Bighorn Medicine Wheel In Wyoming Draws Thousands Of Visitors Every Year

East of Lovell, Wyoming, a path of sunbaked gravel bends toward the Medicine Wheel, an Indigenous sacred site where centuries of seekers have mingled their prayers with the mountain breezes.

The structures nestle in the grasses of the Bighorn National Forest at about 9,600 feet elevation, a scene of mystery and contemplation for many.

Age estimates for the Medicine Wheel range from a few hundred to more than 3,000 years. Oral histories provided by Native Americans indicate the Medicine Wheel is ancient, extending back in time through many generations, according to the Forest Service.

The only reliable scientific date from the Bighorn Medicine Wheel is one sample from wood incorporated into the structure of the western cairn. The sample's latest growth ring dates to 1760 CE.

Some believe the Medicine Wheel is a vision quest site, while others think it is a representation of a sun dance circle, a turtle effigy or a place to mark the summer solstice, according to markers located near the Medicine Wheel. To many Native Americans it is “the place where the eagle lands.”

“You're walking in the path of the ones who came before,” said Bill Matthews, retired archeologist with the Bighorn National Forest who managed the site from 2000-2016. “It’s the same view seen by the Indians for hundreds of years. I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual and I treated it with the respect it was due.”

Mysterious And Important

Medicine Mountain National Historical Landmark features a roughly circular pattern of stones about 82 feet in diameter surrounding a central stone cairn about 12 feet in diameter.

In the center of the pattern is a hollow oval cairn of rock from which 28 radial lines extend to a peripheral circle. Around and near the peripheral circle are six more cairns.

“What they exactly mean or what they’re for, we don't know because there's no written record, and there's no real straight paths down from one generation to the next generation of the indigenous people,” Matthews said.

Many who visit the site say they feel a spiritual connection.

“Lying atop Medicine Mountain at nearly 10,000 feet, the weather is as wild as the towering crags and sheer cliffs that define the mountain. Sleet, rain and snowstorms are common here, even in July. Streaks of jagged lightning, deafening thunder and wind scream past the rocky embattlements,” reads a marker near the site. “These are the forces that confronted the people who came here, ages ago, to build a place of ceremony and worship.”

While the builders and exact purpose of the Medicine Wheel remain unknown, it is an important symbol of Native American beliefs about man’s relationship to the world. It is still used today for religious ceremonies by tribal members.

“Native Americans come from all over from the United States,” Matthews said. “I also had native New Zealanders come up and pray at it, and I had some people from Tibet come over to give their respect for the Medicine Wheel. It's a Native American holy place, but it's internationally known and people from different races and different countries come to this sacred site.”

Most Well-known Wheel

Researchers have identified as many as 150 medicine wheels in Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel is one of the largest and best preserved on the Northern and Northwestern Plains.

“It's a sacred site to numerous tribes all over the Northern Plains — and not just the Northern Plains, but the whole United States,” Matthews said.

Located on the Bighorn National Forest, the Medicine Wheel is just 12 miles south of the Montana border. Lovell lies 25 miles to the west and Sheridan is 46 miles to the east.

Sitting at 9,640 feet in elevation, it is situated on the exposed, slightly sloping limestone surface of the prominent northwestern ridge of Medicine Mountain.

It is normally accessible from mid- to late June through mid-September, and visitation fluctuates annually based on weather and other considerations. The site received a high number of annual visitors in 2005, with more than 14,000 people.

“This past year, the site received just over 6,000 visitors,” said Mark Foster, district ranger for the Medicine Wheel. “The Forest Service attributes the smaller number this year to the shortened season given late spring/early summer snow and rainstorms.”

Visitors can expect to encounter interpretive rangers at the site who help create an appreciation, understanding and connection through meaningful and memorable experiences. At the Medicine Wheel, rangers have duties that balance interpretation as well as the protection and preservation of the wheel and surrounding area.

‘The Sky Is Round …’

Visitors walk clockwise around the wheel, as movement in the Medicine Wheel and in Native American ceremonies is circular, and typically in a clockwise, or “sun-wise” direction. This helps to align with the forces of nature, such as gravity and the rising and setting of the sun.

A quote from Lakota Sioux Medicine Man Black Elk, on a marker at the site, speaks to the importance of circles in Native American culture.

“Everything the power of the world does is done in a circle,” he said. “The sky is round, and I have heard that the Earth is round like a ball, and so are the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours.

“The sun comes forth and goes down in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.

“The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

“The circle is the essence of Native American life,” he added. “The Medicine Wheel structure embodies this. It is a place where many have experienced their vision quest, a place of ritual, a place of prayer, a place of lasting vision."

Points The Way

In the early 1970s, astronomer and solar scientist John Eddy noted several important star alignments involving the central and circumferential cairns.

He suggested that the Bighorn Medicine Wheel was probably used by prehistoric Native Americans as an ancient astronomical observatory and calendar, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

In some Native American ethnographic accounts, the Bighorn Medicine Wheel and other major sacred sites play an essential navigational role.

Later studies by anthropologist James Boggs in the 1990s provided evidence of how various areas at the site are used for differing ceremonial and sacred purposes.

Native American spiritual practices prescribe traditional uses in specific portions of the landscape, including areas for staging, approach, ceremonies, prayer and vision questing, camping and medicinal plant gathering.

Native American ethnographic accounts refer to the Medicine Wheel as the "altar" for the Medicine Mountain complex, illustrating the important central role the wheel plays in ceremonial and spiritual functions.

There isn’t a specific tribe credited for creating the wheel. However, ceramics recovered from the interior have been identified as Shoshone and Crow in origin.

Several researchers have noted archeological evidence supporting an extensive Crow presence on the western slopes of the Big Horn Mountains that began in the latter part of the 16th century and possibly earlier, according to Wyohistory.org. Horseshoe-shaped enclosures like those found in direct association with the Medicine Wheel have been associated with Crow fasting or vision-quest rituals.

There’s also evidence of the Shoshone living in the nearby Bighorn Basin.

“Most of them have stories about how the wheel was made, and what the importance is to each individual tribe,” Matthews said. “[The stories] are pretty similar, but they have their own variations of it.”

Because the Medicine Wheel is an active Native American sacred site, often visitors may be present when a ceremony is taking place.

“lf you go out there and they are having a ceremony, people need to stand back and watch quietly,” Matthews said. “You're very fortunate to be able to see a Native American ceremony.”

The number of ceremonies a year isn’t known, but Foster said the Forest Service monitors visitation of people who self-identify as affiliated with a tribe and there were about 400 last year.

Often, flags or offerings are left on the fence surrounding the wheel, signifying that a ceremony has taken place.

History Of The Wheel

As for just how far back the Medicine Wheel dates remains unknown, but those who see it feel more of a timeless connection to the circle.

Past research suggests the Medicine Wheel is a composite structure with the central cairn and some outer cairns constructed earlier than the rim and spokes. Artifacts and other archaeological evidence clearly indicate that the Medicine Wheel site has been visited by Native Americans for nearly 7,000 years.

“We don’t know its exact age, but it’s associated with the Prehistoric Trail which goes by it, and the trail has been there for probably 10,000 years minimum,” Matthews said.

The first documentary reference to the wheel was in 1895, when Paul Francke described his hunting exploits in an article published in Forest and Stream, according to the Forest Service.

In the mid-1920s, Boy Scouts from Lovell built a protective rock wall around the Medicine Wheel. The rock wall was later replaced with a galvanized steel mesh fence capped with barbed wire, which was eventually replaced by the low post-and-rope fence used now.

The Medicine Wheel was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970 because of its unique scientific research values, according to Wyominghistory.org. In 2011, the landmark boundaries were substantially enlarged from 110 to 4,080 acres in response to an accumulating body of information regarding Native American traditional cultural use of the surrounding landscape.

Collaborative Preservation

Another thing that makes the Medicine Wheel unique is how it is overseen.

The site is managed under a Historic Preservation Plan for the Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark and Vicinity. Signed in 1996, it ensures that the wheel and Medicine Mountain are maintained in a manner that protects the integrity of the sacred site and nationally important traditional cultural property.

“It's not a commercial endeavor,” Matthews said. “You can't have paid tourism. You can’t have drones there. You can go visit, but you can't make money off of it.”

The Bighorn National Forest manages the site collaboratively with federal, state, local and tribal governments. Referred to as consulting parties, they work through issues in a collaborative framework using a consensus decision-making model.

The Forest Service facilitates these conversations among the consulting parties throughout the year, with three core annual meetings used to discuss issues and develop solutions.

“The benefits of this model are manifold,” Foster said. “A key one is that the consulting parties arrive at all decisions through consensus, which promotes buy-in of all parties, effective short-term fixes and sustainable long-term solutions.”

The Medicine Wheel is an important prehistoric archeological landscape as well as an ancient Native American spiritual site where tribal ceremonial activity continues to this day.

It also transformed public land management in Wyoming.

“Eventually, one gets to the Medicine Wheel to fulfill one's life,” said Old Mouse of the Arikara tribe.