Deer Medicine Rocks, Lame Deer, MT

Of the many mysterious landmarks in Indian Country, few elicit the sacred grandeur of the Creator like Deer Medicine Rocks.  The beauty and awe-inspiring natural design of Deer Medicine Rocks cannot be denied.  Nor can the spiritual power emanating from its presence on the landscape.  A natural landmark located in Northern Cheyenne Country along the Rosebud Creek in Montana and largely unchanged for millenia, it is also the historical location of the Lakota Sundance of 1876.

Deer Medicine Rocks is the first National Historic Landmark designated for its association with the Great Sioux War that is not a battlefield, and the first to provide a distinctly native view of the campaign.

Deer Medicine Rocks is located on the west bank of Rosebud Creek. The rocks are formed out of a sandstone promontory originally part of the hills that rise west of the creek, with erosive forces removing the intervening material. The formation rises about 50 feet (15 m) above the surrounding terrain. The surfaces at its base have numerous rock art panels.

Petroglyphs and pictographs cover the sandstone cliffs of Deer Medicine Rocks, some of which may date to two thousand years ago. People, animals, designs, and inanimate objects cover all sides of the monolith. They include shield-bearing warriors etched long before horses arrived on the plains, horses and riders, tepees, elk, deer, mountain sheep, bears and bear paws, horse tracks, and guns. The exact origins of most of these images are unknown. Some of them resemble Shoshone petroglyphs in the Great Basin region; others resemble the images on Lakota winter counts. Still other evidence points to the makers being Crow and Cheyenne. Several of the designs, including turtles, lizards, v-necked humans, and bisected circles and circles containing dots are Cheyenne and Lakota religious symbols. Interpretations of actual designs differ, but in accordance with Cheyenne theology the rocks with their ever-changing visions of life and the future continuously affect people throughout the world. The site’s most famous pictograph, and the reason Deer Medicine Rocks is recognized as a National Historic Landmark, records a vision that came to Hunkpapa Lakota holy man Sitting Bull during a sun dance held in June 1876, approximately two weeks before the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The vision showed U.S. soldiers tumbling into the tribes’ camp, upside down. Then he heard a voice: “I give you these because they have no ears.” Sitting Bull interpreted this to mean that the “blue coats” would attack in great numbers, without strategy or understanding, and that his people would prevail.

Equally as fascinating, though almost unknown, is the depiction of a warrior being bayoneted in the back by a soldier. That pictograph is reputably the work of Crazy Horse and the image the premonition of his death a year later at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

Lame Deer is the administrative seat of the Northern Cheyenne Nation.

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