Summary: Historically, Eastern Shoshone people pursued vision quests at rock art site, the home of supernatural beings.
On my first visit to this site, I observed a thin red blanket and a pan with water were tucked under a nearby rock. Abe Hultzkranz, a Norwegian anthropologist who wrote about his experiences with
the Eastern Shoshone people sixty years ago, described puhawilo, or "sleeping at medicine-rock." Young men bathed at a nearby river, then sat facing the rock art panel for several days. If the supplicant fled the site, fearful of snakes, a bear or solitude, he would suffer lameness or blindness. The spirits which might be encountered on a vision quest could be these strange carved creatures.
When I photographed this site, I thought of the young man who sat here at night, alone, in the dark, cold and hungry. Hultzkranz documented vision quests at rock art in the 1950s, but it appears the practice may continue.
As we descended the ridge, I spotted a four foot prairie rattler coiled inches away from my elderly companion. I caught my breath and told her to walk to me. She hesitated. The snake rattled angrily. She moved calmly away; eighty-five years of Wyoming living prepared her well. The snake vanished into a shadow under a large Ten Sleep boulder.
Historically, petroglyph sites such as this one were thought to be doorways to the supernatural, portals to another world. The site, itself, is a place of power, the home of the supernatural. For this reason, the Eastern Shoshone have not welcomed visitors to reservation rock art sites.