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Bear Butte
A sacred mountain of the Lakota and Cheyenne
Bear Butte rises alone from the plains at the northeastern edge of South Dakota's Black Hills, a dome of ancient volcanic rock that pushed up beneath the surface without erupting, the kind of formation geologists call a laccolith. To the Lakota it is Matȟó Pahá, Bear Mountain. To the Cheyenne it is Noahȧ-vose, the Giving Hill, where the prophet Sweet Medicine received the teachings that shaped Cheyenne life. Leaders including Crazy Horse, Red Cloud and Sitting Bull are said to have come here to pray.
Native people from many nations still come to Bear Butte for vision quests, fasting and prayer, and trees along its trails are hung with brightly colored prayer cloths and tobacco ties, which visitors are asked to leave undisturbed. The mountain has been a South Dakota state park since 1961 and a National Historic Landmark since 1981. Its summit, 4,426 feet above sea level and about 1,250 feet above the surrounding plain, looks out across the prairie near the town of Sturgis.