August 2018 - Sneak Peek

story:
It appears that a Cheyenne decided
to sleep at the base of the monolith
next to the head of a buffalo. In
the morning he found that the Great
Spirit had transported both him and
the buffalo head to the top of the
rock. As there was no easy way down
he had no option but to spend another
day and night on the rock without
food and water. After a day of prayer
asking for deliverance, he awoke the
following day to find that the Great
Spirit had brought him back down to
the ground, but left the buffalo head
at the top of the tower near its edge.
Wooden Leg maintains that the buffalo
head was clearly visible through
a spyglass, which the old man happened
to have in his possession. In
their camps, the Northern Cheyenne
would always have a sacred teepee
in honor of the Great Spirit, and the
sacred object in this teepee was the
head of a buffalo.
European American fur trappers
probably visited Devils Tower, but
they left no written evidence. The
first documented European American
visitors were a military detachment under the command
of Lieutenant Henry Maynadier. They were part of the 1859
expedition to the Upper Yellowstone region led by Captain
William Franklin Reynolds (1820-1894) of the United States
Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. Sixteen years later
in 1875, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge (1827-1895) escorted
an Office of Indian Affairs scientific survey party to
the massive rock formation. As was often the case with such
expeditions, Dodge’s interpreter was somewhat less than linguistically
competent and clumsily rendered the name of the
monolith as “Bad God’s Tower.” There was no going back, and
it was soon called “Devil’s Tower.” In 1890, the apostrophe
was dropped, and it became Devils Tower.
In February 1890, local artist Charles “Chas” Graham
tried to prevent the tower and the surrounding area from
falling into the hands of private entrepreneurs. To that end
he filed a pre-emption application for the lands on which
the tower is situated. In August of the same year, the General
Land Office issued an order to reject all applications on
these lands, thus forestalling attempts to acquire the tower for
speculative and other purposes.
Meanwhile, support grew for the idea of preserving the
tower as a national or state park. In February 1892, Senator
Francis E. Warren (1844-1929) of Wyoming wrote to the
commissioner of the General Land Office asking him for assistance
in preventing the spoliation of Devils Tower and the
Devils Tower Bear Legend, showing Mato, the bear,
by Herbert Alexander Collins, hangs at the Devils
Tower Visitor Center. Collins was born in Canada
but emigrated to Nebraska in 1884, spending the
rest of his life in the U.S. The painting is also known
unofficially as “How the Bear Lost His Claws.”
(Image courtesy of Devils Tower Visitor Center.)
Little Missouri Buttes, located several
miles to the northeast. Several
weeks later, the land office issued an
order under the Forest Reserve Act
of March 31, 1891, setting aside some
60.5 square miles, which included
both the tower and the Little Missouri
Buttes as a temporary forest reserve.
This reserve was reduced in size
in June 1892, and the unreserved
portion was restored to settlement in
1898. In the same year, Senator Warren
introduced a bill (S. 3364) for
the establishment of Devils Tower
National Park. Acting on the advice
of the General Land Office, the senator
requested in his proposal that
18.75 square miles or 11,974.24 acres,
which include both Devils Tower and
the Little Missouri Buttes, be set aside
for the park. The bill, which was introduced
on July 1, 1892, was read
twice by its title and referred to the
Committee on Territories, where it
remained.
The necessary impetus for legislation
was a result of a tour of the
Southwest undertaken by Iowa Congressman
John Fletcher Lacey (1841-
1913), who chaired the House Committee on Public Lands,
and archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett (1865-1946) to investigate
the depredations of “pot hunters” on prehistoric Native
American ruins. This led to a bill that gave the president the
right to establish national monuments by means of a proclamation.
The bill became the Antiquities Act of 1906 (Public Law
59-209), also known as the Lacey Act, which authorized the
president to proclaim historical landmarks, historic and prehistoric
structures and other objects of historic and/or scientific
interest on land owned or controlled by the government,
to be preserved for the enjoyment of all. This legislation was
prompted by the concern that many of these sites were being
damaged by tourists and, more importantly, in danger of being
destroyed by the incursion of enterprises such as those
undertaking strip mining.
President Roosevelt signed the Act on June 8, 1906, and
moved quickly. Within the space of three years a number of
national monuments were established. Of these, nine became
national parks or were given another status, and others were
transferred to state control or eventually disbanded. In addition
to the Devils Tower National Monument, Roosevelt
gave the national monument status in 1906 to El Morro
(New Mexico), Montezuma Castle (Arizona); in 1907 to Gila
Cliff Dwellings (New Mexico), Tonto (Arizona); in 1908 to
Jewel Cave (South Dakota), Muir Wood (California), Natu-
772 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / AUGUST 2018