Friday, September 24, 2004

The Lost Gold of Devils Tower

Near the northeast corner of Wyoming is a striking mountain of igneous rock that looks like a gigantic tree-stump. A tree stump over a thousand feet high. Columns run vertically up the top part of the rock like giant scratches. The name given to the mountain by the white man was "Devils Tower." The Indians had many names for it. One of them was "Bear Lodge."Because it is so unusual in its appearance the tower has figured into many Native American legends and in 1977 it was used as the location for the finale of Steven Speilberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.Perhaps the most widely-known legend the Native Americans had about the tower was told by the Kiowa: There were seven girls playing near their village when they were chased by some bears. The girls jumped on a low rock and called to it "Rock, take pity on us, rock save us!" The rock heard them and grew up towards the sky. The bears jumped at the rock scratching it, but they could not climb it. The rock took the girls so high that they became stars. A constellation we now call the Plediades.There is one story, though, that does not deal with the creation of the rock but what is below it. Years ago a resident of that part northeast Wyoming visited Yankton, South Dakota. While there, he showed a picture of Devils Tower to some elderly Sioux Indians he met. One of them got very excited when he saw the picture.

Devil's Tower Hijinx

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