Devil's Tower

Our first view of Devil's Tower.  A big storm was coming on the horizon.

As we got closer, we could not believe how big it was!

You could see where rocks had fallen off the side of the tower and I wondered where the rocks were.  After you walked closer, you found a field of rocks at the base.

When you look at it up close, it looks like cement columns.  This would be the west side of the tower.  Notice that the ribs look square.

The ribs on the east side looked rounded.  If you click on the pictures, you can enlarge them.

I wonder if the weather out of the north west has something to do with the shapes.

As you can see, the tower is a sacred place for many American Indians.  The Park requests that people do not climb the tower during the month of June as the Indians hold their ceremonies in June.  They hang prayer bundles from the trees.

The Indians are trying to get the name of Devil's Tower changed to Bear Lodge.  When the white man came into the area, they wanted to discourage them from coming to the tower so they told them evil spirits lived there.  The white man began calling it "Devil's Tower." 

 The story goes that the Indians were camped near a river and seven Indian girls were playing at a distance. A bear began to chase the girls.  They ran back toward their village, but the bear was about to catch them.  The girls jumped upon a rock about three feet high and began to pray to the rock, "Rock, take pity on us; Rock, save us." The rock heard the pleas of the young girls and began to elongate itself upwards, pushing them higher and higher out of reach of the bear.  The bear clawed and jumped at the sides of the rock, and broke its claws and fell to the ground.  The bear continued to jump at the rock until the girls were pushed up into the sky, where they are to this day in a group of seven little stars. The marks of the bear claws are there yet.  The rock is 865 feet high.

We drove into the campground to check it out and we saw a sculpture.  Mike thought it was a sharks mouth/jaw.  I thought it looked like calamari.  We were both wrong. It is a circle of sacred smoke. I called Mike over to take a picture. The bench is perfectly center so that the sculpture made a perfect frame for the Tower.

We saw several wild animals.  The prairie dogs are quite fat.  We saw many deer and even a turkey!