It’s been quite a serendipitous day. I was biking from Sundance, Wyoming to Devil’s Tower, a mountain famous for its incredible shape and a controversy between American Indians and rock climbers. As I was headed down the highway, a car slowed and asked where I was going. You know who it was? Rebekah Kelley, one of the very, very few people who actually live at the monument.
She offered me a ride. No one has ever offered me a ride while I was riding my bike before on this trip. Sure, cars have offered to pick me up when I looked haggard and tired, walking my bike up a huge incline (I’m not Superman) or taking a water break. But she pulled over while I was moving. And I was the first “hitchhiker” she ever picked up. (My thumb was nestled tightly against the handlebars, so I don’t consider myself a real hitchhiker.)
She took me to the Devil’s Tower Lodge, which is barely off park property and is the home base for many of the climbers who come to the monument to scale its vertical surface. In case you don’t know what Devil’s Tower is, it’s the flat-topped volcanic rock where aliens landed in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, back when Steven Spielberg made good movies:
I left the lodge almost immediately, eager to explore the park, when I met Frank Sanders, the proprietor of the lodge who has been climbing it for three and a half decades. He took a break from building a deck while I told him about what I was doing, and how Rebekah had invited me to stay for dinner. He asked me my thoughts about the controversy.
Basically, the issue is that many Native American tribes view the tower as sacred, and don’t want climbers to mar it with their activities. Climbers have many arguments to oppose this, ranging from not caring about its sacredness to invoking their own spiritual rights to the mountain. As a compromise, the majority of climbers have agreed not to climb in June, as many tribes come to offer prayers at that time. It began in 1995, and to put it in perspective, the park logged 1,293 climbers in June 1995. The next year there were only 193 climbers the same month. The park has no outright ban on climbing, as courts have seen that as an endorsement of religion on federal property.
But I’ll get more in-depth with the controversy later.
I told Frank what I knew about the issue, and relayed the information I had learned in grad school. I took a class on place-based spirituality at Northwestern, a lot of which dealt with American Indian faiths. We spent a lot of time talking about Devil’s Tower, watching videos and reading books, mostly which were not in favor of the climber’s side. After all, said many of the no-climbing advocates, no one can poke holes in Mount Rushmore or Scotts Bluff, so what’s wrong with adding one more mountain?
“Why can’t they just see that the mountain is sacred to many people in many ways?” he asked, crossing his arms.
I told him that I could see both sides, and that either way, no one’s going to be happy. If you want absolutely no climbing, than even one day of climbing a year won’t cut it. But if you want to climb as a spiritual practice, having an infringement because of someone else’s spirituality seems unjust. I said that I wasn’t here to take a definitive stance, just to see what the stances are of the people here.
He didn’t like that. “You have the master’s degree; you’re the expert,” he accused. “What’s your position.”
I said I didn’t know enough about it yet and literally headed for the hills before things got worse.
In the videos I watched in grad school, the park rangers always seemed on the side of the American Indians, and that really came through here. All around the park there were signs like this one, extolling the religious history of the place:
And inside the welcome center, there were whole dioramas about the subject:
They explained how many tribes have different names for this mountain, but almost all are a variation of the most well-known name, “Bear Lodge,” given by the Lakota. In fact, this was the original name on surveyor’s maps, before an American military expedition gave it its current name in 1873. American Indian groups have fought to have the monument renamed “Devil’s Tower National Monument at Bear Lodge,” but have been continuously battled against by locals, who say it would be “confusing” and a precursor for a “land grab.” (Apparently, people here are worried that American Indians will steal their land.)
A Kiowa legend about how this became known as Bear Lodge tells of a young girl who turned into a bear and killed everyone except for her little sister. When her brothers came back from hunting, they and the sister ran for safety. Along the way, the buffalo helped them by slowing the bear. Then, a flat rock grew out of the ground, with them on top. But the bear caught up, its great claws tearing the seams in the rock that make the tower unique. Finally, a tree helped them by carrying them into the sky, where they became a constellation chased by eternally by a bear.
The Park Service offers daily lectures on spirituality and the monument, and I could here one of the rangers explaining to a tourist about how she felt at the monument. “I can just feel the specialness of the place, as if I were in the center of the world,” she said. “It feels like everything stops here.”
The park’s placards never explicitly give an opinion of the Park Service, but it’s not too hard to glean. Check out these contrasting quotes by an American Indian and climber:
“It affects us psychologically and spiritually. … When people climb on this sacred butte and hammer metal objects into it, the butte is defiled and our worship is intruded upon. It is like they pounded something into our bodies.” – Arvol Looking Horse
“There is no place on Earth quite like Devil’s Tower. It has long been a magnet for nomadic tribesmen, traveling families, photographers, and of course climbers. This last group poses a problem, it seems, because they leave a class of admirers, turn ninety degrees to normalcy and actually lay hands on that brooding fortress of rock … [We] define our world not from postcards but from the sweat of our brows.” – Robert McGovern
The displayed expression hardly seem equal. The American Indian’s quote is emotive and sad, whereas the climber’s quote seems aggressive and unfeeling. Yet these are the ones they chose.
I want to say here how interesting it is that the climber points out that climbers are singled out because of their deeper ties to the land, the physical element. This is something very problematic. For centuries during colonialization and the early years of the United States, American Indian faith were not respected (surprise!). A lot of this comes from how different these faiths are from Judeo-Christianity.
When Judaism was founded, it was unique among the world’s religions because it was historical, rather than place-based. The Egyptians, the Romans, the Babylonians, and practically everyone else were worshipping gods of the rivers and the mountains, and had holidays based on the seasons. But the Jews’ god was not tied to the land, and they had holidays remembering historical events, with a lunar calendar that meant they could be any time of year.
To Christian conquers of the New World, to have sacred places that are natural, not historically significant, was weird and laughable. The dichotomy of the “uncivilized” earth-based religion with an “evolved” history-based one made it so much more easy to justify Manifest Destiny, or the idea that God ordained Western dominance.
For a climber to say that the Native Americans don’t understand their greater connection to the earth is a strange twist.
Anyhow, I went walking through the park for many hours, and took some amazing photos. Here’s an offering made by an American Indian:
These prayer bundles often contain sacred tobacco, sweet grass, and cedar, and are left year-round.
Here’s one of my favorite pics, a close-up of a tree that has been burned in one of the Park Service’s controlled fires, which thin the forest and prevent enormously destructive ones:
And here’s a close-up of the tower. You can see the hexagonal sides in the volcanic rock, which scientist believed were formed when the rock cooled and cracked:
Here is a sculpture recently erected by Junkyu Moto. Called “Circle Wind 2008: Circle of Sacred Smoke,” it’s part of the artist’s vision to have nine sculptures of peace all over the world. This is number four, as he already has one in Rome, one in India and one in Mexico. His vision is that every Sacred Tribal site in the world should have one of those to remind the people of peace and unity. What the nine “tribes” he has established, I don’t know:
And, lastly, here is a very stupid family feeding trail mix to prairie dogs in the nature reserve. You can’t see it, but they’re right next to a sign that says not to feed the dogs, as the salt in human food can kill them. Some people are just too dumb for words:
I made it back to the lodge right before sunset. Frank, the owner, barely appeared that night, and he didn’t say a word to me. I feel as though he is angry at me, probably because I didn’t answer his questions they way he wanted. But he has an amazing story, and I hope to speak with him tomorrow morning, as Rebekah invited me to to stay the night. I’ll write more about this place later. This post is long enough, anyhow.
