Mount Rushmore and the surrounding Black Hills (Pahá Sápa) are considered sacred by Plains Indians such as the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Lakota Sioux, who used the area for centuries as a place to pray and gather food, building materials, and medicine. The Lakota called the mountain “Six Grandfathers” (Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe), symbolizing ancestral deities personified as the six directions: north, south, east, west, above (sky), and below (earth). In the latter half of the 19th century, expansion by the United States into the Black Hills led to the Sioux Wars. In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the U.S. government granted exclusive use of all of the Black Hills, including Six Grandfathers, to the Sioux in perpetuity.
Six Grandfathers was a significant part of the spiritual journey taken in the early 1870s by Lakota leader Black Elk (Heȟáka Sápa, also known as “The Sixth Grandfather”), that culminated at the nearby Black Elk Peak, (Hiŋháŋ Káǧa, “Making of Owls”) U.S. general George Armstrong Custer summited Black Elk Peak a few years later in 1874 during the Black Hills Expedition, which triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush and Great Sioux War of 1876. In 1877, the U.S. broke the Treaty of Fort Laramie and asserted control over the area, leading to an influx of settlers and prospectors.
Among those prospectors was New York mining promoter James Wilson, who organized the Harney Peak Tin Company, and hired New York attorney Charles E. Rushmore to visit the Black Hills and confirm the company’s land claims. During a visit in 1884 or 1885, Rushmore saw Six Grandfathers and asked his guide, Bill Challis, the mountain’s name; Challis replied that the mountain didn’t have a name, but that it would henceforth be named after Rushmore. The name “Mount Rushmore” continued to be used locally, and was officially recognized by the United States Board of Geographic Names in June 1930.
References
McKeever, Amy (October 28, 2020). “South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore has a strange, scandalous history”. National Geographic. Archived from the original on February 23, 2021. Retrieved February 24, 2023.
Harmanşah, Ömür (2015). “Six Grandfathers: Landscapes and Power”. Place, Memory, and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments. Routledge. p. 16. doi:10.4324/9781315739106. ISBN 978-1-317-57571-9.
Morton, Mary Caperton (September 3, 2020). “Mount Rushmore’s Six Grandfathers and Four Presidents”. Eos. 101. doi:10.1029/2020eo148456. Retrieved February 24, 2023.
Neihardt, John Gneisenau (1985). The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-6564-6.
Saum, Bradley (2017). “Black Elk”. Black Elk Peak: A History. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4396-6050-8.
Saum, Bradley (2017). “Introduction”. Black Elk Peak: A History. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4396-6050-8.
Saum, Bradley (2017). “Custer”. Black Elk Peak: A History. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4396-6050-8.
Thomas, William (2010). Mount Rushmore. Chelsea House Publishing. p. 14. ISBN 978-1-60413-515-2.
“BBC will showcase story of ‘Piano Man’”. Tampa Bay Times. March 2, 2006. Retrieved February 26, 2023.
Koestler-Grack, Rachel A. (2005). Mount Rushmore. Abdo Publishing. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-61714-362-5.
Saum, Bradley (2017). “Mountain Monument”. Black Elk Peak: A History. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4396-6050-8.
Found some more in the Black Hills page. No mention of bounty hunters.
European Americans increasingly encroached on Lakota territory. In order to secure safe passage of settlers on the Oregon Trail, and to end intertribal warfare, the United States government proposed the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which established the Great Sioux Reservation west of the Missouri River and acknowledged indigenous control of the Black Hills. The treaty protected the Black Hills “forever” from European-American settlement. Both the Sioux and Cheyenne also claimed rights to the land, saying that their cultures considered it the axis mundi, or sacred center of the world.
During the 1875–1878 gold rush thousands of miners went to the Black Hills; in 1880, the area was the most densely populated part of the Dakota Territory.
The conflict over control of the region sparked the Black Hills War (1876), also known as the Great Sioux War, the last major Indian War on the Great Plains. Following the defeat of the Lakota and their Cheyenne and Arapaho allies in 1876, the United States took control of the Black Hills. Despite their forced relocations, the Lakota never accepted the validity of the US appropriation. They have continued to try to reclaim the property, and filed a suit against the federal government.
On July 23, 1980, in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Black Hills were illegally taken by the federal government and ordered remuneration of the initial offering price plus interest, nearly $106 million. The Lakota refused the settlement, as they wanted the Black Hills returned to them. The money remains in an interest-bearing account, which, as of 2015, amounts to over $1.2 billion, but the Lakota still refuse to take the money. They believe that accepting the settlement would allow the US government to justify taking ownership of the Black Hills.[citation needed]
Big if true
Idk but here’s what I found on Wiki:
Found some more in the Black Hills page. No mention of bounty hunters.