Medicine Wheel

Known to white settlers as the Medicine Wheel and to many Native Americans as "The Place Where the Eagle Lands," this high mountain site is sacred to many people and has long been associated with ceremony, worship, prayer, and traditional observances. It lies atop Medicine Mountain at nearly 10,00 feet, where wild weather, towering crags, sheer cliffs, sleet, rain, snowstorms, lightning, thunder, and screaming wind shape a powerful sense of sacredness and age. These are the forces that confronted the people who came here ages ago to build a place of ceremony and worship. Some believe it served as a vision quest site, a representation of the Sun Dance Lodge, a turtle effigy, or a place to mark the summer solstice. Native American people from over eighty tribes use it for prayer and traditional ceremonies, and a Lakota Sioux reflection speaks of going up on the mountain alone for four days and four nights without food or water to talk directly to the creator.

Wyoming · United States