Thanks in large part to the movie industry and “wild west” novels, when most people around the world think of American Indians, they most likely picture the Plains Indians — the Crow, Cheyenne, Sioux, Comanche, Kiowa, Blackfoot, Pawnee just to mention some of the tribes. We imagine skillful riders charging on horses; hunting buffalo; or colorfully dressed people sitting and dancing around large campfires with majestic tipi’s in the background. We are impressed with their ef

I recently had the privilege of visiting the Medicine Wheel atop Bighorn Mountain in Wyoming. It is the first time I have gotten to see the site although I have written several articles on it. The unusual formation of white stones originally attracted my attention as a possible archaeoastronomical site when astronomer John Eddy studied the formation and came to the conclusion that the spokes of the wheel could have been used to determine the summer solstice and other major

Americas migrated here starting around 40,000 years ago. Most are believed to have arrived by crossing over from Russia to Alaska. At one point, this region was covered in ice enabling the migrations across a land bridge. Later the migrations were by boats. Recent fossils in New Mexico suggest that some migrations also arrived here from Europe by crossing via Iceland and Greenland. A small group may have even crossed over from Easter Island and the Polynesian islands. Th

By 1840, relocation of the Cherokee people from their homelands to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi was complete. James Mooney spent 36 years at the Bureau of American Ethnology living with the Cherokee and working with the elders and the old medicine men and women recording their stories, myths, sacred formulas and customs. His volumes are probably the best collection of the old Cherokee culture remaining. But, even while he was saving these myths and customs, the