The Devils Tower in Wyoming is a Place of Great Significance to American Indians And It’s The First United States National Monument
Devils Tower (Matȟó Thípila or Ptehé Ǧí in the Lakota language, meaning “Bear Lodge” and “Brown Buffalo Horn”) is a laccolithic butte composed of igneous rock in the Bear Lodge Mountains, which are part of the Black Hills in Crook Country in Wyoming.
As the magma cooled, hexagonal columns formed. Photo Credit
Once hidden below the earth’s surface, erosion has stripped away the softer rock layers, revealing the Tower. The oldest rocks visible were laid down in a shallow sea during the Triassic period, 225 to 195 million years ago. Piles of broken columns, boulders, small rocks, and stones lie at the base of the tower, indicating that it was once wider than it is today.
The stone pillar is about 1, 000 feet in diameter at the bottom and 275 feet at the top. Photo Credit
Many Indian tribes over America consider the site to be sacred. Today, more than 20 tribes (Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, Shoshone etc.) have established ties to the tower, and many groups visit the site to perform traditional ceremonies every day.
The landscape surrounding Devils Tower is composed mostly of sedimentary rocks. Photo Credit
All of the tribes have many different stories about the Tower. For example, according to the Kiowa and Lakota tribes, a group of girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them.
Wyoming is an incredible place and Devils Tower is part of what makes it like no other place on earth. Photo Credit
They climbed atop a rock and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Then the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach them. The bears left deep claw marks in an effort to climb the rock. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into stars.
The Monument’s boundary encloses an area of 1, 347 acres. Photo Credit
The name “Devil’s Tower” originated in 1875 when a misinterpretation from Colonel Richard Irving Dodge’s expedition somehow translated the native name as “Bad God’s Tower”. Actually, the formation had many names, “Bear Lodge” and “Brown Buffalo Horn” are the most well known, but there are more – Bear’s Tipi, Bear’s Liar, Tree Rock, and Grizzly Bear Lodge.
In 1977, the formation was used as a plot element in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Photo Credit
On September 24, 1906, Devils Tower was declared the first United States National Monument by president Theodore Roosevelt.
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