Extraordinary Photos From History Explained

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Something in Your Eye

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This is a photo of a man carving out an eye on the famous monument, Mount Rushmore. In 1923, in a bid to increase tourism and stimulate the economy of South Dakota, historian Doane Robinson proposed a monument in the Black Hills, a memorial to great heroes of the West like the Lakota Sioux leader, Red Cloud. The proposal was granted finding, and Robinson selected Gutzon Borglum as the architect and sculpture to design and carve the monument. Borglum went on to convince Robinson that sculptures of US presidents would attract more tourism and national acclaim than Red Cloud. Before the final design was set, Borglum selected the granite cliffs of Mt Rushmore as the location for the monument. This was met with protest and resistance from the Lakota and other Native American peoples, as the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie granted the land around Mt Rushmore to the Lakota in perpetuity. Later, the land was seized by the federal government after the discovery of gold. Furthermore, carving the faces of the leaders of the government who had oppressed them, into a spiritually significant mountain, was like rubbing salt into the Lakota’s wounds.