August 2018 - Sneak Peek

Butte” and “Ghost Mountain.” Because the religious world of
the Shoshones is secret, the name they used is not available.
According to both the Kiowas and Lakotas, bears attacked
seven little girls playing at a distance from their campsite.
The terrified girls, failing to outrun their pursuers, find
themselves dangerously marooned on a small rock. One of
them prays to the rock to save them. The kindly rock takes
pity and begins to extend itself upwards, pushing the children
higher and higher until they are out of the range of the furious
bears. The bears jump at them, daggering their enormous
claws into the ever rising rock, breaking their claws and falling
back upon the ground. The rock continues to push the
children upward into the sky, where they are transformed
into the open star cluster called the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades.
The deep indentations left by the bears’ claws can still
be seen on the tower.
According to the Sioux, Mato, a huge bear equipped with
claws the size of teepee poles, spots two boys wandering far
from their village. Mato thinks the boys would make a good
addition to his breakfast. He is almost upon them when the
boys beseech Wakan Tanka, the Creator of the universe,
to help them. The obliging Creator raises a huge rock that
emerges from the Earth. A frustrated Mato, unable to climb
the ever-rising tower, leaves huge scratch marks on its side.
Wanblee, the eagle, helps the boys off the rock and flies them
to their village. A painting depicting this legend by landscape
painter and portraitist Herbert Alexander Collins (1865-
1937) hangs over the fireplace in the Devils Tower Visitor
Center.
In a Cheyenne version of the story, the giant bear pursues
a group of girls. Only two succeed in escaping from his enormous
jaws. With the bear still in deadly pursuit, they manage
to reach home. They tell two boys that the bear can only be
killed with an arrow shot through the underside of its foot.
The girls lead the bear to Devils Tower and trick it into thinking
they have climbed the rock. The boys attempt to shoot the
bear through the foot as it repeatedly attempts to climb the
rock to get at the girls. Each time it slides back down, leaving
more claw marks. The bear is finally scared off when an arrow
comes very close to its left foot. This last arrow continues to
ascend to the heavens and never returns to Earth.
Wooden Leg, a Northern Cheyenne, related another story,
which he said an old man told him around 1866 to 1868,
when their travels took them past Devils Tower. Here is his
Press sheet. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, National Postal Museum.
AUGUST 2018 / AMERICAN PHILATELIST 771