Religious and Cultural Significance

The site is sacred to many Native nations including the Arapaho, Bannock, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Crow, Kootenai-Salish, Plains Cree, Shoshone, Sioux. No single nation claims the wheel as theirs. Contemporary Native American religious and traditional use areas at Medicine Wheel/Medicine Mountain include “ceremonial staging areas, medicinal and ceremonial plant-gathering areas, sweat lodge sites, altars, offering locales, and recent vision-quest enclosures.”¹

Prayer materials attached to the Medicine Wheel fence (Photo: Djonson5, CCSA).

The Crow Tribe and Blackfeet Nation both have oral histories about the construction of the Medicine Wheel. One Crow story says that Burnt Face fasted at the Wheel to heal his face. A Blackfeet story of this same nature tells of Scar Face who, long ago, traveled to the Medicine Wheel and his scar was healed. Scar Face also received instructions on how to direct the sun dance and how to build a sweat house while at the Wheel and then carried the information back to his tribe, the Blackfeet.²

In addition to these stories, various Native American peoples affiliate the Medicine Wheel with prominent chiefs. The last hereditary chief of the Mountain Crow tribe and a prominent statesman in the 19th and 20th centuries, Plenty Coups, supposedly fasted at the Wheel. Oral tradition states that he once fasted there with Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, one of the most famous 19th-century Native American chiefs. Another 19th-century chief, Chief Washakie of the Eastern Shoshone, is said to have acquired his power at Medicine Wheel with the Crow sometimes joining him in prayer.³