To accompany E. M. Halliday’s “Carving the American Colossus” in the June, 1977, issue, we ran a photograph on page 27 of a Sioux “warrior” posed before Mount Rushmore and named, according to a tourist who took the picture, Black Dog. It now appears that we were ambushed, and several readers have written to rescue us, among them Dayton W. Canaday, director of the South Dakota Department of Education and Cultural Affairs. “The Sioux portrayed,” Mr. Canaday writes, “is none other than Ben Black Elk, a full-blood son of Black Elk, who gained national prominence from John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks. Ben Black Elk was a fixture at Mt. Rushmore for many years, posing for hundreds of thousands of tourists who visited this famous site. He was part of the Mt. Rushmore story and has been often called ‘the fifth face on the mountain.’ ”
Another reader, Mary W. Robinson of Cleveland, Ohio, was particularly distressed by our further caption statement that Black Dog/Elk was photographed while agitating for an Indian cause: “He would turn over in his grave. I’ve never talked to a nicer, more patient, more gentle man.… Please do something about this!!!!!!!!”
We’ll try. Directly right, courtesy of Mr. Canaday, is a genuine, authenticated photograph of the real Ben Black Elk, who until his death in 1973 was indeed well known and respected by many Indians and non-Indians throughout the country.
BENEDICT ARNOLD GETS HIS
At Ridgefield, Connecticut, on April 27, 1777, some two hundred militiamen led by Benedict Arnold valiantly tried to outfight two thousand British Regulars who were withdrawing to Long Island Sound after having destroyed American military stores at Danbury. The Americans were routed, but this year, the bicentennial anniversary of the little battle, twenty-three citizens of Ridgefield donated one hundred dollars apiece to have a medal struck off to honor Arnold’s bravery during the action.
Response to the gesture, predictably, has been mixed. The leaders of the local American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Marine Corps League were not amused, and one outraged citizen wrote to the Ridgefield Press: “What next-a medal for John Wilkes Booth?” Nevertheless, the demand for copies of the medal (silver: ten dollars; bronze: five dollars) has been heavy, and hundreds have been sold.
DR. MARY EDWARDS WALKER GETS HERS… BACK
For thirty-five years, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker enjoyed her standing as the only woman ever to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor; then in 1917 they took it away from her; then in 1977 they gave it back. This was of little comfort to Dr. Walker, who died in 1919, but of more than a little to Anne Walker of Mt. Vernon, Virginia, a distant relative of Dr. Walker who campaigned for the reinstatement of the medal.
Dr. Walker had received the medal in 1865 for her work during the Civil War as the U.S. Army’s first female surgeon. The medal was recommended by Generals George H. Thomas and William T. Sherman, approved by President Lincoln, and presented to her by President Johnson after Lincoln’s death. She wore it proudly on many occasions.
Unfortunately, what she chose to wear it on was formal evening dress—men’s evening dress, including top hat and tails. For Dr. Walker was a militant feminist at a time when such a calling was not highly regarded by her male contemporaries. It may well be that male chauvinism was behind the loss of her medal.
In all fairness, it should be pointed out that Dr. Walker was not exactly singled out for special treatment. In 1917, the Adverse Action Medal of Honor Board, in the only massive award review ever held, disqualified 911 medals-including 864 received by members of a Maine infantry regiment through some clerk’s error. In Dr. Walker’s case, the board decided that her status with the Army had been ambiguous; Generals Thomas and Sherman might not have agreed, but they were not around in 1917 to argue the point.
At any rate, her medal was gone, and it was not until June 10, 1977, that Army Secretary Clifford Alexander, acting on the recommendation of the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records (which suggested that the earlier board “may have erred”), restored the medaland Dr. Walker’s place in history.
HOW TO REPAIR A BROKEN GARGOYLE
It will be remembered that in a small feature accompanying “The Tallest Building in the World” by Spencer Klaw in our February, 1977, issue, we noted that much of the intricate stone facing on New York’s Woolworth Building had been dangerously weakened by a combination of weather and urban pollution. Some of it, in fact, was in danger of falling off, and to prevent the pedestrians below from becoming even more tense and irritable than usual, the building’s owners had hung steel nets around its towers and turrets and gargoyles while they figured out what to do about the problem.
A solution has since been found. Practicing what might be called architectural dermatology, workmen will be repairing and, where necessary, replacing broken facing with a durable, synthetic mixture of materials. The job is expected to take nearly two years to complete, and the cost, according to J. R. Van Leuwen, executive director of construction, will run to “several million dollars.”
THROUGH A VEIL, DARKLY
In our Readers’ Album feature (“High Camp”) for the August, 1977, issue, we were so concerned with getting the dogs Ned, Mose, and Rover correctly identified that we managed to misidentify the falls in front of which they and the rest of the Wyman Comedy Company were sitting in the Yosemite Valley. The falls were not Bridalveil Falls, as we stated, but upper Yosemite Falls, as a number of readers have let us know. Among them was Ivan Branson, historian for The Golden Chain Council of the Mother Lode, Inc., a California tourist organization: “Gosh, man, there are two and one-half million visitors a year to this place, and even the dogs know the difference. Bridalveil is three miles downstream from the 1,420-foot drop of upper Yosemite Falls. Incidentally,” Mr. Branson adds, “the entire valley has gone to the dogs this season—last week there wasn’t enough water falling from either of the two falls to be seen with the naked eye.”
