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353 26 The Great Plains are not known for spectacular caves, but caves and especially rockshelters are present. Many have been excavated, usually without regard to the possibility of ritual. In this chapter, I discuss ethnographic evidence for the cosmological significance of caves and equivalent sites. I also emphasize the larger context of caves, suggesting that many caves were parts of larger ritual precincts. Finally, I will discuss the implication of the cosmological themes identified ethnographically for the interpretation of archaeological remains in and near caves. The first cave in this region to be mentioned in the historic literature is Carver’s Cave in St. Paul, Minnesota. Jonathan Carver, a British fur trader, wrote the following in his journal in 1776: This day arrived to the great stone cave called by the Naudowessee Waukon Teebee, or in English the house of spirits.[Actually, “sacred house” would be a better translation.] . . . The mouth of the cave [was] about ten feet broad and three feet high [and] the room [was] upwards of thirty feet broad, and about sixty feet from the enterence of the cave [to] where I came to a lake. As ’twas dark I could not find out the bigness nor the form [of it]. The roof was about 20 feet high [and] the bottom clean white sand a little descending to the water from the mouth . . . I found many strange hieroglyphycks cut in the stone some of which was very a[n]cient and grown over with moss. (Parker 1976, 91–92) Later visitors found the entrance intermittently covered by rockfall from the bluff above and it was repeatedly reopened. In 1826, the Indian agent wrote that the Dakota held a medicine dance above the “Big Stone Cave.” (Taliaferro 1820s). In 1837, Joseph Nicollet visited the cave and mentioned petroglyphs near the entrance (Nicollet 1845, 72). Although his Dakota informants said they did not bury any of their dead in the cave itself, they did put scaffold burials on the bluff top above the cave entrance, and Woodland period burial mounds are found a short distance to the east. Nicollet also mentioned the presence of native trails and an abundance of productive maple groves and wild rice stands in the vicinity (Nicollet 1852, 97). No formal excavation of the cave ever occurred. In the 1850s the cave floor was quarried for sand, and in the 1860s the Chicago and St. Paul Railroad cut back the bluff, removing about 20 feet of the front part of the cave, destroying the bulk of the petroglyphs. Luckily, Theodore H. Lewis visited the cave and recorded his observations of what remained. He published drawings of four rattlesnakes carved into the roof of the cave. He also mentioned depictions of men, birds, fish, turtles , and lizards (Lewis 1901, 231–3). Details of this brief description of one cave resonate with some of the symbolic themes and associations common to caves and related sites all across the plains (figure 26.1). Caves and Related Sites in the Great Plains of North America Donald J. Blakeslee Donald J. Blakeslee 354 earthen bluffs—all could be the functional equivalents of caves. In some cases, isolated buttes or hills are imagined to have caves within them, with the entrance covered by a rock. For example, one Hidatsa myth refers to a time when all of the game animals were locked inside Dog Den Butte and the “entrance and smokehole were covered over” (Bowers 1965, 195–96). Gaps in a line of hills or through a cliff also functioned in ways similar to caves, as discussed below. Water mediates between the worlds. It comes from the underworld at springs, rises as mist, forms clouds especially at some high peaks, and falls back to earth as rain. A cave that contains water or from which water flows is thus doubly significant. Water that occurs out of place is also sacred, such as a spring or pool at the top of a hill. Waconda Spring in Kansas, Manitou Springs in Colorado, and SunMountain Spring (a Kiowa name) in Texas are three such places. Equally significant is the ability of still pools of water to reflect images of the bodies in the night sky—that is to say, the souls of the moon and stars. Caves and other sites also relate to water via water vapor. Deep caves, such as Cave of the Winds near Pikes Peak, appear to breathe with changes in the weather— inhaling when a high-pressure system approaches...

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