Bear Butte

A mountain that has been a place of prayer far longer than it has been a park

Bear Butte rises 1,253.5 feet above the plains near Sturgis, South Dakota, to 4,426 feet above sea level. It is not strictly a butte but a laccolith: during the Eocene, magma forced its way into the cooler crust of the Black Hills region and domed up the sedimentary layers above it, which have since mostly worn away, as at Devils Tower and the Missouri Buttes. Some of that magma may once have broken the surface as a volcano, long since eroded.

It was an important landmark and religious site long before Europeans reached South Dakota. The Lakota call it Matȟó Pahá, Bear Mountain. To the Cheyenne it is Noahȧ-vose, the Giving Hill, where Ma'heo'o, the Great Spirit, gave the prophet Sweet Medicine the knowledge from which the Cheyenne draw their religious, political, social and economic ways. Human artefacts on or near it go back 10,000 years. Red Cloud, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull made pilgrimages here, and in 1857 a council of many nations met at the butte to discuss the white settlers pressing into the Black Hills. Custer's expedition of 1874, made in violation of the treaty of 1868, camped near it, and once he confirmed gold the butte became a landmark for the rush that followed.

Ezra Bovee homesteaded on the southern slopes, and by the Second World War his family owned the mountain. In the spring of 1945 the Northern Cheyenne asked his permission to hold a ceremony there to pray for the end of the war, and the Bovees went on welcoming ceremonies and pushing for a national park. The state made it a park in 1961, and it became a National Historic Landmark in 1981. The Lakota ceremonial chief Frank Fools Crow, who prayed here all his life and taught harmony among all peoples, is honoured with a bust at the education center.

People still come to pray, fast and hold ceremonies, and the trees along the flanks are hung with coloured prayer cloths and tobacco ties, each one a prayer. The state asks visitors to respect worshippers and leave every offering undisturbed, and waives park fees for those coming for religious purposes. East of Highway 79, where the summit trail climbs and a bison herd ranges the base, alcohol and uncased firearms are banned, and the summit is the northern end of the Centennial Trail.