By Lance Nixon Jul 28, 2016
BLUNT, S.D. — They are about a day’s journey east of Fort
Pierre, the start of July 1839, and the geographer Joseph Nicollet records what
they see in his journal as he and his companions pause to examine the forks of
the East Medicine River and the hill looming above it.
“This last-mentioned river derives its name from a beautiful
hill on its right bank, called by the Sioux Pahah wakan – translated by the
voyageurs ‘Butte de Medicine,’ and in English, Medicine Hillock, or knoll,”
Nicollet writes in his journal. “It is to be remarked, in fact, of the prairies
of this region that they present such low insulated hillocks, to which the
Sioux apply the somewhat generic name of re or pahah, according as they are
more or less elevated above the surrounding plain. The affixwakan indicates that
the locality is to them peculiarly remarkable, or even sacred, and a spot which
they select in preference for some of their ceremonies.”
Nicollet was right in more ways than he knew. In fact
Medicine Knoll, though Nicollet knew it only by its Sioux name, may have been
an ancient ceremonial place already in use hundreds of years before the Sioux
arrived.
Somewhere in the grass of that knoll that Nicollet and his
party climbed to look out across the country was the man-made feature that made
it an important ceremonial site, and one still intensely interesting to
archaeologists: A stone mosaic that makes the outline of a snake in the grass.
It’s known to archaeologists as site 39HU70, and they say is
probably the best known of the effigy sites in South Dakota.
No one knows for sure who made it or why.
Dimensions of a giant
Anthropologists J.E. Todd in 1886, T. H. Lewis in 1889 and
John Helmick in 1897 published early descriptions, with sketches, of the site.
“The figure in question is built upon the north end of this
Paha Wakan (Medicine Knoll) of the Dakotas, and represents a snake,” Lewis
recorded. “Its head is 10 feet in length and nearly 7 feet wide at the broadest
point. Two oblong stones represent the eyes. The body varies in width from 3 to
10 feet. The stones composing the outline of the tail are much smaller than
those used for the body, many of them being no larger than an egg. There are
said to have been several large bowlders extending out from the end of the
tail, representing rattles, but on September 7, 1884, when this survey was
made, there was no indication that there ever had been any bowlders at that
point. The total length of the snake, following the curves, is 360 feet, and
the total number of stones and bowlders used in the outline and including the
two for the eyes is 825, of which at last ten occupied their present positions
previous to the construction of the snake …”
Michael Fosha, assistant state archaeologist for South
Dakota, said the outline of the snake has doubtless changed somewhat since
then, partly because livestock grazing might dislodge stones, perhaps even
because visitors might move stones from one point to another, thinking to fix
some perceived flaw in the effigy by restoring some stone to what they think
must be its original location.
There is also the possibility that looters have made off
with some stones.
“When I was young it had a tongue on it, made of red rock,”
said Royal Runge, the rancher who owned the Medicine Knoll property from 1938
until he sold it in 1999.
“People just took it away for souvenirs.”
A 2006 report to the South Dakota State Historical Society
by archaeological and historical preservation consultant Dr. Linea Sundstrom
notes that the current length of the effigy – 55 meters, or 180 feet, in a
straight line, and about 100 meters, or 328 feet, following the curves of its
body – is about 11 meters shorter than Lewis’s description. That may be because
parts of the tail are now buried or destroyed.
Older than the legends
Runge, contacted by the Capital Journal at the nursing home
in Marion, S.D., where he lives now, said he believes the site to be at least
400 years old or older. He believes that because he allowed professional
archaeologists to examine a nearly perfect arrowhead found at the site. They
dated it to an estimated age of A.D. 1550 to 1675, Runge said.
Mike Fosha, assistant state archaeologist for South Dakota,
said most of the stone mosaics found on the northern Great Plains were made within
the past 500 years, and many within the past 200 years.
The snake effigy on Medicine Knoll probably was made near
the earlier of those dates, or closer to the 500-year mark, he said.
Snake-makers?
If the effigy had been found farther north, around the
Bismarck area in North Dakota, Fosha said he would have associated it with the
people who eventually become known in history as the Blackfoot nation, who left
animal-like motifs of stone in what is now North Dakota before moving west. But
other tribes are also on the move at that same time, four and five centuries
ago.
Peoples who become known in history as the Mandan are one
possibility, and the only tribe that still remained fairly close to the site,
simply moving farther north into what is now North Dakota.
But several other groups who are now more distant from
central South Dakota are also possibilities, including the Omaha, the Gros
Ventre, the Crow, the Cheyenne, even the Plains Apache. Fosha notes that
another interesting possibility is the Shoshone people, now located in Wyoming.
They’re sometimes known in history as the Snake Indians.
“Snakes make up a large part of their cosmology,” Fosha
said. “To me that would be one of the best candidates.”
Serpent legends
Archaeological anthropologist Donald Blakeslee of Wichita
State University disagrees. Blakeslee – one of whose interests is native trails
and sacred sites – believes the Shoshone people wouldn’t have been active as
far east as central South Dakota. But he believes the Arikara are a strong
possibility as the makers of the snake mosaic. He notes they are related to the
Wichita, who built a similar effigy of a snake that is cut into the sod at a
site in Kansas.
“It so happens that we have very little well-documented
information for the Arikara, where you are, and the Wichita, where I am, but in
between, thanks to a Pawnee named James Murie, there is some very detailed
information that has been published,” Blakeslee told the Capital Journal this
week via email. “The Skidi Pawnees, who were closely related to the Arikaras,
had a tradition about the origins of their people that involved the mating of
Morning Star and Evening Star. He lived in the East, she in the West. To get to
her, he had to cross the sky and was involved in a series of adventures along
the way.
“In one, he was swallowed by the serpent (our constellation
of Scorpio) and eventually freed himself using a fireball (meteor) as a weapon,
killing the serpent. The serpent intaglio here in Kansas has something in its
mouth, which may be a representation of the fireball.”
There may be a similar image carved on a rock wall or bluff
along the Fall River in southeastern Kansas, Blakeslee added.
“So we have multiple images of a serpent plus meteor/oval
thing all in areas occupied by the related Arikara/Pawnee/Wichita – all
speakers of northern Caddoan languages. The simplest explanation is that they
all symbolize the same mythological event – one that may derive from an actual
celestial event.”
One of Blakeslee’s former graduate students is currently
researching whether there may have been an actual astronomical event the snake
effigies reflect.
“Archaeologists working on the symbolism of the
Mississippian societies of the Southeast generally assume that this Morning
Star tale was once widespread and that it happened to survive and get recorded
among the Pawnee,” Blakeslee said.
Fire in the sky
Blakeslee finds another possible link between Medicine Knoll
and the heavens.
“In 1857, the prominent fur trader, C.P. Chouteau found a
meteorite that he donated to the St. Louis Academy of Science,” Blakeslee
writes. “The only direct evidence we have regarding its original location is
that he found it 20 miles from Fort Pierre in South Dakota. Since no other
locational evidence was available, the 16 kg medium octahedrite was named the
Fort Pierre meteorite and has been listed with the longitude and latitude of
that place in the various meteorite catalogs.”
But Blakeslee, in his research over native trails, is
intrigued by the recorded distance from Fort Pierre to the place where Chouteau
found the meteorite; especially when he cross-references it with Joseph
Nicollet’s 1839 journey and map east from Fort Pierre past the foot of Medicine
Knoll.
“Paha wakan lay along a trail that ran east and northeast
from the Ford of the Missouri across the James River to Minnesota. The same
trail continued west of the river to the site of Fort Laramie in Wyoming, and
the trail probably predated that trading post and was the reason for its
placement. To get from Fort Pierre to Paha wakan, one had to go 2 miles south
to the ford and then, according to the Nicollet map, 18 miles more to the
hill.”
That would make it exactly 20 miles from Fort Pierre to
Medicine Knoll, the precise distance from Fort Pierre at which Chouteau
recovered the Fort Pierre meteorite. If the snake image also was associated
with a meteorite that had been found at that location or brought there –
something native peoples were known to do – it could help explain the Lakota
name, Paha wakan, Blakeslee said. And if the Arikara retained the same Caddoan
legend that the Skidi Pawnee recorded about the fireball and the snake, they
might celebrate such a connection.
Sundstrom told the Capital Journal this week that Blakeslee
could be right in proposing a connection between the snake and a large
meteorite.
“The snake could have been made in response to the meteorite
landing there, but we’ll never know for certain,” Sundstrom said.
Dakota vision quest site
Whatever Medicine Butte’s snake effigy meant to the
ancients, the high prairie remained in use as a sacred site for tribes in more
recent times.
Vine Deloria Jr., in a book called “Singing for a Spirit: A
Portrait of the Dakota Sioux,” tells that Deloria’s great-grandfather, a member
of the Yanktonais Sioux, did his vision quest on top of Medicine Knoll in about
1831 at about age 16 while his family camped in a draw below the northeast side
of the butte.
Deloria’s account notes: “On the southern part of that
butte, in the old days, there was a long twisting trail of rocks arranged to
resemble a rattlesnake. Some of the rocks can still be seen today, although
people have vandalized the spot, making the snake effigy difficult to discern.”
The Deloria account suggests that the Dakota thought of the
snake effigy as already very old in the 1830s.
However, a Yanktonais tradition recorded in 1923 by a
Yanktonais named Thomas Tuttle said that the serpent was constructed after a
young Yanktonais, seeking a vision at Medicine Knoll, alerted his friends to a
party of Rees, or Arikara nearby. The Yanktonais captured or destroyed the Rees
and made the snake to celebrate that event, Tuttle’s account said.
T.H. Lewis also recorded Dakota informants saying the snake
effigy commemorated a great war speech made by a chief as his band was
returning from a successful hunt.
Fosha said the stone circles found on top the knoll near the
snake may have been associated with vision quests. In some tribes, the young
man seeking a vision would not leave that stone circle until the vision had
come.
Ceremonial use?
Whether the stone mosaic of the snake was used in some
community or ceremonial way remains a mystery. Runge is confident that it was.
“It is a ceremonial ground, no doubt about that,” Runge
said.
But what that use was remains a mystery.
Linea Sundstrom, the consultant who has studied South
Dakota’s boulder effigies for the South Dakota State Historical Society, said
the Medicine Knoll snake effigy may be too far from Shoshone country to have
been made by that tribe but it may really refer in some fashion to a people
group.
“It is more likely to refer to a snake clan or division of
one of one of the tribes that lived along the Missouri: Mandan, Hidatsa,
Arikara, Ponca, or some unknown distant ancestors of those,” Sundstrom told the
Capital Journal in an email. “The snakes tend to be most common in Arikara
territory. Arikaras were known as corn growers, and the beliefs of the Mandan,
Hidatsa, Arikara, and Dakota make a strong association between snakes and
corn-growing. We really don’t know when, why, or by whom that big snake was
made, so it’s a matter of coming up with an educated guess that’s not too
far-fetched.”
Sundstrom’s 2006 report on “boulder effigy sites” in South
Dakota notes that of the seven recorded snake effigies in South Dakota, six are
found on the east bank of the Missouri River near Pierre.
“The concentration of snake effigies along the Missouri
River between the Big Bend and the mouth of Okobojo Creek suggests these may
have been shrines related to corn-growing. This was the northern homeland of
the Arikara tribe, known to their neighbors as the Corn Eater tribe. In
addition, the Big Bend was specifically mentioned in Lakota mythology as the
origin place of corn horticulture,” Sundstrom notes.
The 2006 report notes another possible reason so many snake
effigies are found along the Missouri River in central South Dakota.
“The area of present-day Pierre and Fort Pierre was a major
crossing-point, as well. This suggests the possibility that spirit beings
represented visually as giant snakes were also petitioned at the snake effigies
for safe crossing of the river,” Sundstrom writes.
Snakes were seen as a powerful symbol of the underworld, so
their help would be essential.
Black Hills State University biologist Brian Smith, a
reptile specialist, said it’s not surprising that the site represented a
prairie rattlesnake, in particular.
“They would naturally be a potent symbol, since they can
kill using venom, display using the rattle, and shed their skin,” Smith said,
noting that the snake’s shedding of its skin might be also a sign of renewal or
rebirth and perhaps eternal life.
Dan Elwood of Fort Pierre, who bought the Medicine Knoll
property from Runge in 1999, said Medicine Knoll could very likely have been
used by several different people groups as they moved through the area over the
centuries.
He said he’s heard from Native Americans that the name
“Medicine Knoll” may have an additional meaning that has nothing to do with its
value as a sacred site. It might merely reflect the fact that many medicinal
plants known to native peoples grow in the prairie on top the knoll.
He adds that the site’s rich history and the height of
Medicine Knoll – at an elevation of 2,037 feet, it is about 400 feet higher
than Medicine Creek below – makes it the kind of place that Native Americans
still visit for prayer, ceremonies and vision quests. But others who take the
trouble to climb the knoll associate it with a vision quest of another kind.
“You can see forever in every direction,” Elwood said.
Storied Stone: Indian Rock Art in the Black Hills Country
By Linea Sundstrom
OVERVIEW OF PLACES OF TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL
SIGNIFICANCE
“The physical setting for fasting, prayer, and vision
questing sites, for example, is a hilltop or mountain peak. Human-generated
features and materials associated with such sites might include vision quest or
fasting structures, cairns, small stone circles or clusters of stone, rock
alignments, and offerings. Eagle trapping locations also occur on high points,
and might consist of an excavated pit large enough for a man to lie in, which
would be covered with a lattice of brush and grass. Alignments are man-made
arrangements of stone having a relatively low profile, and being in the shape
of a straight line or geometric pattern (Abbott, Ranney and Witten 1982 cited
in Sundstrom 2006). These generally serve as “directional markers/prayer lines
associated with major ceremonial sites ... or drive lines ... to channel ...
deer, antelope and bison. (BLM Montana Field Office unknown). As demonstrated
by the site and feature descriptions compiled by Sundstrom (2006), at times it
is difficult or impossible to discern whether a rock feature is an alignment, a
disturbed stone circle, or some other petroform... Sundstrom (2006), following
Abbott, Ranney, and Whitten (1982) defines a cairn as “a pile of stones on the
surface; this may have collapsed into a mosaic [an arrangement of stones in the
form of a solid figure or pavement].” It is not clear the extent to which this
definition is adhered to in reporting on cairns in cultural resource reports.
As Sundstrom (2006) demonstrates throughout her report, the dimensions and configurations
of cairns can vary considerably. This variation relates in part to the purpose
of the feature. Cairns are associated with a variety of contexts and features,
including burials, medicine wheels, memorials of important events or persons,
trail markers, animal drives, marker for a ritual or ceremonial site, and
monuments to important (spiritual) place (e.g., Hall 1985; Liebman 2002;
Sundstrom 2006; USFS Custer National Forest 2004; BLM Montana Field Office
unknown; Surface Transportation Board 2010). They can occur singly, in
clusters, and in alignments. They can be stand alone features or components of
larger features (e.g., associated with alignments). Such features, particularly
when they are aggregates of larger features, may have significant time depth.
Variability in cairns also depends on the relative integrity of the feature,
its age, and the extent to which it or its location has been reused over time.
Medicine wheels are stone alignments that generally include a central cairn or
stone circle from which lines (spokes) radiate outward. There are many
variations on this (see Brumley 1988 and Sundstrom 2006 for examples). The
number of spokes (either 4, 6, 7, 8 or 28) and their arrangement are based on
culturally significant numbers. Thus, if a medicine wheel has four spokes,
these will be laid out in the cardinal or semicardinal directions. Additional
alignments would bisect these cardinal spokes.
Finally, burials, graves, and cemeteries are also places of
cultural significance. Burials have a spiritual significance to the Northern
Plains tribes. Respectful treatment and minimal disturbance of these places are
of paramount importance. Burials may take several forms, including graves and
cairns. Burial mounds, which are present in eastern South Dakota, are not found
in the Powertech/Cameco project areas (Winham and Hannus 1990). Out of respect
for the sentiments expressed by the Northern Cheyenne about graves and burials,
the BLM’s discussion of site types excludes burials, graves or cemeteries (BLM
Montana Field Office unknown). As noted above, some of the features covered in
this report are sometimes associated with human remains.”
Fascinating. Thx.
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