On a ridge above the Cree Crossing of the Milk River, an outcrop of granite looked like a herd of buffalo bedded down in the grass, and the largest boulder, the leader, carried markings cut into it long ago for horns, eyes, backbone and ribs. In Nakoda it is Tatanga Ishtima. It was known to the Cree, Chippewa, Sioux, Nakoda (Assiniboine) and Aaniiih (Gros Ventre) who lived near it, and to the Blackfeet, Crow and Northern Cheyenne farther off, and stories handed down in more than one nation tell how the herd fooled a hunting party. H. G. Robinson, who first saw the rocks in 1892, remembered watching a lone rider dismount, raise his hands in prayer and walk to the stone, and leave beadwork, tobacco and red calico on it. As a Chippewa Cree elder put it, "These rocks are sacred, just like our old people."
In the early 1930s the Sleeping Buffalo was taken off the ridge, leaving a hole where it had lain, and set up in the town park in Malta. Stories went around that it would not rest there: that it changed position in the night, that people heard it bellow. It was moved out to the old highway at the road to the hot springs, and in 1967, after U.S. 2 was rerouted to the north, to the junction with Montana 243 where it stands now. In 1987 Medicine Rock, also taken from near the Cree Crossing, was brought to join it.
The two stones rest under a roofed shelter beside the highway west of Saco, with a sign. The National Register lists them as a traditional cultural property, a powerful spirit helper to the Blackfeet, Nakoda, Aaniiih, Cree, Chippewa and other peoples of the Northern Plains. This is a sacred place, not an exhibit; look, and leave everything as it is.
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