January 16, 1895 - For years the whites have known that somewhere on Medicine mountain the Indians had a sacred altar or monument of some kind, but so zealously has the object been guarded that no white man ever knew the character or the location of the Indians’ holy place.
There is an interesting relic about four miles northwest of Bald Mountain City, Wyo, which but few people have ever seen. It is what is called Medicine Wheel. It is made of rock embedded in the ground in the shale of a wheel with thirty-seven spokes. The circumference of the wheel is about 173 feet, and it is supposed the savages came to this place in the early days to make medicine, and from this custom the wheel derived its name. One old Indian on the Crow reservation, over eighty years of age, says the wheel was there when he was a young brave, and no one can recollect when it was made. - 1895 Jan 16, The Wichita Beacon
1925 Feb 15, Casper Star Tribune |
The first article I could find that mentions the "Medicine Wheel"
1895 Jan 16, The Wichita Beacon |
1902 Billings, Mont, Aug 3 – Indian Medicine Wheel for Chicago Museum
H.C. Simms, representative of Field’s Colombian Museum of Chicago, who has been scouting the Crow reservation for the last two weeks in search of curios for the museum, made an important find last week in the Big Horn mountains.He was accompanied on his tour by L.E. Reynolds, brother of Major S.G. Reynolds, agent for the Crows. Last Wednesday they discovered at the summit of a mountain 6,000 feet above the sea level what is known among the Indians as a “medicine wheel,” an immense chapel, where the Indians were wont to worship in former times. The wheel is about forty feet in diameter and in the center is an altar, where the priests of the tribe performed their incantations. From the altar or hub on the wheel there radiates at intervals, spokes made of stone, covered with inscriptions. - 1902 Aug 3, Star Tribune
1910 - Indian Shrine Discovered by Prospectors in Wyoming Mountains
Basin, Mont, Jan 8 – One of the most remarkable monuments left by a prehistoric people has just been discovered in the Big Horn mountain, near this place by mining prospectors. The monument, which is known as the “Medicine Wheel,” is looked upon by the Indians as sacred and is held in the utmost awe and veneration by all tribes of the central mountainous country.
The “Medicine Wheel” is a giant stone wheel built on the flat top of Medicine mountain. It is laid out symmetrically and is built of great granite boulders so placed as to form a perfect wheel with spokes eight feet long. At the center is a great rocky hub
For years the whites have known that somewhere on Medicine mountain the Indians had a sacred altar or monument of some kind, but so zealously has the object been guarded that no white man ever knew the character or the location of the Indians’ holy place. The red med always refused to talk to the whites on the subject and it was only by chance that the prospectors came upon the great stone wheel and made a snapshot picture of the object.
The identity of the builders of the “Medicine Wheel” is as unknown to the Indians as to the whites. The only tradition possessed by the Indians concerning the wheel is that it was built by the gods themselves and is to remain as a sacred object to the end of the world. Medicine mountain, so named by the Indians for the reason that it was to its rocky slopes that the Indians went for the “medicine” or charm which was to protect them through life, has long been known among the Indians as the home of the Great Spirit, and for generations these Indians have camped around the great wheel while engaged in the mystic rites and ceremonies of making Indian “medicine.” No Indian would pilot a white man to the mystery and only chance brought the two prospectors to the place of the “Medicine Wheel.” -- 1910 Jan 8, The Republic
1902 Aug 2, The Minneapolis Journal |
1902 Aug 3, Star Tribune |
1910 Jan 8, The Republic |
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