Tipi rings are circular patterns of stones left from an encampment of Post-Archaic, protohistoric and

historic History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...

Native Americans.Cassells, Steve. (1997). ''The Archaeology of Colorado.'' Boulder: Johnson Books. pp. 224-227. . They are found primarily throughout the Plains of the United States and Canada, and also in the foothills and parks of the Rocky Mountains. Clusters of stones circles are often found in favorable camp-sites, near water, fuel and good hunting grounds. In many cases the clusters are organized in patterns, such as rows, circles or v-shapes. The stones were used to hold down the tipis to keep the lodge warm and dry. In some cases elaborate walls or defensive structures were built.

Tipi ring practices

They are generally found in the

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of the

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and

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, but are also found in the foothills and mountains, near good areas for hunting, supplies of water and fuel, and main routes of travel. The rings are often in diameter and often occur in groupings. The rings of stone held down the edges of animal skin hides of the cone-shaped tipis, to keep them snug against the ground. The general pattern of a tipi (also "tepee") ring is an east-facing entrance, where there are no stones, and a heavily anchored side with extra stones for protection against prevailing winds, often on the northwestern side of the ring. Hearths found in the center of tipi rings suggest a winter encampment. In the summer, food was cooked in open-air hearths. There are generally few artifacts found at these sites. Stone circles, of which tipi rings are an example, may be simply assembled rocks placed in single or multiple courses. More elaborate circles have been constructed in walls of stone or with horizontal logs and stone, possibly for a fort or corral. Other stone circlessome more than across – may be the remains of special ceremonial dance structures. A few cobble arrangements form the outlines of human figures, most of them clearly male. Perhaps the most intriguing cobble constructions, however, are the ones known as medicine wheels. Tipi rings are nearly all of the types of stone circles, except those that are medicine wheels or of very small diameter.''What is a Medicine Wheel?''
Royal Alberta Museum, Government of Alberta. Retrieved December 8, 2011. Stones were replaced by wooden pegs to hold down the tents after the introduction of axes by people of European ancestry. In the

Crow language Crow (endonym, native name: or ) is a Missouri River Valley, Missouri Valley Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken primarily by the Crow Tribe in present-day southeastern Montana. The word translates to "Children of the Large Beaked Bird" ...

the word for precolonial times literally means "when we used stones to weigh down our lodges."

Blackfeet Indian Reservation study

From a study of 137 sites on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, tipis were often arranged in a pattern, such as a single or double row, semi-circle, circle, triangle, V-shape or a haphazard shape. Artifacts found were limited to tools or fragments of tools made of stone or bone, such as broken

projectile point In archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have been kept in the ...

s, hammerstones, grooved mauls and pieces of flint or imported obsidian. When horses were introduced after about A.D. 1730, camp materials were pulled by horses rather than dogs and the tipis became larger, from holding 6-8 people to up to 50 people.

Sites

;Canada *Alberta: In 1989 there were 4,290 tipi rings recorded in the provincial inventory of archaeological sites (slightly more than 20% of all sites in the inventory). ** Carmangay Tipi Ring Site **

Nose Hill Park Nose Hill Park is a natural park in the northwest quadrant of Calgary, Alberta which covers over . It is the fourth-largest urban park in Canada, and one of the largest urban parks in North America. It is a municipal park, unlike Fish Creek, w ...

** Suffield Tipi Rings National Historical Site ** Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park *Saskatchewan **

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** Wanuskewin Heritage Park ;United States Between

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and

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, a long corridor, there are 136 tipi ring sites. * Colorado: :During the protohistoric and historic periods, tipi rings were created in the mountains by the

Ute people Ute () are an Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin, Indigenous people of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau in present-day Utah, western Colorado, and northern New Mexico.Pritkzer''A Native American Encyclopedia'' p. 242 Historically, their t ...

. Sites on the plains belonged to

Apache The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...

Arapaho The Arapaho ( ; , ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho bands formed t ...

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. The Cheyenne comprise two Native American tribes, the Só'taeo'o or Só'taétaneo'o (more commonly spelled as Suhtai or Sutaio) and the (also spelled Tsitsistas, The term for th ...

and Comanche people. :* Northern mountain and foothills: :** Indian Mountain near

Boulder In geology, a boulder (or rarely bowlder) is a rock fragment with size greater than in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In ...

:** T-W Diamond site in the Rocky Mountain foothills near Fort Collins. :* Northeastern plains :** Biscuit Hill Site (78 - 100 tipi rings) :** Keota Stone Circles Archaeological District :* Southeastern plains :** Carrizo Ranches (possibly

sites) :** Picture Canyon of the

Comanche National Grassland Comanche National Grassland is a National Grassland located in southeastern Colorado, United States. It is the sister grassland of Cimarron National Grassland and contains both prairie grasslands and canyons. It is separated into two sections, ...

. * Montana: ** Blackfeet Indian Reservation has 210 tipi ring sites over a 2000 square mile area. ** Canyon Ferry Reservoir area has 16 tipi ring sites within a 500 square mile area, found along the

Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...

or its tributaries or mountain valleys. ** First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park * Texas: ** Squawteat Peak (see Pecos County) * Wyoming: ** Basin Oil Field Tipi Rings ** Shoshone National Forest

References

External links

Images of Tipi Ring remains
{{Indigenous People of CO Native American history of Colorado Post-Archaic period in North America Prehistoric cultures in Colorado Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains

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