KORCZAK and the CRAZY HORSE DREAM | VHS rip | 1987

I am a storyteller is stone but how that's all I am I want to tell the world that there was once a race of people that lived here that were remarkable I did intend to make it this larger though I intend to make something a hundred feet high 100 foot figure would look like nothing and then all what the hell are you real place to go so I stepped over there for five warnings five nights and I said I'll count the whole mountain now now they knew I was crazy yeah really nuts wheels kurta tchaikovsky was a mountain carver and this collection of historic pictures in comments from Fort Rock will give you a chance to meet this extraordinary man who had a bigger-than-life dream Corps Chuck's Crazy Horse Memorial is the largest sculptural undertaking the world has ever known and it's now being carved in the round from a 600 foot high granite mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota the tools are jackhammers dynamite and bulldozers millions of tons have been blasted off blocking out the rough form of crazy horse which one day will look just like cortex large-scale model one of the most amazing things about Crazy Horse is that not one penny of federal or state money is involved a strong believer in the free enterprise system cordial consistent Crazy Horse be financed by the interested public through an admission fee and contributions the Crazy Horse dream was born when Sioux Indian chief Henry Standing Bear invited court jock to the Black Hills to carve an Indian Memorial Standing Bear wrote my fellow Chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes also well you know I've been in office I was here old I was born Boston nas barber an Irish prizefighter and I always told when I was 16 I was gonna beat but I just gonna whip that's all when I was 16 I couldn't quite do it so I left him I went to work on the waterfront I always said I wanted something worthwhile with my life and I want to become a sculptor then one day when I was 13 I'd read about this man bobbum carny a mountain little thinking that about 16 years later I was only working as his assistant in my Rushmore then I got a letter from this all Indian I've never met Standing Bear and he asked if I'd build a memorial to their people so the white people know the dead man had great heroes also well having brought myself up me an American a Polish descent I thought there was a wasn't too much to ask for and I had no place to go so I decided that it gave my life doing this it was newspaper stories about court socks marble portrait of Paderewski that prompted Standing Bear to write to court shocked by popular vote uh turetsky won first prize for sculpture at the 1939 New York World's Fair court chuck was a self-taught sculptor and he carved the 1200 pound portrait in just 5 and 1/2 days after he and Standing Bear picked the 600 foot high mountain in 1946 Kurtag determined Crazy Horse would be much more than just a mountain carving well standing there just wanted the port that you tolls crazy awesome mountain but after wicked rest more seeing how people flocked there well it seems I was making a gimmick or just tourist money and of course that's not my intention at all so I told Standing Bear that when I was dead and I got this thing and three-quarters done it looked pretty good and people flop from all over the world and those money's that would come here for years and years and years should be funneled into a university in a Medical Center in a museum for the Indian people North American not just the Sioux and the University we call it the University of North America and in that way it is a humanitarian project I didn't come out to billet or ischemic and I resent that when people say it to me cuz I had no idea that I was going to have to deal with tourists anything like that I was naive I just thought I'd come out me get a mountain and just that cut core truck arrived May 3rd 1947 and lived in a tent the first 7 months while he cut trees and hand built a log studio home he had to spend two years pioneering because there were no roads water or electricity when finally he could start work on the mountain he was 40 years old and had only a hundred and seventy four dollars left to his name he had to climb a rope to get to the top of the mountain and he singl jacked or hand drilled the holes for the dedication blast in 1948 that winter he built an incredible 741 step staircase all the way to the top no matter how humble I paddled on the mountain my stand battle with a single jacket the Pam Runa and the steel and I drill my holes around three four feet deep and blow them off and I bought an old compressor was 24 years old no Buddha straight around four turns and I put a pipeline two thousand four hundred and forty feet long confessor on the grounds at the top of the mountain and I bought a Jack and I just took two years he had all this done and I bought another Hammond in my steel dynamite is rather expensive my electric camp so for the first seven years I climbed that 741 steps and I carried everything up in my back when I grew up I start to be compressor i juiced a crank at you know and for the 50 pound box of dynamite in one shoulder put a wire spring of bits around my neck then I think maybe an eighth of ten or twelve fourteen foot stealing my left hand and this horse start up the mountain the old border the old compressor lieutenant decrepid and I get sometimes part of the way up and I just hear that thing goes to put the foot to put put put everything down walk all the way down the stick he started up again crank her up wait there five minutes start up the mountain together the up go up to the top which is quite a difference put all my things down get my air valves cleaned out oil the Hannah pick it out get my status feel in it just artist your one hole get down about off what's me get here they put a cup what to cook or to cook put down I go again one day I did that nine time heal the kids awful old Oh bad walk up and down here is terrible he also went up and down in a dangerous homemade aerial cable car all this is a bucket I'd built it was quite a bucket to it goes so fun in a drop about the dirty feet then it go up and down and up and down and up and down I made a mistake and I asked my wife to come with me once I should never have done it because when she started to drop mother said this is it you're not going up there anymore this bucket that was a great great lifesaver for me I'd carried tons and tons of lumber and tons of dynamite and tons of caps bits and steel hammers and wagon drills see I have no Road up I used to ride the stallion of a great deal time he said his horse warrior was more like people than some people and the big Palomino once saved court rocks life in a blizzard in 1951 he hung from a one-inch rope outlining Crazy Horse on the mountain with a hundred and seventy-six gallons of paint a dangerous effort that backfired I did a foolish thing I put up eight of the outline it was just no small job and I said this is let the people know what I'm gonna cut away the autumn with a cuddle you know they thought that was all I'm gonna do I couldn't wait for the rock to come down where the paint away the winter of 1955 he blasted out the first of many roads up the back of the mountain the bulldozer he drove to the top helped clear the rock from above the Indians outstretched arm which is nearly as long as a football field then he built a four-story scaffold for work on the Indians 90-foot high head so the scaffold was up there and I thought I put a sign up so people would understand you can take it any way you want a slow man at work ah but the helicopters the planes go slow there's a man at work but you got to have a little bit of humor in this way well applause that poor D for cats not until I got the d9 was able to really push the rock because we're not have a blast and sometime it takes me take me two or three days to move the rock with the smaller D for the g6 and even an old d8 I had up there but when I got the nine I could move in three or four hours what he used to take me two or three days I kind of like that sign because it's an honest sign on Thanksgiving Day 1950 court jock married Ruth Ross one of the volunteers who helped him ten years earlier on the 13 and 1/2 foot Noah Webster statue court jock carved it as a gift to West Hartford Connecticut Webster's hometown he worked two years on it and cut 14 inches off the top so Noah Webster would not stand taller than nickel Angelo's David at that time he also formed the Noah Webster Fife and drum corps which paraded throughout New England and on New York's Fifth Avenue over the years court rock and Ruth had ten children one of whom court Jacques delivered himself there were five boys and five girls and they even went to school in their own schoolhouse at Crazy Horse which became very much a family project well that's how you put the electric cap into the stick of dynamite course with dynamite I'm using now is about two feet long well you'll probably see something but here no I'm just a small diner man here six dynamite two feet long and here is Johnny at the bottom we have to used to have to push all that stuff in well see now you'll see why we had ten children there all the boys were necessary up on the mountain and the girls were necessary down here to help mother with the with the visitors that was rather hard work to keep on pounded I might in to help finance the project in the early years courts are built and operated a lumber mill and he and Ruth went into the dairy business once milking 60 had a registered Holstein cattle in winter he sculpted portraits such as Gutzon Borglum for whom he had keen admiration and while Bill Hickok carved as a gift to Deadwood South Dakota and his famous seven-ton Sitting Bull Memorial on Sitting Bull's grave near the Missouri River in north-central South Dakota on the mountain harsh winters in wet springs limited his work to a frustrating average of just five months a year but in spite of Mother Nature and very limited finances for Chuck and his family made steady progress walking out the rough form of Crazy Horse in the beginning corps chuck worked on the mountain as a mining claim later he obtained it and surrounding land for the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation through a land exchange with the federal government when completed Crazy Horse will be 563 feet high and 641 feet long carved in the round it will be taller than the Washington Monument and have nearly 2,000 miles of finished surface all four heads on nearby Mount Rushmore would fit inside just Crazy Horse's head a ten story building would fit in the completed opening under the Indians arm and the horse's head will be 22 stories high and a five room house would fit inside the horse's nostrils more than eight million tons have been blasted off so far do the enormous size of the carving and the limited finances no completion date can be projected as the mountain changed so did courtyard this is the sculpture as a young man of 23 this is the mountain man 50 years later at age 73 and as he and his mountain changed so did the Crazy Horse visitor center year by year it grew to more than 70 hand rooms including in 1973 the beautiful Indian Museum of North America which represents all tribes a second larger wing was added ten years later core chalks original log studio home contains many of his wood and marble works such as the 55 piece grandfather's clock he hand-cut at age 18 and his famous fighting stallions carved freestanding from a single block of African mahogany outside many of his marble portraits lined the walkway to the Visitor Complex core Chuck never took a single lesson in art sculpture architecture or engineering he worked his way through technical school and never had an opportunity to go to college at the entrance to the visitor center our core chalks unusual Black Hills nature gates with 270 brass silhouettes of plants and animals native to the Black Hills at the heart of the project is Crazy Horse a symbol of the Native American you know it never was a portrait of Crazy Horse when now a white trader asked him where your lands were told his horse's head and said my lands where my did library that's what I'm making there and when they try to take a picture of him he said what would you imprison my shadow to you've taken everything else I've asked some of the great poets and word crazy the way it Indians use them it was like he was mad for the love of something mad for the lot of his people of course the white man interpreted is crazy and he was mad because he loved his people so much he didn't want things to change was the white man's aggressiveness and greed even though the Treaty of 1868 been an awful lot to the Indians when they discovered all six miles from here that was broken so he went out I suppose you'd call it the warpath to make the white man keep that treaty and then from the time he was about 27 years of age 26 years of age and seven till the day he was under a flag of truce down to Fort Robinson he never let his people down never try to uphold the dignity in the culture in the way of life of his people without looking for any aggrandizement for himself whatsoever holding steadfast to his free enterprise philosophy core chalk twice rejected ten million dollars in potential federal funding including an offer from a US Secretary of the Interior who visited Crazy Horse well he said I'll tell you what you do you come to Washington least the town will have a will draw up an ironclad contract and between the government yourself Secretary of Interior and the Crazy Horse Commission I said an ironclad contract either mr. secretary tell me about those ironclad treaties you drove with the Indians well you know he didn't get angry with me thank heavens because we are still good friends today some skeptics and doubters continued to question core Chuck one day years and years ago I went down to watch the blast down at the studio this fellow said to me mister how do you know that crazy was in that mountain I looked at a night I didn't quite believe him but he was serious and I said well I'll tell you what I do every morning with it I drill about 8 10 16 foot holes and then I fill them full of dynamite and just as I pull up the plunge I say Crazy Horse you there and I push the plunger down he says as the years passed court rocks great progress blocking out the rough form of crazy horse won him an army of grassroots supporters from across the nation yes it's quite surprising there were a lot of doubting Thomas years ago who will now become very great friends who thought I was crazy of course I guess you don't have to be a little bit crazy don't you to do a thing like this especially when you tell the government he can keep that ten million dollars twice huh better if I hadn't worked on Mount Rushmore and I've been with Gutzon Borglum was a sculptor rational I even I don't think I would've tell you because I watched what he went through they washed every penny he used do you realize that man how that mountain for about nine thousand dollars a year and when he died he didn't have a $10 bill and he was abused we want to stop that wild man destroying our beautiful black it didn't make any difference it was George Washington Abraham Lincoln uh Teddy Roosevelt it didn't make a bit of difference but ah Gutzon Borglum taught me a lot to not take government money this is how crazy horse will look when it's completed core chuck was convinced the government would neither finish the mountain carving as it failed to finish Mount Rushmore nor carry out the humanitarian goals the whole purpose of the Crazy Horse dream it's a strange thing a lot of people like the spectacular the sensationalism of the size of the mountain and I try to tell the people that I didn't come out here because I'm an Indian lover or not I'm a storyteller I'm a storyteller in stone and when Standing Bear asked me to tell a story of their great chief was killed many years ago I want to tell the story of the North American Indian the blackest mark and the escutcheon of the American people is the story of the Indian now my purpose of being out here is to first I must give them a little bit of pride well I'm not Nelson Rockefeller I'm not a millionaire in fact I started this project with a hundred and seventy four dollars but if I can carve a mountain there will be one of the great things of the world that will tell the story of a race of people once lived here which are now practically extinct I will give the few remaining Indians a little bit of pride to themselves secondly I will try to write a little bit of the wrong that our white people and I'd M one but my father mother Levon in Poland I was born in Boston but I want to write a little to the wrong that they did to these people because this is part of American history you know there's an old saying and I quoted it two or three times in my life and it goes like this when the legends die the dreams in and when the dreams in there is no more greatness I'd like to think I country is great I'd like to think that we are capable of writing along this is my purpose I don't want it just I'm not interested in the tourist gimmick I'm not interested in making money I could stay tuned New York what they say in Boston and I could be very wealthy but I chose to come out here to live in a tent to do it the hard way I didn't realize that Indians were despised out here but they want me to carve this mountain even the people who are against Indians want me to carve it of course they are only interested in one side of it I'm interested in the side to right the wrong a little bit that I can that let the world know that once upon a time a race of people lived here because a hundred years from now there will be none of them left my old dream and desire is to carry out the purpose of people like phidias people like Michelangelo people like Leonardo people like Rodin people I got some problem to tell the story so that the world who runs may read it's not a personal thing you know I'm building a tomb at the bottom I'm of the mountain about 2,000 feet this side of the mountain and I written my own epitaph and it says court rock storyteller and stone may his remains be unknown I am NOT interested in myself I'm interested in my nation my country my people I'm interested in those Indians who have many many gifts to give I believe we have seen these Indians we have seen these people we have other races in this country who are also great but I was asked out here by an old chief that his fellow Chiefs to tell the story of his people that the white man will know that the red man had great heroes also when I am gone many people will come here I would like to feel that the Medical Center the museum the university can be built for the North American Indian not with the taxpayers dollar but what the people will come in here to see the mountain the artifacts and the history of these people have once lived here which now are almost obliterated Crazy Horse's is not just a place Crazy Horse's a living symbol what do I say to those people I say Boyka be completed it took no today power 600 years to rebuild it isn't built yet to 300 thousand slaves 20 years a nod to build one pyramid and you put five pyramids in this mountain what you got to have I guess a couple more dreamers like me that'll come along and say well why not finish in the olden days you know you take the statue of the granddaddy Aryan cinmarc square that was made by three sculptors Lombardi Rocio and grande oh it's not wrong for another sculptor to come along and finish a person's work oh good engineer maybe you'll take a hundred years what difference does it make isn't time relative one minute one hour one year core choc battled the mountain nearly thirty six years until his death in October 1982 at the age of 74 he realized at the outset the project was much bigger than any one man's lifetime so he and his wife Ruth prepared three books of detailed plans and measurements with which to complete the mountain carving she in their large family are using those plans to continue core chucks work they and the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation and many others are dedicated to the realization of the Crazy Horse dream his family has the benefit of having been well trained by court jock who always was a teacher as well as a careful planner for the future as mrs. Joe Kowski explains and he left everything laid out I don't think we'd have to have another thought for more years than I can imagine around and we'll be able to follow along with his plans and I intend to be up on the mountain with the youngsters as much as I can be and still keep an eye on what's going on down here because car Chuck loved it up on the mountain and he always had when it came to this part down here well it was necessary because this is where the money's made but he was happy up there so this down here has to run just as it always did but we all have nobody can take its place nobody can do what he did we can all just try to carry out his plans as he laid them up for the future for all of us he made a lot of friends over the years and he touched an awful lot of lives he really did and just the perseverance that he's had I think has proven to a lot of people especially youngsters that if you want to do it badly enough and you're willing to work hard enough and pay the price he'd do anything you want to do poor chuck was a man for all seasons and he was eulogized as a man of Legends dreams visions and greatness who lived a love affair with his Mountain and the story it tells he lived it the hard way because he never was content just to talk about his dream he made it happen because he believed passionately that work is one of life's greatest blessings I'll tell you something I very very very seldom ever other the world asked you one question only one the world asks you did you do the job and in my book there's only one answer yes you know not sir I would have done the job if it had the money I would have done the job if people had been sympathetic or understood what I was trying to do I would have done the job if I hadn't gotten hurt or crippled God knows I've been crippled you don't even say I would have done the job if I had hadn't died you don't buy I don't buy it there's only once yes my lands are where my dead lie buried I love that phrase it rolls beautifully where he lands now to shunka Widow my lands are where my dead like Oh in that beautiful in that beautiful

Channel: VincentsVideoVisions

Views: 24,212

Keywords: korczak, crazy, horse, crazy horse, indian, native, american, sculpture, blasting, drilling, documentary, america, history, americana, art, dynamite

Id: ThtKqV9RUZ0

Length: 34min 48sec (2088 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2016