side by the long boom of the pointing machine atop the heads. There is to be a reviewing stand for dignitaries behind where Roosevelt’s car will be parked, and live radio microphones and half a dozen newsreel cameras grinding. If Paha Sapa is successful in triggering charges on all
three
of the heads that Sunday, no one will be hurt, but the entire world will watch in movie theater newsreels the final destruction of the three heads on what would have been the Monument on Mount Rushmore.
Three heads.
There is part of the problem. Paha Sapa knows all too well Gutzon Borglum’s plan for four heads up there, the last one being that of Theodore Roosevelt, tucked in between Jefferson and Lincoln. The stone experts are already drilling and coring to confirm that the granite there will be of adequate quality for the carving, and though many have protested Borglum’s putting so recent a president up there—and another Republican to boot—Paha Sapa knows how stubborn Borglum is. If the sculptor lives (and perhaps even if he does not, with Lincoln taking over), there will be a Teddy Roosevelt head on Mount Rushmore.
Paha Sapa’s Vision was of four
wasichu
Great Stone Heads rising out of the Six Grandfathers,
four
giant stone
wasichus
shrugging off the soil and trees of the Paha Sapa, and
four
of these terrible giants looking out and over the destruction of Paha Sapa’s people and of the buffalo and of the Natural Free Human Beings’ way of life.
Does he not have to destroy all four heads to keep this Vision from coming true?
More to the point, Paha Sapa realizes as he approaches the final flights of steps, does he now have
time
to wait for that fourth head to be carved?
The doctor in Casper said no.
A few months
, the white-haired doctor said solemnly but with no emotion, just another old Indian sitting on his examining table,
perhaps a year if you’re unlucky.
Paha Sapa understood that the “unlucky” referred to the pain and immobilization and incontinence this form of cancer would give him if the dying dragged on.
P AHA S APA PASSES the wooden landing with a flat bit of graveled soil between the boulders where the men ambushed him each morning for weeks after he was first hired by Borglum five years earlier.
To their credit, they never attacked him all at once. Each morning they’d have another champion to beat the old Indian into submission, to beat him so badly that he would have to quit. One of the larger, more violent miners in the early attacks.
And each morning, Paha Sapa refused to be beaten into submission. He fought back fiercely, with fists and jabs and head butts and kicks to the bigger man’s balls when he could. He sometimes won. More often he lost. But he always took a toll on his assailant, morning after morning. And he was never beaten so badly by the white men’s single champion that he—Paha Sapa—could not lift his drill or crate of explosives and helmet and gear and continue the painful climb toward the powder shack, where he would begin work. And though they broke his nose and blackened his eyes and pulped his lips over those weeks, they never managed to disfigure his face so much that he couldn’t don the filtration mask and go to work.
Finally, Borglum noticed and called all the men together in a meeting outside his studio on Doane Mountain opposite the work site.
—
What the goddamned hell is going on?
Silence from the men. Borglum’s usual roar of a voice became an even louder roar, drowning out the compressor that had just started up.
—
I’m goddamned serious. I’ve got a powderman who is obviously getting the excrement beaten out of him every day and two dozen other workers with missingteeth and rearranged noses. Now, I need to know what the goddamned hell is going on and I’ll know it right
now.
There are thousands of miners and workmen and powdermen out of work, right here in South Dakota, who’ll take your jobs in a fast minute, and I’m about fifteen seconds away
three
of the heads that Sunday, no one will be hurt, but the entire world will watch in movie theater newsreels the final destruction of the three heads on what would have been the Monument on Mount Rushmore.
Three heads.
There is part of the problem. Paha Sapa knows all too well Gutzon Borglum’s plan for four heads up there, the last one being that of Theodore Roosevelt, tucked in between Jefferson and Lincoln. The stone experts are already drilling and coring to confirm that the granite there will be of adequate quality for the carving, and though many have protested Borglum’s putting so recent a president up there—and another Republican to boot—Paha Sapa knows how stubborn Borglum is. If the sculptor lives (and perhaps even if he does not, with Lincoln taking over), there will be a Teddy Roosevelt head on Mount Rushmore.
Paha Sapa’s Vision was of four
wasichu
Great Stone Heads rising out of the Six Grandfathers,
four
giant stone
wasichus
shrugging off the soil and trees of the Paha Sapa, and
four
of these terrible giants looking out and over the destruction of Paha Sapa’s people and of the buffalo and of the Natural Free Human Beings’ way of life.
Does he not have to destroy all four heads to keep this Vision from coming true?
More to the point, Paha Sapa realizes as he approaches the final flights of steps, does he now have
time
to wait for that fourth head to be carved?
The doctor in Casper said no.
A few months
, the white-haired doctor said solemnly but with no emotion, just another old Indian sitting on his examining table,
perhaps a year if you’re unlucky.
Paha Sapa understood that the “unlucky” referred to the pain and immobilization and incontinence this form of cancer would give him if the dying dragged on.
P AHA S APA PASSES the wooden landing with a flat bit of graveled soil between the boulders where the men ambushed him each morning for weeks after he was first hired by Borglum five years earlier.
To their credit, they never attacked him all at once. Each morning they’d have another champion to beat the old Indian into submission, to beat him so badly that he would have to quit. One of the larger, more violent miners in the early attacks.
And each morning, Paha Sapa refused to be beaten into submission. He fought back fiercely, with fists and jabs and head butts and kicks to the bigger man’s balls when he could. He sometimes won. More often he lost. But he always took a toll on his assailant, morning after morning. And he was never beaten so badly by the white men’s single champion that he—Paha Sapa—could not lift his drill or crate of explosives and helmet and gear and continue the painful climb toward the powder shack, where he would begin work. And though they broke his nose and blackened his eyes and pulped his lips over those weeks, they never managed to disfigure his face so much that he couldn’t don the filtration mask and go to work.
Finally, Borglum noticed and called all the men together in a meeting outside his studio on Doane Mountain opposite the work site.
—
What the goddamned hell is going on?
Silence from the men. Borglum’s usual roar of a voice became an even louder roar, drowning out the compressor that had just started up.
—
I’m goddamned serious. I’ve got a powderman who is obviously getting the excrement beaten out of him every day and two dozen other workers with missingteeth and rearranged noses. Now, I need to know what the goddamned hell is going on and I’ll know it right
now.
There are thousands of miners and workmen and powdermen out of work, right here in South Dakota, who’ll take your jobs in a fast minute, and I’m about fifteen seconds away
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