DEVIL’S TOWER, WYOMING:
High on every list of sites that are sacred to Native
Americans is Bear Lodge Butte, listed on our maps and in our records as Devil’s
Tower. I can remember being fascinated with this pretty much all of my life
after seeing a picture of it in a little Golden guide to geology as a child.
There are a vast number of available references and resources on Devil’s Tower,
both in travel books from the library and on the internet.
Devil's Tower, Wyoming. Photograph: Peter Faris, June 2013.
In his book Where
Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, Peter
Nabokov gave a description of the beliefs and mythology that are attached to
this location by Native Americans. “Best
known of the Black Hills outliers was what Indians called Bear Lodge Butte, but
which whites in offensive contrast to its heroic role in Indian mythology, came
to name “Devil’s Tower.” Remembered by most Americans, this volcanic upthrust,
located to the north of the Hills that jutted into the sky like a great horn
with its tip lopped off, was the Mother Ship’s landing pad in director Steven
Spielberg’s 1977 science fiction classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
But to the Kiowa tribe
the 867-foot promontory was revered as T’sou’a’e, or “Aloft on a Rock.”
Here was the
embarkation point for that early period in Kiowa Indian history that the
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist N. Scott Momaday called “the setting out.” From
these high plains their ancestors migrated south, to ultimately reach the area
of Rainy Mountain in western Oklahoma, where their reservation is found today.
Like a number of
Plains Indian tribes, the Kiowa never forgot the Tower’s place in their
mythology. They told of the seven sisters and a brother who were playing
together. Transformed into a monster bear, the brother attacked his sisters,
who ran for their lives. When they reached a giant tree stump it told them
“climb up on me.” Once they were on top the stump began to grow, leaving the
bear pawing at them and raking its sides with his claws – those vertical
grooves remain to this day. On the summit the girls were finally safe, but the
Kiowa say the sisters then ascended into the sky, to become the constellation
we know as the Big Dipper (other tribal versions say the Pleiades).”
(Nabokov 2006:215-16)
After a long life of abiding interest in this place we
finally undertook the trip there in June 2013. A long days’ drive got us to
Sundance, Wyoming, which serves as the gateway to the Devil’s Tower National
Monument. The next day we drove out to the tower itself. It was every bit as impressive
as I had hoped. We hiked around the spire and saw probably a couple of dozen
rock climbers working their way up various routes. I could certainly get a small
sense of the unease that Native American peoples feel to a greater extent
seeing these people climbing up this sacred rock. Additionally, many small
offerings could be seen in the trees in various locations around the tower reinforcing
its’ spiritual nature for some people.
Offerings at Devil's Tower, Wyoming.
Photograph: Peter Faris, June 2013.
REFERENCE:
Nabokov, Peter
2006 Where
Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, Peter
Nabokov, Viking Press, New York
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