Ed Kemmick
There isn't much doubt about how Castle Butte acquired its name.
On a Saturday morning in late January, my brother, a friend and I headed for Castle Butte north of Pompeys Pillar to look for petroglyphs. Our timing couldn’t have been better.
We’d had quite a bit of snow and bone-chilling temperatures earlier in the winter, and it has been cold and snowy almost every day since our outing. But there we were on the high plains of Montana in the dead of winter and it was a gloriously fine day.
Castle Butte is about 15 miles north of Pompeys Pillar. You cross the Yellowstone River on Bundy Road, hang a quick right on Castle Butte Road and continue northeast until you see a formation that could scarcely have been called anything else. The cluster of sandstone atop a prominent rise looks just like a fortress, and the whole formation is ringed with a rampart of sandstone.
The temperatures were in the low 50s, the sky was deep blue with just a few faint scraps of cloud on the horizon, and all the snow had been reduced to a handful of scattered patches on the rolling prairie. To forestall the dullness of perfection, there was a stiff wind blowing out of the northwest.
It was quite chilling at first, despite the balmy temperatures, but it didn’t take too much walking before the coats and gloves came off. Throughout our four hours of tramping around on the 184-acre Bureau of Land Management site, we seem to have spent every 15 minutes in a different weather pattern, depending on the wind direction, sun or shade, elevation and windbreaks.
Ed Kemmick
The wind is strong and steady on top of Castle Butte. Just ask this ponderosa pine.
Suffice it to say it was never the least bit unpleasant, even when you had to put a death grip on your hat to keep the wind from carrying it off. The hiking was also pleasant, but for one short uphill hump, and if it hadn’t been for the infrequency of outings this fall, even that would have seemed minor enough.
With each bit of elevation gained, the view expanded in every direction. From the top of the butte the view was breathtaking, with the Bighorn, Pryor, Beartooth and Bull mountains visible under an immense blue sky.
We had obtained some fairly vague directions to help us find the petroglyphs and after considerable sleuthing we found three separate panels, plus a few smaller sites that may or may not have contained ancient petroglyphs. The most intriguing rock art we found wasn’t even one of those that had been described to us. It showed an apparently human figure with a round, almost alien-looking head atop an elongated body.
On another panel there was a rifle, crude but unmistakably a rifle, and on the third were three engravings: two animals, apparently a deer and an elk, and a human figure with hair that reached the ground.
Some days after our hike, an archaeologist with the Billings Field Office of the BLM helped me understand what we had seen.
Ed Kemmick
This petroglyph might show a warrior. The long hair could indicate that the warrior was suffering from some illness.
Carolyn Sherve-Bybee said there are numerous petroglyphs and pictographs at Castle Butte, dating from about 1100 A.D. to the fur trade era of the 1800s. There is also a fair amount of “historic graffiti” dating from the late 1800s to the present, including some historic brands, “which are kind of cool,” Sherve-Bybee said.
She said the oldest petroglyph on the site is known as the “Lightning Man,” but we did not see it. Nor did we see what she described as one of the most interesting petroglyphs, which shows warriors, horses and a gun.
The alien-looking figure is known as a V-neck or chevron figure and is a common motif in rock art. She said the V-neck figure is probably a bit older than the battle scene, which could not have been created earlier than the introduction of horses in this part of the world, between 1730 and 1740.
As for the longhaired figure, Sherve-Bybee said she was once told by a Crow Indian that the figure is a male warrior, and that the long hair means the person was ill. Likewise, she said, an engraving near the longhaired warrior shows a deer or elk looking over its shoulder, another symbol of sickness.
Sherve-Bybee said it is difficult to associate any of the individual pieces of rock art with a particular tribe. The Yellowstone Valley had a “tremendous amount of resources” and was frequented by numerous tribes, she said. Castle Butte would have been an attractive spot because of the expansive views from its top, including a view of Steamboat Butte, also rich in rock art, to the northwest.
Castle Butte is considered an Area of Critical Environmental Concern, meaning it needs special management. In an ACEC nomination evaluation written last March, Castle Butte was described as “one of a handful of sites in the Northwestern Plains which show a range of rock art styles dating over a long period of time.”
Some of the rock art panels can also be “directly associated with adjacent buried archaeological deposits,” which “increases the scientific value of the site immensely,” according to the evaluation.
For our part, the rock art we found was well worth the effort, and we spent a good bit of time conjecturing on the meaning of the art without actually knowing much of anything. But unless you’re an archaeologist or an unusually well informed amateur, the real significance of the rock art is that it provides a good reason to get out and tramp around some beautiful parts of this state.
Our “failure” to find some of the more impressive petroglyphs at Castle Butte just gives us another excuse to return. We will definitely await the arrival of better weather.
DETAILS: It is illegal to cause any direct or indirect damage at rock art sites. Sherve-Bybee asks that visitors to Castle Butte observe the Center for Outdoor Ethics’ Leave No Trace Seven Principles. To read them, go here.
The BLM is also looking for site steward volunteers who have been trained through the Montana Site Stewardship Program. These stewards monitor archaeological sites on BLM, Forest Service or state lands for natural or human-caused damaged and vandalism.
By next summer, Sherve-Bybee is hoping to have site stewards monitoring all the rock art sites visited by the public in the area managed by the Billings field office. For more information, go here.
