Rushmore today as it currently stands,
how it tells the story of our country, how it's
how it is as a memorial to our country, and

(02:18):
sort of the issues that my book Raises is about,
you know, in particular the Black Hills of South Dakota
and where Mount Rushmore is and and it's very fraught,
complicated history and how that is and is not reflected
as the memorial.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Itself tell me about some of that history too, some
of the what we might not necessarily get and what
I surely did not get in my history class as
a child, what what might not be being taught in
classrooms as far as Mount Rushmore is good.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, yeah, thanks for that question, Bennie. So yet there's
you know, the Black Hills are a very sacred area
to the Lakota Nation into many other Native American tribes.
The Lakota called the Black Hills the heart of everything
that is. They believed that they literally emerged from the
Black Hills onto the earth, and so it's a place
that is very stacred to them, and they you know,

(03:09):
most archaeologists say that the Lakota came to the Black
Hills in the early eighteenth century, but they quickly became
the dominant tribe in the area, and then the United
States and the Lakota signed a treaty in the eighteen
sixty eight called the Treaty of Fort Laramie, when the
United States basically gave the Lakota a lot of land,
part of which included the entire western half of what

(03:30):
is today South Dakota, including the Black Hills, and no
sooner than that treaty was signed. Just about six short
years later that George Armstrong Custer led an expedition through
the Black Hills where he found goals, and that changed
the dynamic completely because it made miners want to rush
into the Black Hills and look for goals. And the
president at the time was Ulysses S. Grant, and he tried,

(03:53):
he had tried to prevent people from coming in, but
he gave up at that point, and he ordered all
Native Americans to go to stuff Little Run reservations, and
that those who did not would be quote unquote rounded up.
And so George Custer again enters the picture, and he
leaves his seventh Cavalry in eighteen seventy six to try
to go quote unquote round up these Native Americans, and

(04:14):
he engages thousands of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne at the
Battle of Little Big Horn, which the Native Americans called
the Battle of Greasy Drafts. Of course, Custer was defeated,
he himself was killed, and when the word got back
to the East coast, what had happened. An enraged United
States has decided to take over the Black Hills, which
which they do in breaking that treaty. And so for

(04:35):
the Lakota, that seizure of the Hills and that taking
of the Black Hills really reflects a very sad, tragic
history that happened both before it and after that battle.
And so the memorial, where it is in the Black Hills,
and what it represents too many Native Americans, is a
great source of pain. And so that's why the land itself,
the memorial itself, is complicated and fraud.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
That's so well said.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
And again we're on with Matthew Davis, whose work has
appeared in The New York or The Atlantic, Los Angeles
Review of Books, again in Rave Reviews for this book
Living in DC. Yourself, your wife, a diplomat. Are you
surprised that at no point over these these last ten years,

(05:20):
in particular, that Mount Rushmore didn't get hit with any
of the cancel culture nonsense, or that the and again
not looking for political commentary, but so much of our
history is under siege, you know, you'd think Mount Rushmore
would have been.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
And I saw nothing.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
I didn't see any takedowns, any thought process that you know,
the wrong people were being lionized, anything along those lines.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
No, I mean that has not happened at Rushmore. I
mean there was legislation that the representative from South Dakota
in the House Representatives, Dusty Johnson, pass that made it
so there could be no changes to the memorialist And
I think, you know, more than any physical changes at
Mount Rushmore, what you're seeing is just bigger conversations about

(06:08):
how the history of Mount Rushmore is represented at the
memorial I don't think people necessarily want to take presidents
down from the mountains. It's really you can't really do
that in many ways. But there are conversations, certainly in
the Black Hills of South Dakota and more broadly nationally,
it's just about what kind of history is being represented
at Mount Rushmore. Now, I'll just give you an example

(06:28):
of Vinny. So you know, but when I first went
to Mount Rushmore in the year two thousand and when
I went there, the United States was in a very
different spot than it is right now. We were just
coming out of the cold war, we had a great
deal of strength. There was a you know, a lot
of There was no indication at the mountain at all
that Native American tribes had lived in the area, still

(06:50):
valued it, still thought it was a still value its land,
still thought it was very important spiritual place for them.
There was no indication about whatsoever. Two thousand and four,
there was a Native American superintendent that was hired in
Mount Rushmore named Gerard Baker, and Baker began to introduce stories,
Native American stories, Lakota stories. He built at Lakota Heritage Village,

(07:12):
hired Native American interpreters, invited Native Americans to come there
and perform culturally, and it really expanded the stories that
were being told at the mountain. Enabled Americans and foreigners
both who were visiting, to get a much broader idea
of the history of the Black Hills. And so, you know,
when we're having these conversations about what kinds of histories
are being told, what kinds of historical narratives are being told,

(07:35):
my view is always that it's best to be as
complicated and as comprehensive and as informative as we possibly
can so that people can make their own decisions on this,
and that's the thing that Gerard Baker was really trying
to do. And so there's been no effort really to
take down Mount Rushmore, but there have been many efforts
to sort of expand the narratives and expand the stories

(07:55):
that are present at the memorial.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
I think to the name, I don't even think I'm
going to pronounce it correctly because it's the first time
I'm ever seeing it. My father is a huge history buff,
so I surely I think I should know the name.
Gutzon Borglum. Is that closed? So I did die Goods.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, that's that's really great, great job goodsim Borglum.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
And the story of this man. There should be a
biopick there.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
This is who sculpted Rushmore, the initial artist for Stone Mountain,
and that name is probably lost on nine out of
ten Americans, if not all ten.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
No, not many people who are unfamiliar with Mount Rushmore
will know who that is. Gunsen Borglam At the time
he created Mount Rushmore, and even before then, that was
a famous artist. He was a very accomplished artist. He
began to sculpt larger monuments and memorials in the early
twentieth century and then, as you said, he was the
initial sculptor of the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain and

(08:53):
was doing that work for a number of years before
he was asked to carve Mount Rushmore and now he was.
He was fired some Stone Mountain for very controversial reasons.
Joe Mountain was a project that was run by the
Ku Klux Klan. Borglum himself was affiliated with the Ku
Klux Klan, but he and the Klan had a huge
disagreement over finances, and so the Klan basically fired Borglam

(09:17):
In about six months after he was fired at Stone Mountain,
Gunsen Borglum was on top of Mount Rushmore in October first,
nineteen twenty five, having the first dedication of this new
memorial that he wanted to build. The Borglum's a complicated character.
He's an incredibly talented artist. He's a very he's very
ego driven in terms of what he wants to accomplish,

(09:38):
and his politics are controversial, but he no doubt was
very talented and the faces you see at the memorial,
as one artist explained to me, are just very It's
the work of a classically trained, very accomplished artist.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
And again it's a biography of a mount in the
making and meaning of Mount Rushmore and before we let
you go and again and we're on with Matthew Davis
right now. I got to get my hands on this book.
It just sounds like a heck of a read. And
I'm sure there are some extraordinary photos to look out there.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Let me ask you, is it in a state of
decay in any way? You know what condition is Mount
Rushmore in.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
That's a great question. No, it's it's not in the
state of decay. I mean, it's it's exposed to the weather, obviously,
so there's elements with that, and some of the rock
is unstable. But the memorial and the upkeep of it
is quite consistent and quite good, and so there's you know,
as it is now, there's always, you know, fears that
different parts of it might become damaged naturally through a

(10:37):
natural process. But the upkeep on the memorial is quite
quite good.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
And I would imagine costly. It's got to be costly
the upkeep for that. I mean, I'm all for it,
but it's got it.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Would have to be.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I that's a great question. I don't know how much
of the upkeep is wrapped up into the actual budget
amount Rushmore, but I would imagine that it's got to
be bad insecurity or probably two of the bigger, the
bigger line items in the Mount Rushmore budget.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
What a great project. Congratulations, thanks for taking the time
to come on today, Matthew Davis again and the name
of the book is a biography of a mountain. I
can't wait to grab a hold of it. Thanks again, sir.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Bennie, Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.