Gutzon doesn’t seem to be sure about their origins and early development any more than he is sure of his own. He never gave a thought to such things until he was about fifty years old and inquisitive admirers began to ask questions. Somewhat confused, he gave some ill-assorted answers, many of which remain puzzling today. In his notes, for instance, he says that he was born on March 25, 1867. This, according to some evidence given by his brother Solon, seems to be correct. Yet the biographical sketch in _Who’s Who in America_, which he himself wrote, says that he was born in Idaho on March 25, 1871. One must leave it at that. Borglum was a man of great imagination, and he built up a fine character for the men of the hardy North country from which his ancestors had come. In his mind they came from “the North of Denmark, the land bending eastward under the cruel winds from Greenland and Iceland, the rendezvous of Vikings and high-sea rovers. There we have what are called Black Danes.... They are unquestionably an exchange token from Spain, Rome or Greece.... In our own family of blonds there are always some with fine dark eyes and hair to remind us of our ancestral wanderings.” The best Borglum’s father did for this family research was to locate a prospective Borglum with Frederick of Sweden in his crusade to the Holy Land. This man seems to have been named Reinhardt. But he saved the prince from a charging goat in the south of France and was given the title _de la Mothe_, “the one of courage.” This forebear returned to Denmark and, Borglum’s father reported, “his arms carry the crusader’s shield in the center.” The founder of the modern branch of De la Mothes was a priest who, in due course, joined Luther and married a nun. Gutzon wrote: The menfolk became priests, soldiers, adventurers, and I have books left by them in their own scripts. In this black dune, the wind-swept northern part of Denmark, there is an ancient Norman pile called the Borglum Kloster which, in the nineteenth century, was a hunting lodge for the kings and nobles. The De la Mothe family was closely connected with this cloister. On a visit not so long ago I found in the great chapel, buried in its floor, the only memorial tablet to our ancestors extant.