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Walters Art Museum (Baltimore/Maryland/USA)
Medicine Wheels
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Medicine Wheels
Majorville Medicine Wheel
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Medicine Wheels
Medicine Wheel in Wyoming
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Medicine Wheels
Medicine Wheel in Wyoming
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Medicine Wheels
Pictograph at Writing on Stone Provincial Park
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Medicine Wheels
Sundial Hill
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Medicine Wheels
Wanuskewin Heritage Park
By Dennis Begin
As a young teenager, my father insisted on visiting the Sundial Hill Medicine Wheel east of Carmangay, Alberta. This ‘educational trip’ meant driving forever, or so it seemed, through a barren prairie landscape only to find two circles of rocks on top of an isolated hill. My father explained that the medicine wheels were a mystery, and built at roughly the same time as Stonehenge, and prior to the Egyptian pyramids.
The term ‘medicine wheel’ was first used by Europeans in an area called the Northern Plains and applied to the approximately one hundred circles of stones found from Alberta to Wyoming. The exact total is not known, as many medicine wheels have been vandalized and the rocks stolen. In Alberta there are fourteen recognized sites and eight in Saskatchewan, although there are many partial sites spread across the prairies. The most famous medicine wheel is found in the Big Horn Mountains near Sheridan, Wyoming.
Medicine wheels are usually located on top of a hill, using rocks from the surrounding area. The diameter of the medicine wheels range from 7.5 to 25 m (25-80 ft). In the center of the circle is a cairn of rocks and spokes radiating outwards like a wagon wheel. The major spokes indicate the four cardinal directions. Some of these medicine wheels date back 5,000 years, well before the arrival of our present indigenous people and were constructed by pre-history nomadic plains tribes. As for the purpose of the medicine wheels, there is no consensus on their purpose among archaeologists, as they could serve spiritual, ceremonial and/or celestial functions. The medicine wheels could be a metaphor for the circle of life or the center of their universe, a 360 degree view of their known world. Europeans realized the medicine wheels were a sacred place that appeared to give spiritual guidance and inner strength.
They can function as a large sundial. The central cairn and spokes are sometimes aligned to mark the equinox and solstice, sunrises and sunsets, as well as phrases of the moon and position of certain stars. The twenty eight spokes represent the twenty eight days of the lunar month. Many other cultures, from the Anasazi Pueblo People in the American Southwest, to the Maya in Mexico have used some form of a sundial to track time. In Canada, the same lunar phenomenon occurs at the Sundial Medicine Wheel [Carmangay, Alberta], as well as Moose Mountain [Carlyle, Saskatchewan] and Majorville [Bassano, Alberta]. The medicine wheels were used as a monthly calendar, assisting with decisions from when to move, to when to hunt.
Other explanations do exist about the purpose of the medicine wheels, as they could have been used as boundary markers, navigational or directional aids or just rock art that was patterned after the stars. Although medicine wheels have existed for thousands of years, both astronomers and archaeologists continue to research the wheels in hope of solving the mystery.
For more information on early aboriginal life, visit the Wanuskewin Heritage Park just northeast of Saskatoon. The Opimihaw Creek appears to have been a central visiting area for the Northern Plain peoples, with pottery fragments, spear and arrowheads, animal bones, plant seeds, and remnants of a medicine wheel.