Oceti Sakowin and the Paha Sapa
One of the main causes for continued Native American resentment of Mount Rushmore comes from the fact that the monument itself has been carved into a very sacred location according to the Sioux cosmology. As the legend goes, Takahe, the First One, lived with the rest of the people beneath the earth in caverns. Inktomi, the Spider, tricked Takahe into bringing six other families with his own up onto the surface of the earth, where they could know nature and the Great Spirit. (www.bbc.co.uk) The holy man Tatanka warned Takahe not to go, that life was hard up on the surface, and when it proved true, Tatanka took pity on Takahe and his people and came to the surface as well, appearing not as a human but as the Buffalo. (www.travelsd.com) Takahe's family and the other six became the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, a reference to the ancestors of the seven tribes in the Great Sioux Nation.
The story is important for any investigation into Mount Rushmore and the cultural importance of the Sioux land claims because the place where Takahe and the other six came forth from the ground was identified as being through Wind Caverns, a natural geological formation in the Black Hills, or 'Paha Sapa' as the Sioux call them. Not only does Mount Rushmore symbolize memories of treaties broken and battles lost, the icons of the four white presidents carved out of the living rock was erected on land with a central role in the creation mythology of the entire Sioux people.
Interestingly enough, however, the Sioux themselves were not the original inhabitants of the Black Hills, having come from the Northeast and been driven out of their own lands by Ojibwa tribes after the British armed the Ojibwa with guns.(www.nativeamericans.com) An alternate version of the
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