Medicine wheel: Encyclopedia II - Medicine wheel - History

Medicine wheel - History

Erecting massive stone structures is a well-documented activity of ancient man, from the Egyptian pyramids to Stonehenge, and the natives of Northern America are no different in this regard. What does separate them from the rest is how non-intrusive their structures were. Unlike the usual towering stone monoliths, the natives simply laid down lots of stones on the earth in certain arrangements. One of the more obtuse arrangements is the medicine wheel.

Medicine wheels appear all over northern United States and southern Canada, specifically South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Most of the wheels have been found in Alberta. In all over 70 medicine wheels have been found.

One of the prototypical medicine wheels is in Big Horn County, Wyoming. This 75 foot diameter 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki