A Sacred Stone As Related To AB Welch

Standing Rock in Fort Yates, N.D. on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation.
Native American Sacred Stones And Holy Places
As Told To Col. A.B. Welch
FORT YATES, N.D. - The following comes from the papers of Col. A.B. Welch. The Welch papers are available online at Welch Dakota Papers.

Chapter II: Sacred Stones
Part 1, The Painted Rock

Many stories and legends are told among the old people of the North Dakota tribes and frequent allusions are made in these legends to a large rock, sometimes called “The Painted Rock,” situated in the country deserted by the Mandans and Arikara as the Sioux pressed northward, upon the North Fork of the Cannon Ball river, not far from Brisbane in Grant County, N.D.

This probably was the most revered object of all the stationary medicine, or holy, stones of the tribes which have held the country, including the Cheyenne and Sioux, during the last one-hundred and twenty-five or more years, and has been frequently consulted by many tribesmen who are still living.  It is known to the Sioux as the Iyan Wakan Gapi (Idol of the Holy Stone) and they call the river upon which it is situated Iyan Wakan Gapi Wakpa (River of the Idol of the Holy Stone).  This stream is marked upon maps as the Cannon Ball and Le Raye mentions it by that name in 1801.

Part 2, Reclining Bear's Story Of Standing Rock

Reclining Bear, an old time Hunkpapa Teton speaks as follows of the stone itself:

“I have been there.  Many people went there often.  The Palani went there too.”

Palani, or Padani, is a Sioux word properly applied to the Arikara.  While the Dakotah, or Sioux, have separate names for the Mandans and Hidatsa, or Gros Ventre, the term Palani is commonly used when speaking of these three northern tribes as a separate federated body.  When speaking of any of these tribes as a separate people, they use the name Mowahtani for the Mandans, Hewaktokta for the Gros Ventre and Palani for the Arikara.

Reclining Bear used the term in the general sense meaning the people of those three tribes.  Continuing, he said:

“This stone is a big one.  It is a little distance from the water of the Cannon Ball.  It is as big as a log house, where it stands.  It has many marks upon it.  The marks are made by the spirits.  When we came near to it, we sung songs and acted very respectfully then.  We camped on the water and not too near it.

Then when we were ready, some old man carried a pipe to it.  He carried the stem in both hands in front of his body.  He extended it toward the sky and toward the holy stone then.  There he sat down and smoked with four draws through it.  He placed the pipe there.  He poured out some tobacco there.  He sung a good song then.  He wanted plenty of buffalo and he wanted the people to live a long time.  He sung that way.  He went away from there.

The next day he went again.  When he went again there were other marks upon the stone.  Some good men would tell what they meant to the people.  Some times there was [sic] paint marks upon it.  The marks were made by spirits.

They were never the same marks like they were before.  It told us what to do.  It said when to strike the enemy.  It told where the buffalo had gone to.  If the people did like it said, they were all right.

One time it sung a song with words.  We saw an old woman walk into it one time.  She went right in it.  She was gone.  It is very holy.  It was there when we came across the Missouri.  I think it had been an Arikara stone.  I think they found it first.  The put things there, too [sic].  No one would strike an enemy around that place.  Every one was safe there.  There were always many presents there.  There were weapons and things to eat and valuable cloth on sticks.  There were buffalo heads there, too, for meat to come around.  It is very holy.  It is there yet.  I do not want to talk much about it.” 

Part 3, Offerings To Stones

The custom of placing offerings before certain stones was noticed by many of the early explorers.  There can be little doubt that Lewis and Clark, in 1804-05, while wintering with the Mandans at a point a few miles above the present city of Mandan, N.D., referred in their journals to this identical stone mentioned by old Reclining Bear.  Many of the traditions told today by members of the three Federated Tribes relate to this stone.  It is often mentioned as a sort of “Zero Milestone” when they endeavor to locate some point in the country, by saying that “It is a day’s journey by wagon from the Painted Stone on the Cannon Ball.”

Part 4, [Standing Rock] Holy Idol Stone Mentioned In Lewis & Clark Journals

“Thursday, 21st (February, 1805).  We had a continuation of the same pleasant weather.  Cheenaw and Shahaka came down to see us, and mentioned that several of their countrymen had gone to consult their medicine stone as to the prospects of the following year.  This medicine stone is the great oracle of the Mandans, and whatever it announces is believed with implicit confidence.  Every spring, and on some occasions during the summer, a deputation visits the sacred spot, where there is a thick porous stone twenty feet in  circumference, with a smooth surface.  Having reached the spot, the ceremony of smoking to it is performed by the deputies, who alternately take a whiff themselves and then present the pipe to the stone; after this they retire to an adjoining wood for the night, during which it may safely be presumed that all do not sleep; and in the morning they read the destinies of the nation in the white marks on the stone, which those who made them are at no loss to decipher.  The Minnitares (Hidatsa) have a stone of a similar kind, which has the same qualities and the same influence over the nation.  Captain Lewis returned from his excursion in pursuit of the Indians…”

Part 5, The Minnitari Stone

The “Medicine Stone – sacred oracle” mentioned by Lewis and Clark is none other than the Iyan Wakan Gapi of the Sioux on the Cannon Ball River.  The “Minnitari” stone spoken of, according to information given to the writer by living members of the Mandan and Hidatsa people, was a large, detached, granite boulder – - – which was in the Valley of the Middle Hole country, and a little ways from the river which flows there.  The Crying Hill Village people went there.  It was north of the water on a hill side.  It is gone now.  Some white man put powder in it and built a house with it.  It was a holy stone.  It belonged to the Hidatsa.  It had marks upon it like the one on the Cannon Ball.

They were marks of buffalo, birds and wolve’s feet.  They were different every time.  The old people knew how to read these marks.  It told them all about everything.  It is too bad that it is spoiled.

There was the other one in the Sioux country.  It was bigger than this Minnitari (Hidatsa) stone.  When we passed by there we smoked.  While we were close there, we were not attacked by anyone.  It was dangerous around there after we left the stone.  It was in the Sioux country.  When we left there we always rode clear to the Heart River before we stopped.   They could steal our horses then.  But between the Heart and the Cannon Ball it was dangerous country.  We were safe at the stone.  On the Heart we could keep watch and they could steal our horses if they were brave enough to come after them there.” 

Part 6, Stone Idol [Standing Rock] Creek Journey

The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Arikara villages on the Grand River in the early part of October, 1804, and those people desired that one of their chiefs would be permitted to accompany the boats to the Mandans for the purpose of concluding a peace parley.  Accordingly, the Chief of the upper village, by the name of Ahketahnasha (“Chief of the Village”) went aboard.  On the trip up river to the Mandan villages north of Mandan, N.D. much information was obtained from him regarding the names of the creeks and rivers flowing into the Missouri.  It is observed that in nearly every instance where he gave the name of deserted village sites, he called them Mandan villages.

The expedition, in following up the Missouri River from the Arikara villages in the vicinity of the Grand River, came to a small creek coming in from the east, or left, bank, on Saturday, October the 13th.  This creek now bears the name of “Morphrodite Creek” and is in Campbell county, S.D., near the North Dakota line.  To this creek they gave the name of Stone Idol Creek, and their journal contains these remarks about it:

“…At ten and a half miles we reached the mouth of a small creek on the north, which takes its rise in some ponds a short distance to the northeast; to this stream we gave the name of Stone Idol Creek, for after passing a willow and sand island just above its mouth, we discovered that a few miles back from the Missouri there are two stones resembling human figures, and a third like a dog, all of which are objects of great veneration among the Ricaras.  Their history would adorn the metamorphoses of Ovid.  A young man was deeply enamored with a girl whose parents refused their consent to their marriage.  The youth went out into the fields to mourn his misfortunes; a sympathy of feeling led the lad to go to the same spot, and a faithful dog would not cease to follow his master.

After wandering together and having nothing but grapes to subsist upon, they were at last converted into stone, which beginning at the feet, gradually invaded the nobler parts, leaving nothing unchanged but a bunch of grapes which the female holds in her hands to this day.  Whenever the Ricaras pass these sacred stones they stop to make some offering of dress to propitiate these deities.  Such is the account given by the Ricara chief, which we had no mode of examining except that we found one part of the story very agreeable confirmed, for on the river where the event is said to have occurred we found a greater abundance of fine grapes than we had yet seen…”

By Sunday, October 21st, the same expedition had ascended the great waterway to “a creek on the south called Chisahetaw, about thirty yards wide and with a considerable quantity of water.”  This is the famous Heart River of the Mandan Indians and is so called to this day.  Continuing, the journal states:

“Our Ricara tells us that at some distance up this river is situated a large rock which is held in great veneration and visited by parties who go to consult it as to their own or their nations destinies, all of which they discern in some sort of figures or paintings with which it is covered.  About two miles off from the mouth of the river the party on shore saw another of the objects of Ricara superstition; it is a large oak tree standing alone in the open prairie, and as it alone had withstood the fire which has consumed everything around it, the Indians naturally ascribe to it extraordinary powers.  One of their ceremonies is to make a hole in the skin of their necks through which a string is passed and the other end tied to the body of the tree, and after remaining in this way for some time they thing they become braver…”

The stone mentioned in the foregoing paragraph by the old chief of the Ricaras, as being situated “at some distance up this river,” is the Minnitari Stone, and was drilled and split up for building stone by the white settlers in Mandan, and the basement of Mr. G.W.Renden’s residence is built of the fragments of this holy stone of the inhabitants of the Village of the Crying Hill of one hundred and fifty years or more ago.

Part 7, Maximilion Visits The Painted Rock

In the records of the German scientist, naturalist and explorer, Maximilion, Prince of Weid, who spent some time with the Mandan Indians in the winter of 1833-34, we also find reference to the sacred stone of the Cannon Ball River, the Iyan Wakan Gapi of the Dakotah.

Speaking of a Holy Stone, Maximilion says:

“Another curiosity of a similar nature is the Medicine Stone, which is mentioned by Lewis and Clark and which the Minnitaries likewise reverence.  This stone is between two and three days journey from the villages on Cannon Ball River, and about 100 paces from its banks.  I was assured that it was on a tolerably high hill, and in the form of a flat slab, probably of sand stone.  The stone is described as being marked with impressions of the footsteps of men, and animals of various descriptions, also sledges with dogs.  The Indians use this stone as an oracle, and make offerings of value to it, such as kettles, blankets, cloth, guns, knives, hatchets, medicine pipes, etc., which are found deposited close to it.  The war parties of both nations, when they take the field, generally go to this place, and consult the oracle as to the issue of their enterprise.  Lamenting and howling, they approach the hill, smoke their medicine pipes, and pass the night near the spot.  On the following morning they copy the figures on the stone upon a piece of parchment or skin, which they take to the village, where the old men give the interpretation.  New figures are undoubtedly drawn from time to time upon this stone, near to which the celebrated ark, in which part of the nation was saved from the deluge, formerly stood.”

This “Medicine Stone” of Maximilion is, without doubt, the Iyan Wakan Gapi of the Dakotah, and the description he gives to it is quite accurate.

Part 8, Four Swords Story

Four Swords, an aged Sioux, living today upon the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, when questioned regarding the stone, said:

“This stone.  I have seen it.  It is west of Shields.  It is about days’ travel from that place (via horses and wagon).  It is on the north branch of the Cannon Ball River.  It is near the water.  (He pointed across the street to a building about 150 feet distant).  It is that far.  This stone is not high.  It is flat and very large.  It is not red or black or white.  It is more like this color (here he pointed to a tan shade in the rug).  It is not on a high hill.  The ground is not high there.

It is Wakan, this stone.  People sat around it many times in the old days.  ‘Hekton’ – they smoked there.  Many things were placed there.  They placed sticks in the ground with red cloth on them.  They poured out tobacco in little piles there.  Many people sat together there.  The Palani came there too (here he used the term of the Federated Villagers).  We sat together there.  We did not fight then.

I never saw any Wicasa Kangi (Crows) there.  Some might have been there.  They visited the Minnitari (Hewaktokta – the Gros Ventre).  I do not know.  When nighttime came, we went to our camp down by the water.  In the morning there were new tracks on the stone.  There were buffalo tracks there, those of the yearling cows.  That meant good meat.  There were bird tracks and tracks of the wolf, too.  In the grass were tracks of the buffalo and elk.  The spirits had been there.  This stone is there today.  Some old people might go there today, but we have better spirits now.  We go to church.”

The town of Shields is on the left bank of the North Fork of the Cannon Ball, on the New England branch of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Rwy., and in Grant County.  A sub-agency of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, also called Shields, is located in the same vicinity, but on the right bank and in Sioux County.  Four Swords location would place the stone almost south of Brisbane and in the valley of the Cannon Ball, and agrees with Maximilion, that “This stone is between two and three days journey from the villages on the Cannon Ball River and about 100 paces from its banks.”

Part 9, A Mysterious Incident At The Painted Rock

Emeron ‘White,’ an educated Teton Sioux, told me this story as he passed through Mandan after a visit with the Mandans, Arikara and Gros Ventre upon the Fort Berthold Reservation.  As it relates to the “Iyan Wakan Gapi” of the Cannon Ball River, it is given here, verbatim:

“The people up north told me this story while I was with the Arikara: They said that they sent some men out to look for a place to build a village.  There were four of these men and they went out along the valley of the Missouri to find a good, flat place with high bluffs over the water.”

“They came at last to a single earth lodge like they lived in then.  They had never seen this lodge before and they were very much surprised to find it there.  They approached it carefully and there was an old woman standing there all alone.  There were no men around that they could see.  They all ran toward her to strike her for honors.  She did not run, but she did not speak either, but just turned and looked around all the time.  They were afraid to strike her then.  They tried the sign language, but she did not answer them in that either.  She just looked around all the time.  They were afraid of her because she did not speak to them.  Finally they all went away from that place.  They went to their own camp and reported all they had seen and what had taken place.  So then the old men did not believe them at all, for they did not know about that stranger lodge either.”

“They decided to prove the story told by the hunters.  They all went there, guided by the four men.  The lodge was still there.  They finally looked within.  There was no old woman there at all.  There was nothing in the lodge except some branches where some one had slept.  There was no pottery or anything else.  But they found a mark outside which looked like some one had dragged a dead horse or deer or some heavy body through the bush and the grass.  The grass was trampled down all around the mysterious lodge.”

“They followed the sign of the dragged thing and, at last, the trail ended, but a buffalo cow’s track led away from the end of the dragged trail.  These tracks are smaller and more slender than a bull’s track.  They followed these tracks for a long time.  They followed them to the Cannon Ball River and picked them up on the other side.  The tracks led straight to the Iyan Wakan Gapi, where the drawings were, and went inside the rock there.  This is the reason why this Cannon Ball stone was sacred to the Arikara, because this spirit woman went inside the stone.  This was during the time of “Red Man’ or “Red Bear” who was killed by the stone by the road by the Sioux, at Fort Abraham Lincoln.”

This “Red Man” was Arikara, and was born among the Pawnees, cousins of the Arikara people, in 1793.  He was killed while scouting for the soldiers at Lincoln in 1872.  His son was called “Pretty Elk,” whose mother was “White Corn Woman.”  After his father’s death he took the sun dance and his father’s name.  He also was a scout and was present at the “Testimonial Ceremony” at Mandan, July 4th, 1924.