Medicine Wheels
On a remote peak high in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming lies an intricate pattern traced out in stone. It and other similar designs constructed by some ancient people are known as Medicine Wheels. Situated on a flat shoulder near the top of a 10,000-foot mountain, it was first found, at least in modern times, by some early prospectors. Resembling a large wheel, it contains 28-spokes and measures 80 feet across, with six rock piles, or cairns, that are spaced unevenly around its rim. Beyond some modern-day calculations and speculations this is nearly all that is known of it and similar Medicine Wheels. No one knows who made them, or when, or why.
The area is rich in game and flowing streams and was once a favorite hunting place for Indian tribes. In times past the Crow, Cheyenne, Shoshone, and Arapaho frequented this spot. It was assumed that the ancient ancestors of one of these Native American tribes had constructed the wheel.
Early in the 1900s archeologists came to view this wonder of the west. They inquired of various Indian tribes as to the wheel's origin. The answers they received, "It was here when we came," or " It was built by people who had no iron," gave no clue. Further questioning resulted in "The sun built it to show us how to build a tepee," moving the archeologists further still from an answer.
Continuing their quest, the mystery deepened for these men of science as legends and fanciful notions began to be uncovered. Some speculated that it and others were built by the Aztecs, Hindus, Chines, or possibly the Phoenicians. The stories even attributed the wheel's construction to pre-Columbian members of the Masonic lodge.
The Shoshone Indians had one of the more fanciful and delightful answers. For them, the wheel was the home of the "Little People." These small ones, the Shoshone said, lived in caverns beneath the wheel and ate the meat of the bighorn sheep.
In 1922 a more reasonable possibility came from ethnologist George Bird Grinnell. Grinnell stressed that the pattern of this Bighorn Medicine Wheel considerably illustrated the floor plan of a Cheyenne medicine lodge, a temporary wooden structure used for the sun-dance ceremony. To explain away the fact that this wheel was made of stones, Grinnell thought that it could be a symbolic replica of the sun-dance lodge, built of stone because of a lack of wood.
Perhaps knowing how many eons past this medicine wheel was erected would give some clue to its builder, but that too is a mystery. Recent investigations do give evidence of the wheel's location being used in the past few centuries, but just how many centuries past can only be guessed at. Unearthed from the thin layer of mountain soil that lies between the stone spokes are a few arrow points and beads. These artifacts date from before white men came upon the site. Also, a broken branch found in one of the cairns has been dated by tree-ring analysis to date back to about 1760. Whether the branch was placed there at the time of the wheel's construction or later is also a part of the medicine wheel's shadowy and silent past.
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