12-SacredMedicineWheel-Photos

Photos

The sacred reality of the stone Spirit Wheel high above the Bighorn Basin on Medicine Mountain began with the wisdom of one man who carried a spirit wheel lance in 500 BC and led his people from the darkness to the light. Thirteen hundred and eighty six years later, the so-called Great Sioux War began in 1876 with a surprise attack on a predominantly Cheyenne village on the Powder River. Old Brave Wolf was blind, and his daughter, Elbow Woman, sat him upon a horse she then led from the village on a rein. The three made conspicuous targets, but though bullets whined and crackled around them, they walked away unscathed. Across his lap Old Brave Wolf had rested his spirit wheel lance, which became his eyes in that darkness and rendered the soldiers sightless. The spirit in the wheel was alive and long since had been called into the wheel.

Amongst the Ancient and the Old Ones were those who knew this gift. A spirit, it seems, was called into the wheel of stone on Medicine Mountain and there it still lives and breathes, so still they come, not knowing why, from the four corners of the earth to touch something of that time long ago that still lives within them.