What is the purpose of the wheel made by Burnt Face?

Zbeckabee

One Crow story speaks of a man named Scarface. He was handsome and was fond of strutting in his finery before young women. One day while entering his mother's tipi, he fell into the fire which severely burned his face and was thereafter embarrassed to be seen. Shamed at his appearance, he left his people and went to live in the mountains. Scarface lived alone for many years. One day while a young woman and her grandmother were hunting berries, they became separated from their people and couldn't find their way back. They traveled along a trail which took them into the mountains. They occasionally saw Scarface and one day made contact with him. Scarface later married the young woman. On their travels back to his people, Scarface supposedly built the Medicine Wheel as their shelter. On the second day he built another tipi by the Big Horn river in the valley below. The tipi rings are believed to still exist. It is also said that Red Plume, a great Crow Chief during the time of Lewis and Clark, found great spiritual medicine at the Medicine Wheel. The legend states that following four days without food of water, Red Plume was visited by little people who inhabited the passage to the wheel. They took him into the earth where they lived and told him that the red eagle feathers was his powerful medicine guide and protector. He was told to always wear the small feather from the back of the eagle above his tail feathers. Thus Red Plume received his name. Upon his deathbed, he told his people his spirit would be found at the wheel and that they might communicate with him there. http://www.crystalinks.com/bighorn.html http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~rfrey/PDF/Shared/If%20all%20these%20great%20stories%20were%20told.pdf Jul 12 10, 7:56 PM

serpa

Sarface must be the same dude as Burnt Face. Members of the Crow tribe, who have long used the Medicine Wheel for rituals, ascribe its creation to a boy named Burnt Face. According to the story, the boy fell into the fire as a baby and was severely scarred. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel is astronomically aligned: four of the outer cairns line up with the rising and setting sun of the summer solstice, and the others with the three bright stars that fade as the sun rises on summer mornings: Aldebaran, Rigel and Sirius. The 28 spokes are likely to correspond with the days of the lunar month. http://www.sacred-destinations.com/usa/bighorn-medicine-wheel.htm Jul 12 10, 8:03 PM