| The part
of the country we call the Great Plains is the home of many Indian
tribes. The Crow, Cheyenne, Sioux, Comanchel, Kiowa, Blackfoot,
Pawnee and other tribal people live there. The Indians of
the Great Plains were known as the buffalo hunters. They were nomadic.
This means they followed the herds of buffalo, building their camps
on the grassy, flat land that stretched for miles in all directions. |
| The
Plains people were constantly on the move. They spent certain seasons
in temporary villages, but soon they moved on again. In days long
ago, people carried all they owned on their backs or on travois
pulled by dogs. They walked from campground to campground. When
horses became available to the Plains people, their life as hunters
became easier. They could hunt faster with the horses. When they
travelled, the horse helped carry the people and their, belongings. |
Many
of these tribes built no permanent villages. Their Anasazi neighbors
in the Southwest left many things behind so there was much
to learn about their lives. There are few cultural remains for archeologists
to study and learn about the Plains people. For this reason, we
do not know a lot about how the ancestors lived many hundreds of
years ago. |
| But
there are things the prehistoric Plains Indians built. We can study
and wonder at them. Spreading across the grasslands of the Great
Plains there are thousands, maybe even billions, of stone circles.
These circles are 6 to 8 feet across. We now call these stone rings
tipi rings. They were probably
used to hold down the edges of tipi hide covers. The rings were
left behind when the people moved to another camp. |
| Most
of the stones in the tipi rings
are about the size of a loaf of bread. Counting the number of tipi
rings in a camping area gives the archeologist some
idea of how many people traveled and lived together. The rings also
show the size of the tipis and how they were arranged. Bones of
animals, broken pots, discarded arrow points and other things used
by tribal people have also been found in old tribal campsites. The
tipi rings, along with the
bones and tools, give us most of our information about the lives
of Plains Indians, who lived long, long ago. |
| But
there is one other very important thing the people of the Great
Plains left behind. In many places there are large, mysterious stone
formations. Some of these formations are long, low stone walls.
Others are piles of stone that look like images of people or animals.
Still others are wheel-like shapes. We call them medicine
wheels. In the Great Plains, abouy 40or 50 medicine
wheels have been found. |
Medicine
wheels are different sizes and have di£ferent
patterns.
But most often the wheels are made from loaf-sized stones laid out
in
a circle. Lines of stones reach out from the edge of the circle
to the
middle, like the spokes of a huge wheel. In the middle of the circle.
there is usually a large pile of rocks. |
| Medicine
wheels are much larger than tipi rings. Some are 180
feet across! This is almost as long as two blue whales, from the
head of one to the tail of the othef. The rock pile in the center
might be 12 feet high and 10 feet across. This means the people
had to carry several tons of rock to just the right spot, then pile
up the rocks, one on top of another! |
| We
don't know just why all these medicine wheels were built by tribal
people so many years ago. Through careful study, some scientists
believe that a number of the medicine
wheels were used as calendars. |
The
Bighorn Medicine Wheel |
| The
Bighorn Medicine Wheel is found near the top of Medicine Mountain
in Wyoming. The spot is nearly 10,000 f.eet high! It lies far above
timberline, a place so high few trees can grow. It's a
great place for sky-watching!! |
| To
make this medicine wheel, people had to gather stones £rom
the grassy slopes, haul them up the mountain, and then pile them
in a large wheel-like shape. At the center of Bighorn Medicine Wheel,
there is rock pile. This pile is shaped like a doughnut. It measures
nearly 10 feet from side to side. Straight lines of stones connect
the outer circle with the central pile. There are twenty-eight of
these "spokes. " It cannot be known for sure, but some
scientists think that the Bighorn Medicine Wheel was built by the
ancestors nearly 2,000 years ago! We can only guess how long it
took for tribal people to build the Bighorn Wheel on Medicine Mountain. |
What
was the Bighorn Medicine Wheel and other medicine wheels on
the Great Plains used for? Well, people who have studied the wheels
think they were used by Indian people to tell the seasons of the
year. Bighorn Medicine Wheel was probably used to indicate when
it was time for the summer solstice. |
Summer
solstice occurs on June 22. Winter solstice happens
on
December 22. What is the solstice? It is when the sun seems
to stand still in the heavens. Winter solstice is the day
when the sun stops its southward journey in the sky and begins to
move north again. Winter solstice is the shortest day of
the year. Even though there is still plenty of cold weather to come,
we can think of the time when the days will grow longer and warmer.
Just like our ancestors must have done. Because of deep snow that
covers Medicine Mountain during the fall and winter months, the
Bighorn Medicine Wheel was probably used only during the summertime. |
Scientists
have taken careful measurements of how the stone piles
and spokes were put together. They have also figured out how the
spokes and rock piles line up with the brightest stars in the night
sky. Seeing these bright stars appear just before dawn--and then
disappear--helped the people choose the exact day of the summer
solstice. Standing at a certain point outside the circle. a person
can see the first glimmer of the rising sun above the center of
the wheel. |
| The
twenty-eight spokes of the medicine wheel were probably used to
count the days of the month. On the day of solstice, Indian people
knew another year was beginning. For people who depended on game
and wild plants for their survival, the solstice was a promise of
good things to come. We have great respect for the ancient ones
and what they built to remind us of their lives. |
| Indian
people have built medicine lodges in the same shape as the Bighorn
Wheel. Listen to part of what Black Elk, a holy man ofthe Og1ala
Sioux said about how the sun dance lodge was constructed. |
Each
of the posts around the lodge stands for something. The whole
circle is like the universe. The one tree at the center is the
center of everything. Twenty-eight poles rest on this tree. The
numbers four and seven are sacred. If you add four sevens, you
get twenty-eight. The moon lives twenty-eight days, or one month:
Two days represent the Great Spirit
Two days are for Mother Earth
Four days are for the Four Winds
One day is for the Spotted Eagle
One day is for the Sun
One day is for the Moon
One day is for the Morning Star
Four days are for the Four Ages
Seven days are for our Seven Great Rites
One day is for the Buffalo
One day is for the Fire
One day is for the Water
One day is for the Rock
One day is for Two-Legged People |
| If
you add all these days, you will see they come to 28! |
