Crazy Horse Memorial

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The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument on privately held land in the Black Hills. It depicts Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance.

The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski. It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a private non-profit organization.

Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S. Federal government to fight against encroachments on the territories and way of life of the Lakota people.

His most famous actions against the U.S. military included the Fetterman Fight (21 December 1866), and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25�26 June 1876). He surrendered to U.S. troops under General Crook in May 1877, and was fatally wounded by a military guard while allegedly resisting imprisonment at Camp Robinson in present-day Nebraska.