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High on a mountain ridge in the Bighorn Mountains you will find one of the most sacred monuments of the Plains Indian Culture, built by Native Americans at least 200 years ago. The great Medicine Wheel is a circular arrangement of stones measuring 80 feet across, with 28 rows of stones radiating from the center of the circle to its rim. No-one knows for certain what the purpose of the great wheel was, but many people have noticed that the structure of the Wheel resembles the Sun Dance lodges built by many Plains tribes for religious celebrations. Others suggest that the 28 "spokes" of the wheel may symbolize the days of a lunar month, and that the wheel may have been used as a kind of astronomical observatory. |
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