Sacred architecture is well documented around the world, but is of rare and little known existence in the U.S. West. More common to the Great Plains, medicine wheels were used by native cultures in ceremony and ritual to symbolize the cycles of life, growth, death and regeneration.
University efforts to document the first Native American medicine wheels ever reported in Oregon will be featured on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s “Oregon Field Guide” television program at 8:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 23. The medicine wheels were discovered in an area frequently visited by the Northern Paiute, a group of Native Americans that lived in Oregon, northeastern California, northern Nevada, Idaho and southern Washington.
In 2007, Oregon Bureau of Land Management (BLM) archaeologists discovered two large circles in the Stinkingwater Mountains of southeastern Oregon. The BLM contacted University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History archaeologist, Patrick O’Grady, who began leading field teams to the site to survey and record their formation and function. The UO’s Archaeology Field School, led by O’Grady, first surveyed the site in 2008. Survey work continued in 2009 and 2010 using an innovative combination of helium balloons and cameras to take aerial photographs leaving the structures undisturbed. Aerial photography and 3-D software technology has enabled the team to digitally recreate the space creating a compelling nomination for the site’s inclusion in the National Register.
Their work documents two large circular stone formations. One measures 80 feet in diameter and the other 60 feet in diameter. The two are 600 feet apart with lichen growth on the stones, which are slightly misshapen by wind, water, and the passing of time. The larger of the two circles is subtle. The smaller is more distinct and sits in a kind of protected amphitheater. O’Grady and his team are not sure who built the medicine wheels, but they are certain that the sacred hoops are between 110 and 340 years old. Other prehistoric artifacts such as obsidian points help them to date the stone structures. Other excavations at Lost Dune, near Malheur Lake add evidence to the historical record of travelers to the area in the late pre-historic period.
The Stinkingwater Mountains, east of Burns, Oregon are known to have played a significant role in the seasonal migrations of the Northern Paiute or Numa. The Northern Paiute spanned territories in northeastern California, northern Nevada, Idaho, southern Washington and Oregon east of the Cascades. A hearty, well adapted dessert people, the Paiute visited the Stinkingwater Mountains in early spring for respite from the scarcity of winter. Spring in the mountains brought root crops and seeds, a large part of the Paiute diet. The mountains were one of the first places in the season to find fresh green shoots of bitterroot and Indian carrot.
The UO’s Archaeology Field School was established in 1937 by Luther Cressman, the father of Oregon archaeology. Cressman is most known for discovering the famous Fort Rock sandals in 1938 – 10,000 year old shoes that provide evidence of human occupancy in the Great Basin region much earlier than originally thought. A third-degree Duck, having received his BS, MS and PhD at the UO, Patrick O’Grady was a Field School student in 1994 and now leads summer field sessions on northern great basin prehistory to continue Cressman’s work. “The ongoing research of the field school’s Northern Great Basin Prehistory Project emphasizes reconstruction of past lifeways, paleoclimatic investigations, and human responses to changing environmental conditions.” The survey of rare medicine wheels will help to build the archaeological record of the area. “While we may never know exactly which cultural group might have been responsible for the stone circles,” O’Grady says, “their rarity in this region deserves a level of protection that will guard them for future study.”