<< Other Photo Pages >> Devil's Tower National Monument - Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature in United States in The Northwest Mountains
Submitted by AKFisher on Monday, 04 September 2023 Page Views: 189
Natural PlacesSite Name: Devil's Tower National Monument Alternative Name: Bear Lodge ButteCountry: United States
NOTE: This site is 190.668 km away from the location you searched for.
Region: The Northwest Mountains Type: Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature
Nearest Town: Hulett, WY
Latitude: 44.588680N Longitude: 104.69969W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
Internal Links:
External Links:
Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature in Crook County, Wyoming.
Devils Tower (also known as Bear Lodge Butte)[8] is a butte, possibly laccolithic, composed of igneous rock in the Bear Lodge Ranger District of the Black Hills, near Hulett and Sundance, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River. It rises 1,267 feet (386 m) above the Belle Fourche River, standing 867 feet (264 m) from summit to base. The summit is 5,112 feet (1,558 m) above sea level.
Devils Tower was the first United States national monument, established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt.[9] The monument's boundary encloses an area of 1,347 acres (545 ha).
Name:
Native American names for the monolith include "Bear's House" or "Bear's Lodge" (or "Bear's Tipi", "Home of the Bear", "Bear's Lair"); Cheyenne, Lakota: Matȟó Thípila, Crow: Daxpitcheeaasáao ("Home of Bears"[10]), "Aloft on a Rock" (Kiowa), "Tree Rock", "Great Gray Horn",[11] and "Brown Buffalo Horn" (Lakota: Ptehé Ǧí)
Native American cultural beliefs:
According to the traditional beliefs of Native American peoples, the Kiowa and Lakota, a group of girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock, fell to their knees, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach the girls. The bears, in an effort to climb the rock, left deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. Those are the marks which appear today on the sides of Devils Tower. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the stars of the Pleiades.[22]
Another version tells that two Sioux boys wandered far from their village when Mato the bear, a huge creature that had claws the size of tipi poles, spotted them, and wanted to eat them for breakfast. He was almost upon them when the boys prayed to Wakan Tanka the Creator to help them. They rose up on a huge rock, while Mato tried to get up from every side, leaving huge scratch marks as he did. Finally, he sauntered off, disappointed and discouraged. The bear came to rest east of the Black Hills at what is now Bear Butte. Wanblee, the eagle, helped the boys off the rock and back to their village. A painting depicting this legend by artist Herbert A. Collins hangs over the fireplace in the visitor center at Devils Tower.
In a Cheyenne version of the story, the giant bear pursues the girls and kills most of them. Two sisters escape back to their home with the bear still tracking them. They tell two boys that the bear can only be killed with an arrow shot through the underside of its foot. The boys have the sisters lead the bear to Devils Tower and trick it into thinking they have climbed the rock. The boys attempt to shoot the bear through the foot while it repeatedly attempts to climb up and slides back down leaving more claw marks each time. The bear was finally scared off when an arrow came very close to its left foot. This last arrow continued to go up and never came down.[23]
Wooden Leg, a Northern Cheyenne, related another legend told to him by an old man as they were traveling together past the Devils Tower around 1866–1868. An Indigenous man decided to sleep at the base of Bear Lodge next to a buffalo head. In the morning he found that both he and the buffalo head had been transported to the top of the rock by the Great Medicine with no way down. He spent another day and night on the rock with no food or water. After he had prayed all day and then gone to sleep, he awoke to find that the Great Medicine had brought him back down to the ground, but left the buffalo head at the top near the edge. Wooden Leg maintained that the buffalo head was clearly visible through the old man's spyglass. At the time, the tower had never been climbed and a buffalo head at the top was otherwise inexplicable.[24]
The buffalo head gives this story special significance for the Northern Cheyenne. All the Cheyenne maintained in their camps a sacred teepee to the Great Medicine containing the tribal sacred objects. In the case of the Northern Cheyenne, the sacred object was a buffalo head.[25]
N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) was given the name Tsoai-talee (Rock Tree Boy) by Pohd-lohk, a Kiowa elder, linking the child to the Devils Tower bear myth. To reinforce this mythic connection, his parents took him there.[26] Momaday incorporated the bear myth as unifying subtext into his 1989 novel The Ancient Child.[27]. Source: Wikipedia (see link below).
References:
8. Mato Tipila, or Bear's Lodge, the stunning monolith of stone in northeastern Wyoming that settlers dubbed 'Devil's Tower. Jason Mark, Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man (2015), p. 166. "Devil's Tower, beyond the Black Hills, forms the Buffalo's Head, with the face, Bear Butte as the Buffalo's Nose, and Inyan Kaga as the Black Buffalo Horn." Jessica Dawn Palmer, The Dakota Peoples: A History of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota through 1863 (2011), p. 203.
22. Robert Burnham, Jr.: Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Volume 3, page 1867
23. Marquis, pp. 53–54
24. Marquis, pp. 54–55
25. Marquis p. 106 and p. 152
27. An Overview of Post-1960 Native American Literature. Native American Writers. Retrieved July 17, 2020.
Bibliography:
Marquis, Thomas B. (2003). Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books. ISBN 0-8032-8288-5. OCLC 52423964, 57065339. Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer.
Further reading and information:
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Tower<2>
National Park Service
http://www.nps.gov/deto/index.htm<4>
National Park Service History
npshistory.com/series/archeology/rmr/9/report.pdf<6>
Directions:
From Hulett, WY via WY-24 W and WY-110 W, 12.9 mi.
You may be viewing yesterday's version of this page. To see the most up to date information please register for a free account.
Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor.
Nearby Images from Flickr
The above images may not be of the site on this page, but were taken nearby. They are loaded from Flickr so please click on them for image credits.
Click here to see more info for this site
Nearby sites
Click here to view sites on an interactive map of the areaKey: Red: member's photo, Blue: 3rd party photo, Yellow: other image, Green: no photo - please go there and take one, Grey: site destroyed
Download sites to:
KML (Google Earth)
GPX (GPS waypoints)
CSV (Garmin/Navman)
CSV (Excel)
To unlock full downloads you need to sign up as a Contributory Member. Otherwise downloads are limited to 50 sites.
Turn off the page maps and other distractions
Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
28.2km S 178° Arch Creek Petroglyphs* Rock Art
43.4km E 98° Vore Buffalo Jump* Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature
214.7km SSE 155° Hudson-Meng Bison Kill* Ancient Mine, Quarry or other Industry
217.9km SSW 207° Glenrock Buffalo Jump* Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature
225.9km W 275° Falling Block* Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature
227.9km W 263° Medicine Lodge State Archeological Site* Rock Art
243.6km S 179° Hell Gap* Ancient Village or Settlement
256.0km W 277° Bighorn Medicine Wheel* Stone Circle
298.0km SW 233° Castle Gardens* Rock Art
303.8km W 280° Petroglyph Canyon (Cowley)* Rock Art
310.1km SSE 151° Carhenge, Nebraska* Modern Stone Circle etc
319.2km WNW 295° Pictograph Caves* Rock Art
323.0km WSW 256° Legend Rock* Rock Art
342.1km WNW 286° Valley of the Shields* Rock Art
393.6km NE 47° Double Ditch State Historic Site* Ancient Village or Settlement
399.5km W 270° Mummy Cave* Cave or Rock Shelter
402.4km S 184° Lindenmeier Site* Ancient Mine, Quarry or other Industry
415.0km WSW 254° High Rise Village Ancient Village or Settlement
449.4km W 270° Yellowstone Lake* Ancient Village or Settlement
475.8km SW 232° White Mountain Wyoming* Rock Art
477.0km W 275° Obsidian Cliff* Ancient Mine, Quarry or other Industry
539.8km E 98° Mitchell Site* Ancient Village or Settlement
570.2km SW 219° Dinosaur National Monument* Rock Art
593.8km ENE 61° Standing Rock State Historic Site* Artificial Mound
604.3km WNW 294° Megaliths Of Helena* Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature
View more nearby sites and additional images