Medicine wheels arepetroforms or circular formations of rocks on the land. Historically, most medicine wheels followed a similar pattern of a central circle or cluster of stones, surrounded by an outer ring of stones, along with spokes radiating from the center out to the surrounding ring. Often, but not always, the spokes may be aligned to thecardinal directions (East, South, West, and North). In other cases, some stones may be aligned with astronomical phenomena. Thesestone structures may be called "medicine wheels" by theIndigenous nation which built them, or by more specific names in that nation's language.
Physical medicine wheels made of stone have been constructed by many differentIndigenous cultures in North America, notably many of thePlains nations. The structures are associated withNative American andIndigenous Canadianreligious ceremonies.
TheRoyal Alberta Museum (2005) holds that the term "medicine wheel" was first applied to theBig Horn Medicine Wheel inWyoming, the southernmost archeological wheel still extant.[1] The term "medicine" was not necessarily applied because of any healing associated with that medicine wheel, but denotes the sacred site and rock formations' importance and their religious, hallowed, and spiritual significance.[1]
Intentionally erecting massive stone structures assacred architecture is a well-documented activity of ancientmonolithic andmegalithic peoples.
TheRoyal Alberta Museum posits the possible point of origin, or parallel tradition, to other round structures such as thetipi lodge, stones used as "foundation stones" or "tent-pegs":
Scattered across the plains of Alberta are tens of thousands of stone structures. Most of these are simple circles of cobble stones which once held down the edges of the famous tipi of thePlains Indians; these are known as "tipi rings." Others, however, were of a more esoteric nature. Extremely large stone circles – some greater than 12 meters across – may be the remains of specialceremonial dance structures. A few cobble arrangements form the outlines of human figures, most of them obviously male. Perhaps the most intriguing cobble constructions, however, are the ones known as medicine wheels.[1]
 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Medicine wheel" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Stone medicine wheels are sited throughout the northernUnited States and southernCanada,[2] specificallySouth Dakota,Wyoming,Montana,Alberta andSaskatchewan. The majority of the approximately 70 documented stone structures still extant are inAlberta, Canada.
One of the prototypical medicine wheels is in theBighorn National Forest inBig Horn County, Wyoming. This 75-foot-diameter (23 m) wheel has 28 spokes, and is part of a vast set of old Native American sites that document 7,000 years of their history in that area.[3]
Medicine wheels are also found inOjibwa territory, the common theory is that they were built by the prehistoric ancestors of theAssiniboine people.
Larger astronomical and ceremonialpetroforms, andHopewellmound building sites are also found in North America.
| This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Medicine wheel" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(July 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
In defining the commonalities among different stone medicine wheels, theRoyal Alberta Museum cites the definition given by John Brumley, an archaeologist fromMedicine Hat, that a medicine wheel "consists of at least two of the following three traits: (1) a central stonecairn, (2) one or moreconcentricstone circles, and/or (3) two or more stone lines radiating outward from a central point."[1]
From the air, a medicine wheel often looks like a wagon wheel lying on its side. The wheels can be large, reaching diameters of 75 feet.
The most common variation between different wheels are the spokes. There is no set number of spokes for a medicine wheel to have although there are usually 28, the same number of days in a lunar cycle. The spokes within each wheel are rarely evenly spaced, or even all the same length. Some medicine wheels will have one particular spoke that is significantly longer than the rest. The spokes may start from the center cairn and go out only to the outer ring, others go past the outer ring, and some spokes start at the outer ring and go out from there.
Sometimes there is a passageway, or a doorway, in the circles. The outer ring of stones will be broken, and there will be a stone path leading in to the center of the wheel. Some have additional circles around the outside of the wheel, sometimes attached to spokes or the outer ring, and sometimes floating free of the main structure.
While alignment with the cardinal directions is common, some medicine wheels are also aligned with astronomical phenomena involving the Sun, Moon, some stars, and some planets in relation to the Earth's horizon at that location. The wheels are generally considered to be sacred sites, connected in various ways to the builders' particular culture, lore and ceremonial ways.
Other North American Indigenous peoples have made somewhat-similarpetroforms, turtle-shaped stone piles with the legs, head, and tail pointing out the directions and aligned with astronomical events.
Stone medicine wheels have been built and used for ceremonies for millennia, and each one has enough unique characteristics and qualities that archaeologists have encountered significant challenges in determining with precision what each one was for.
One of the older wheels, theMajorville medicine wheel located south ofBassano, Alberta, has been dated at 3200 BCE (5200 years ago) by carefulstratification of known artifact types.[4][5] LikeStonehenge, it had been built up by successive generations who would add new features to the circle. Due to that and its long period of use (with a gap in its use between 3000 and 2000 years ago), archaeologists believe that the function of the medicine wheel changed over time.[6]
AstronomerJohn Eddy put forth the suggestions that some of the wheels had astronomical significance, where spokes on a wheel could be pointing to certain stars, as well as sunrise or sunset, at a certain time of the year, suggesting that the wheels were a way to mark certain days of the year.[7] In a paper for the Journal for the History of Astronomy ProfessorBradley Schaefer stated that the claimed alignments for three wheels studied, theBighorn medicine wheel, one at Moose Mountain in southeasternSaskatchewan, and one at Fort Smith, Montana, there was no statistical evidence for stellar alignments.[8]
Joe Stickler ofValley City State University, North Dakota, with the assistance of his students, began the construction of Medicine Wheel Park in 1992. The Park showcases twosolar calendars: "a horizon calendar (the medicine wheel) and a meridian or noontime calendar."[9] According to the Medicine Wheel website, the "large circle measures 213 feet (approximately 65 meters) around. The 28 spokes radiating from its center represent the number of days in the lunar cycle. Six spokes extending well beyond the Wheel are aligned to the horizon positions of sunrises and sunsets on the first days of the four seasons."[9]
The medicine wheel has been adapted into a visualsymbol, with associated correspondences and meanings, bypretendianHyemeyohsts Storm, who first published his invention in 1972.[10][11][12][13] It has been adopted as a visual icon and teaching tool by a number ofpan-Indian groups, as well as Native groups whose ancestors did not traditionally use medicine wheels as a structure.[14][15][10][11][12] It has also beenmisappropriated by non-Indigenous people, usually those associated withNew Age communities, who have often added additional elements from non-Native cultures.[16]
Successive groups of people added new layers of rock, and some of their arrowheads, from that time until the coming of Europeans to Alberta. Curiously, the site does not seem to have been used between about 3,000 and 2,000 years ago. Archaeologists do not know when the spokes and surrounding circle were constructed, or even if they were constructed at the same time. The long period of use and construction of the central cairn at the Majorville Wheel suggests that such sites may have served different functions over the years.
| Topics | |
|---|---|
| Lists by state |
|
| Lists by insular areas | |
| Lists by associated state | |
| Other areas | |
| Lists of specific structure types | |
| Related | |
44°49′34″N107°55′19″W / 44.826°N 107.922°W /44.826; -107.922
