Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark
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Medicine Wheel/Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark
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The Medicine Wheel in Big Horn County, Wyoming, USA
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| Nearest city | Lovell, Wyoming |
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| Coordinates | 44°49′34″N 107°55′18″W / 44.82611°N 107.92167°WCoordinates: 44°49′34″N 107°55′18″W / 44.82611°N 107.92167°W |
| NRHP Reference # | 69000184 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | April 16, 1969 |
| Designated NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK | August 29, 1970 |
The Medicine Wheel/Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark (formerly known as the Bighorn Medicine Wheel) is a medicine wheel located in the Bighorn National Forest, in the U.S. state of Wyoming. The Medicine Wheel at Medicine Mountain is a large stone structure made of local white limestone laid upon a bedrock of limestone. It is both a place of sacred ceremony and scientific inquiry. In Native Science these uses are not distinguished as separate as they are in Western science.
The cultural history of the Big Horn Mountains, home to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, dates back over ten thousand years.
No indigenous people have publicly claimed to have built the Big Horn Medicine Wheel. During negotiations to include the Big Horn Medicine Wheel to the registry for National Historic Landmark and Sacred Site status, the Crow stated that the Wheel was already present when they came into the area. However, the Wheel rests within the Crow homeland, an area given to the Crow by the Creator when No Vitals, the visionary Crow Leader (circa 1400-1600), had his vision of stars descending into tobacco blossoms while he fasted and prayed on the highest mountain in the Bighorns (Cloud Peak). Oral history from several indigenous nations sets the Big Horn Medicine Wheel as already existing, having been built by "ancient ancestors" or "people without iron."
The Big Horn Medicine Wheel is a sacred site to many people of many nations. Although the Wheel was built high above the Bighorn Basin, and the climb up from the basin takes effort, a wide and deep cut ancient trail takes the traveler directly to the Wheel. In winter, when the modern asphalt road is covered in snow and closed for the season, one can still make their way by foot up the old trail from Five Springs Campground. Stephen C. Simms of the Chicago Field Museum, upon examining the Wheel in 1903, astonishingly surmised that the travois trail (road) must have been well-traveled for long periods in the past to acquire its deeply cut edges. The Bighorn Mountains are high above the hot summers of the basin. In 1887, the Sheepeater Elder Aggretta said her people chose to live high in the Bighorns to escape the flies and human conflict.
The A’aniiih, indigenous to the Rocky Mountains and northern prairies for tens of thousands of years, practice the vision quest—a journey into darkness and aloneness to find guidance and direction in the ”dark.” Ancient beings called “Little People” are known to come to the aide of those who fast and pray deep into the night on Medicine Mountain. The Little People are said to live in the caves underneath the Wheel. The A'aniiih are relatives of the Arapaho who call the Big Horn Medicine Wheel "Hii3einoonotii." A detailed account of ceremonial use of the Bighorn Medicine Wheel by the Arapaho was related in 1993 by Paul Moss in a landmark of Native American oral tradition.
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