The Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum’s Voices of the Valley series continues with a program by archaeologist Dr. Lawrence Loendorf on Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. at 225 N. Cache in the museum gallery.
Dr. Loendorf is well known authority on rock art, part of the international team chosen to excavate Chauvet Cave discovered in southern France in 1994. Closer to home, Loendorf – a native of Montana – is known for his work on the Native American history of the Greater Yellowstone Region. He is co-author with Dr. Peter Nabokov of Restoring a Presence, American Indians and Yellowstone National Park, of Mountain Spirit: The Sheep Eater Indians of Yellowstone and, with Dr. Julie Francis, Ancient Visions: Petroglyphs and Pictographs of the Wind River and Bighorn Country. His current research focuses on “buffalo caves”, a little known type of vision quest site.
Although the vision quest experience was practiced by American Indian groups across the Great Plains and adjacent areas, it differed widely in form and function. In the immediate region, the Sheep Eater Shoshone visited petroglyph sites in the vision ritual, while the Crow went to isolated and prominent places to seek a vision. The Crow practice included the construction of ovoid or u-shaped fasting beds, made from stone that were utilized by the supplicant in their quest.
Archaeologists have found the remains of these stone structures throughout Crow Indian territory. The Medicine Wheel in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains, for example, contains several of these fasting beds. In the Jackson region, the stone feature known as the “Enclosure” on the Grand Teton is generally thought to represent a vision quest structure.
Caves were also recognized across North America as sources of power, and sometimes a supplicant would visit a cave to seek spiritual guidance. Siouan-speaking tribes, for example, went to caves to commune with the buffalo spirits. Only recently, archaeologists have learned that paintings of buffalo and buffalo spirits were made in the caves as part of this ritual.
Loendorf will show examples from Montana and Wyoming of caves and rock art sites where he has done ground breaking work in recording these paintings.
