On the Big Horn Medicine Wheel: A Comment on Matthew Liebmann, Plains Anthr...

On the Big Horn Medicine Wheel: A Comment on Matthew Liebmann, Plains Anthr...
David Vogt

David Vogt in Stone-Age Astronomy

Copied from Stone-Age Astronomy on 17 Mar 2009

Title:
On the Big Horn Medicine Wheel: A Comment on Matthew Liebmann, Plains Anthropologist 47-180: 61-71.
Authors:
Schlesier, Karl H.
Source:
Plains Anthropologist; Nov2002, Vol. 47 Issue 183, p387, 6p
Document Type:
Article
Subject Terms:
*SUN dance
*CHEYENNE Indians
MEDICINE Wheel National Historic Landmark (Wyo.)
Geographic Terms:
WYOMING
UNITED States
Abstract:
The Big Horn Medicine Wheel, often considered as "shrouded in mystery," has been interpreted as a depiction of a Sun Dance lodge on a horizontal plane, and as a place for vision-seeking. There should be no quarrel with the latter proposition. The first proposition, however, is erroneous. The tribes near the location of the Big Horn Wheel in prehistoric and historic times included the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Kiowa, and Kiowa Apache. These tribes did not have "Sun Dances" but major ceremonies with names different and no emphasis on sun worship. The exception is the Shoshone, who adopted a Sun Dance between 1800 and 1820. The lodge structures of the ceremonies of these tribes, investigated here in detail, in no way reflect the feature of the Wheel. The author explains the Wheel as a depiction, on a horizontal plane, of the Cheyenne Massaum lodge. This lodge, in which the secret part of the ceremony was held, was a closed tipi with a frame based on 28 poles. The Wheel, in addition, is here seen as a Cheyenne oxzem, a spirit wheel, as a territorial marker directed to the spirits of the world above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
 
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