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“There are things in nature that engender an awful
quiet in the heart of man; Devil’s Tower is one of them.” So
writes N. Scott Momaday, Pulitzer Prize winner, Kiowa.
He goes on to say, speaking of the times when the Kiowa dwelt on the northwestern
plains, “Two centuries ago, because they could not do otherwise,
the Kiowas made a legend at the base of the rock.”
My companion and I walked, quietly, around Devil’s Tower. There was
new snowfall, but the day was still, comfortable. We met few people. Only
one climbing party, composed of Germans, was scaling the rock. Now and
then they shouted climber lingo to one another.
That phrase of Momaday’s, “awful quiet,” keeps recurring
to me. During three seasons of the year it seems impossible anymore to
experience such a thing at Devil’s Tower. Rock climbers are numerous
and noisy, both because of the necessity of communicating with one another
and also because they are exuberant. Their shouts reverberate from the
faces of the rock. They also are highly visible, because they wear bright
clothing.
Devil’s Tower, in northeastern Wyoming, on the northwestern fringe
of the Black Hills, is a geological anomaly of the plains. It formed underground
some 60 million years ago, when molten rock pushed up through sedimentary
layers. Erosion stripped away softer materials, leaving the volcanic plug
standing, serene. Altitude of summit: 5112 feet. Height of tower from
its base: 867 feet. The tower’s rock faces are like piped garments,
comprising multiple columns of stone. Gray columns, tinged with lime-green
lichen. Sublime.
The Kiowas have their story of the place, the legend of a boy who became
a bear and chased his seven sisters up a tree. The tree transformed into
a rock tower; the bear lunged against it, gouging cracks into its sides;
and the sisters were carried into the heavens to become seven stars in
the Big Dipper. Momaday knew this story because Kiowa on the reservation
in Oklahoma, who themselves never laid eyes on Devil’s Tower, nevertheless
recalled the story, and the place.
The Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and other native peoples of the plains have
their stories of Devil’s Tower, too. Every year thousands of natives
make pilgrimage to the site, there going off by themselves, away from
the other visitors (some half-million a year), for their own prayers and
observances. Along trails around the tower bright prayer clothes and little
prayer bundles of tobacco dangle from branches.
Devil’s Tower became America’s first national monument, so proclaimed
by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. By that time there already was
a tradition of whites climbing the rock. Two guys did so, with a fantastic
ladder spiked into a long crevice up the tower, on the 4th of July, 1893,
planting an American flag on the summit. The first white woman to ascend
the tower did so two years later. The last person to climb the ladder
did so in 1927. The first people to ascend the tower by rock-climbing
techniques, members of the American Alpine Club of New York City, did
so in 1937.
During the 1890s 4th of July picnics of ranchers and settlers took place
around Devil’s Tower. By the 1930s there were annual picnics of the
Northern Black Hills Pioneer Association. What I’m saying is that
with white occupation of the area, whites established recreational and
ritual use of the site, while Indians had been confined on reservations.
By late 20th century Indian populations on the plains had resurged, traditional
and updated spiritual beliefs had crystallized, and the natives were mobile
veterans of the powwow highway. They come to Devil’s Tower seeking
that awful quiet of which Momaday spoke. The rock remains serene, but
the site is not. True believers must seek quiet in their own hearts.
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