Shields of the Ancients - Sacred Ground for the Plains Indians - Castle Garden, Wyoming

so [Music] there are other similar rock sites to this in montana there are several this one here obviously in wyoming and then another in colorado and all the plains indian groups have ties to these places like castle gardens and those include like the crow the cheyenne shoshone the ute arapaho kiowa navajo and the apache that's pretty amazing and did you know that the arapahoe call castle gardens or who nessie i don't know how that's pronounced it means holy water true story holy water right so i wonder if that is tied to select this is was this like a mineral spring area or does have some type of thermal activity one of the things that's really great about this location is you see the different colors in the rock i mean it looks like a geologically active area at one point maybe thermal would just be a guess but then you can see some of the carvings here these are obviously more modern i think the earliest one that we've seen is up over here just some initials it is beautiful but also a wonderfully windy day here in wyoming so we're going to continue on and see what other artifacts we can find there's the other side of that rock we're just at you get a little bit better a view of the different tones in the rock how it gets more almost like it's being burned towards the top which makes me like i said earlier i think like a thermal type area so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] here's some too i don't know if these are the legitimate ones shields that they're talking about but i do have a fun fact about how they created them so what they would do is since the rock is fairly soft they would take a wet hide and scrape down the surface to get it a little bit moist then they would grab another rock like a flat rock say like this and then smooth the side of this out then get an animal bone that was sharpened and start to create and then the fourth step in the process another person would come along they would painstakingly paint all the little details into the rock so this to get it to stand out so this would have had painting in it this would have originally been painting like i said if these are the legitimate ones and not ones that somebody else has come and recreated so are they pictographs or petroglyphs because pictographs are paintings petroglyphs are carvings this is the two yeah this is both of them put together it looks like somebody has actually dug out one of the shields to take it home you can actually see the straight line yeah you can see the chisel marks back behind where it could have just flaked off so that's yeah because part of this one's gone they see they've done the same thing up here and probably didn't do it propped it anyway and broke it yep what a shame it is i wonder what they mean and again another sad sight someone has come along and just chiseled away and broken this one out it's such it is such a shame because these this whole site is very sacred to the native people and there's so much rock here that you know these were historic things this is part of their culture their heritage and just to come alongside of it and do something like this i mean there's so many rocks around this entire area why do you have to come up and do this right next to something that's sacred and then come along and chisel and break one away ignorance yeah it's just it gets so irritating and bothersome you know we don't agree with graffiti or anything but if you're gonna do it do it somewhere else i mean nobody wants to look at your name next to something that is historically important hopefully this turns out on the camera i know the the sun probably isn't doing this any help here but there is a carbon looks like a human form with a bunch of maybe hand prints along their body and then next to it that looks like a look next to it kind of looks like a cauldron with a spoon out the top with the four legs or is it an animal of some sort i say maybe a pigeon well though it's got four legs yeah so yeah it's it does look bird-like but there are four legs on it huh strange very interesting so it looks like some of these have actually been defaced i don't know whether i mean you've got some figures but that other one looks like there's a figure in a garden with a garden fence it does and it almost looks like they're holding glasses yeah and then below there's letters so people have come in and defaced it even though it's fenced off and that over there looks like a rocket ship can you see a rocket but it does have arms and a funny head yeah then it's a human figure that looks that's in the shape of like a rocket with another figure inside of it that's holding something and then there's a face down along the bottom lots of figures in this one but again someone's come along and dug out one of the shields yeah and it's bizarre because the figures all look different you can tell which ones are are human-esque but then you get ones that look very bizarre i don't know if they're depicting their gods or who knows and also we don't know how old some of this graffiti is it could only be 20 years old [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] these ones are amazing you can tell these are more original because i do think that some of those other ones have just been carved out in later years but these ones i mean the circles are perfect they are and they just have and you're right you look at them you can kind of just tell what looks more original and what looks like somebody's tried to to copy it or just be funny and there's one on it here i don't know if the camera can get it to the left and you can still see pigmentation of colors in it that's really cool and there's a bunch on this side so this was a this is worth hiking up to see some of these and there's more on the rocks but i said the weathering is just they're disappearing another nice short and sweet but beautiful area we always end up finding them way out in the middle of nowhere those are the best locations i think and remember to subscribe like and share and on that note get out there go and explore put another pin in the atlas and we will see you on our next adventure or on patreon [Music] so [Applause] [Music]