Sacred and mysterious sites of North America
Rock art, medicine wheels and ancient earthworks.
Terra Terra Collections Sacred and mysterious sites of North America
Places that Indigenous peoples held sacred or built on, and that still raise questions: Blackfoot rock art at Writing-on-Stone, the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, the carved Teaching Rocks in Ontario, Chaco Canyon and Serpent Mound. They are shown as real terrain; many are living sacred places, so visit them respectfully and follow the posted rules.
12 stops · read them in order, or jump to the one you want
-
Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, Canada
Sandstone hoodoos along the Milk River covered in Blackfoot rock art, the largest set on the Great Plains.
-
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alberta, Canada
A sandstone cliff where Blackfoot hunters drove bison for nearly 6,000 years.
-
Bighorn Medicine Wheel, Wyoming
A stone wheel with 28 spokes on a 2,900 m ridge in the Bighorn Mountains, sacred to many Plains peoples.
-
Peterborough Petroglyphs, Ontario, Canada
More than 900 Algonquian carvings on one slab of marble, called the Teaching Rocks.
-
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
Great houses of the Ancestral Puebloans in a desert canyon.
-
Canyon de Chelly, Arizona
Sheer sandstone walls with cliff dwellings, and Navajo families still farming the floor.
-
Serpent Mound, Ohio
A 400 m earthwork shaped like a snake, built by Native Americans over a thousand years ago.
-
Cahokia Mounds, Illinois
The biggest earthwork city north of Mexico, with Monks Mound at its center.
-
Mount Shasta, California
A snow-capped volcano that dominates northern California.
