Sleeping Buffalo Rock

This panel and the National Register sign program's text disagree about Medicine Rock: here it is the smaller stone, there the larger. The nomination behind the listing, written by Chere Jiusto in January 1996, admitted that serious questions arose over the rock's integrity, housed in a man-made shelter on a heavily traveled highway right-of-way, and made the case anyway on what the stone still is to the nations who visit it. It was listed on May 17, 1996. Medicine Rock had lain unprotected beside the highway until 1987, when the hot springs' owners petitioned to shelter it.

What the plaque says

Sleeping Buffalo Rock Montana's native people revere this boulder that once perched high atop a wind-swept ridge overlooking the Cree Crossing on the Milk River. The ancient, weather-worn effigy resembled the leader of a herd of reclining buffalo in an outcrop of gray granite. Ancient markings define its horns, eyes, backbone and ribs. Since late prehistoric times, native peoples of the Northern Plains have honored the Sleeping Buffalo's spiritual power. Oral traditions passed down among the Cree, Chippewa, Sioux, Assiniboine and Gros Ventre as well as the more distant Blackfeet, Crow and Northern Cheyenne tell how the "herd" fooled buffalo-hunting parties. While each tribe has its own culture and beliefs, all Montana tribes share worldviews. A Chippewa-Cree elder explained, "These rocks are sacred, just like our old people." Locals claim the Sleeping Buffalo, relocated to Malta's City Park in 1932, was restless, changing positions and bellowing in the night. The Sleeping Buffalo found this final resting place in 1967 where the smaller "Medicine Rock," also collected near Cree Crossing, rejoined it in 1987. These timeless objects continue to figure prominently in traditional ceremonies, linking the present with the past when the power of the prairie was the buffalo.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sleeping Buffalo Rock — steps away
  A sacred boulder marked as a resting buffalo, taken off its ridge above the Milk River in the 1930s and sheltered now beside U.S. 2.
• Great Plains Dinosaur Museum — 16 mi
  Home of Leonardo, the duckbill that kept its skin for seventy-seven million years, found in the breaks north of Malta in 2000.

More markers nearby

• The Long, Long Trail — steps away
• Cree Crossing — 5.3 mi
• Cattle Brands — 15 mi