The Karnak Temple

Photographer Unknown, (Inside the Karnak Temple in Luxor)

Consisting of more than one hundred hectares, Karnak is an ancient temple precinct in Egypt located on the east bank of the Nile River in modern-day Luxor, formerly Thebes. The largest sector is the central portion which is dedicated to Amun-Ra, considered to be the supreme creator, the god of fertility and life.

In the southern central sector is a precinct dedicated to the goddess Mut, wife of Amun-Ra, the primal mother goddess who is associated with the waters from which everything is born. She was a patron deity of Thebes along with her husband Amun-Ra and their son Khonsu, god of the moon.

North of the central area is a precinct dedicated to Montu, the falcon headed god of war and embodiment of the conquering vitality of the Pharaoh. The ancient god Montu was the manifestation of the sun, Ra, whose scorching destructive effect caused him to be considered initially a warrior; he was eventually given status as a god of war.

To the east of the central sector, there is an area that was dedicated to Aten, the solar disc. The deity Aten was the focus of the monotheistic religion established by Amenhotep IV who worshiped Aten as the creator, the giver of life, and the nurturing spirit of the world. Horemheb, the last Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, reestablished the priesthood of Amun and destroyed the temple area of Aten. A prolific builder, Horemheb constructed the Second, Ninth and Tenth Pylons of the great Hypostyle Hall in the precinct of Amon-Ra at the Temple of Karnak.

The last major building program at Karnak was under the reign of Nectanebo I, a king of the Thirtieth and last Dynasty of Egypt. He built a large enclosure wall around the site along with another temple. He also started, but did not complete, a new pylon at the western entrance of Karnak. The rulers of foreign descent who took control of Egypt continued work at Karnak, creating a series of burial catacombs dedicated to Osiris, god of the underworld. When Rome seized control of Egypt in 30BCE and maintained control for a six hundred year period. Structual work at Karnak ceased when Rome established power, ending a span of two thousand years of construction. .

Wat Samphran

Wat Samphran, a Buddhist temple in Amphoe Sam Phran, is located about forty kilometers west of Bangkok in Thailand. The seventeen story temple is known for its gigantic dragon which curls around the entire height of the building. The dragon contains a staircase, which, due to its poor condition, is no longer in use.

The founder of the temple, after a seven-day fasting meditation, realized the design of the structure. The 80 meters tall building honors the number of years that the Buddha manifested on the earth. A large figure of the Buddha resides on the third floor and a shrine to the Goddess of Mercy is located on the grounds of the temple.

Calendar: December 16

A Year: Day to Day Men: 16th of December

Observing the Street Below

The sixteenth of December marks the beginning of the 1631 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, a conical Italian volcano built up by many layers of hardened lava and unconsolidated material. The eruption, marked by columns of volcanic debris, ash and hot gases, buried many villages under the resulting lava flows. It is estimated that four-thousand people were killed by the eruption, which was so intense that it lowered the summit of Vesuvius by four hundred and fifty meters.

Located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Mount Vesuvius has a long historic and literary tradition. At the time of the 79 AD eruption, the volcano was considered a divinity of nature. The Roman cities surrounding the volcano regarded Mount Vesuvius as being devoted to Hercules. This was particularly true for the city of Herculaneum ,which was named after its mythical founder. Frescoes depicting Vesuvius as a serpent decorated many of the household shrines in Pompeii; inscriptions on walls linked the power of the god Jupiter to the volcano, IOVI VESVVIO, or Jupiter Vesuvius.

Mount Vesuvius has erupted multiple times with varying grades of severity. All of its eruptions included explosive outbursts named Plinian after the Roman writer Pliny the Younger, who published a detailed account of the 79 AD eruption that killed his uncle. That eruption was largest and most destructive of all Vesuvius eruptions. Its cloud of super-heated gases and particles reached a height of thirty-three kilometers. The molten rock, pumice and hot ash ejecta reached sped at a rate of one and a half million tons per second. This volcanic event destroyed several Roman towns and completely obliterated Pompeii and Herculaneum under massive pyroclastic surges and ash fall deposits.

Today, Mount Vesuvius is considered the world’s most dangerous volcano. This is due to two main factors: it has erupted violently and frequently through the years and the large number of people living in its vicinity. The area surrounding Mount Vesuvius is the most densely populated volcanic region in the world. Three million people live near enough to be affected by an eruption, with at least six-hundred thousand in the danger zone. Mount Vesuvius is among the most closely monitored volcanoes in the world. The network consists of a number of fixed seismic stations on the surface of the earth with sensors that detect the motion of the soil, changes in the gravimetric field and indicative shifts in the magnetic masses in the subsurface.

Calendar: December 8

A Year: Day to Day Men: 8th of December

Saturday Morning After Shower

On the eighth of December in 1881, Vienna’s Ring Theater was destroyed by a gaslight fire that killed three hundred and eighty-four people.

The popular Ring Theater in Vienna, Austria was built between 1872 and 1874 by architect Heinrich von Förster from plans drawn by Emil Ritter. Opening in January of 1874 under the direction of operatic tenor and actor Albin Swoboda Sr, it was originally the Opéra Comique. In September of 1878, it changed its name to the Ring Theater and its focus to spoken plays and variety presentations as well as German and Italian operas.

As the footprint of the theater was small and it was intended for an audience of seventeen hundred, the architect designed the theater with four levels. On the eight of December in 1881, a fire began shortly before a performance of “Les Contes Fantastiques d’Hoffmann”, a French libretto written by composer Jacques Offenbach. The theater’s entire interior was engulfed in flames and collapsed; three hundred and eight-four people perished. In 1882, new regulations for theaters were passed regarding public safety provisions, including outward-opening doors, safety curtains and the fireproofing of the theater sets.

The Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary Franz Joseph used his private funds to build an apartment building on the site of the demolished Ring Theater. Although a private residence, it supported worthy public causes. This building also suffered a fire in 1945 with heavy damages and eventually collapsed in 1951.

Between the years 1969 and 1974, an office building occupied the site and served as the federal headquarters for the Vienna police and federal security guards: a plaque commemorating the fire is installed on the police headquarters. The original Attic-styled statues from the Ring Theater are now in Vienna’s Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark, a sprawling natural preserve with statues, wildlife areas and a small farm.

Gol Stavkirke

Gol Stavkirke, Oslo, Norway, 1212 AD

Gol Stave Church (Gol Stavkirke) is a stave church originally from Gol, Hallingdal, Norway. It is now located in the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History at Bygdøy in Oslo, Norway. When the city built a new church around 1880, it was decided to demolish the old stave church. It was saved from destruction by the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Norwegian Monuments, which bought the materials in order to re-erect the church elsewhere.

It was acquired by King Oscar II, who financed its relocation and restoration as the central building of his private open-air museum near Oslo. The restoration, overseen by architect Waldemar Hansteen, was completed in 1885. In 1907 this early open air museum, the world’s first, was merged with the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, which now manages the stave church, still nominally the property of the reigning monarch. The church was dated to 1212 by the characteristic patterns of the annual growth rings in the timber construction.

A modern replica of the Gol Stave Church is in the mediaval park Gordarike. The copy was built in the 1980s and consecrated by the bishop of Tunsberg in 1994. In the summer evening on Wednesdays there is a devotional and sometimes musical performance. The church is often used for weddings. The woodwork inside the church is adorned with beautiful carvings and details.

Source: dariaendresen

Well of Chand Baori

Photographer Unknown, Well of Chand Baori, Abhaneri, India

The Well of Chand Baori is situated in the village of Abhaneri in the state of Rajasthan, India.. There are 3500 narrow steps extending for a height of thirteen stories. It extends approximately one hundred feet into the ground making it one of the deepest and largest stepwells in India. It was built by King Chanda of the Nikumbh dynasty between 800-900 CE and was dedicate to Hashat Mata, Goddess of Joy and Happiness upon completion.

The well was designed to conserve as much water as possible in the extremely dry area of Rajasthan. At the bottom of the well, the air remains about 6 degrees cooler than the temperature at ground level. it is used as a gathering place for locals during intense heat of the day. The site has been used as a filming location for the movies “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”.

Calendar: March 31

Year: Day to Day Men: March 31

Changing His Tunes

The thirty-first of March in 1889 marks the official opening date of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The wrought-iron lattice tower was constructed as the centerpiece for the 1889 Paris Exposition, and as a memorial to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the French Revolution.

Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, two senior engineers employed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel’s company Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel, produced a sketch of a great metal pylon, narrowed as it rose, for the centerpiece of the Paris Exposition. With the assistance of Stephen Sauvestre, the company’s head architect, the men refined the design with the addition of decorative arches at the base of the tower and a glass pavilion on the first level. Gustave Eiffel approved the design and bought the patent rights for their design. This design for the Eiffel Tower was on display at the 1884 Exhibition of Decorative Arts under the company’s name.

On the thirtieth of March in 1885, Gustave Eiffel presented his plans to the Society of Civil Engineers at which time he discussed the technical difficulties and emphasized both the practical and symbolic aspects of the structure. Little progress on a decision was made until Édouard Lockroy was appointed Minister of Trade in 1886. A budget for the Paris Exposition was passed and requirements for the competition being held for the exposition’s centerpiece were altered. All entries were now required to include a study for a three-hundred meter, four-sided tower on the Champ de Mars. A judging commission set up on the twelfth of May found all proposals, except Eiffel’s design, either impractical or lacking in details.

Gustave Eiffel signed the January 1887 contract in his own capacity rather than as a representative of the company. The contract granted him 1.5 million francs toward the construction cost, less than a quarter of the expected cost. Eiffel was to receive all income from the commercial exploitation of the structure during the Paris Exposition and for the following twenty years. To manage the construction, he established a separate company for which he provided half the necessary capital.

The French bank, Crédit Industriel et Commercial, CIC, helped finance the Eiffel Tower’s construction through acquiring funds from predatory loans to the National Bank of Haiti. As a result, the Haitian government was sending nearly half of all taxes collected on its exports to finance the construction of the tower. While the tower was being built as a symbol of France’s freedom, the newly independent Haiti’s economy was hindered in its ability to start schools, hospitals and other basic establishments necessary for an established country.

Work on the Eiffel Tower’s foundations began at the end of January in 1887 with the formation of the four concrete slabs for the legs of the tower. While the east and south legs were easily done; the west and north legs, being closer to the Seine River, needed pilings twenty-two meters deep to support their concrete slabs. All four slabs supported blocks of inclined limestone for the ironwork’s supporting shoes. The foundation structures of the Eiffel Tower were completed at the end of June.

An enormous amount of preparatory work was done for the assemblage of the ironwork. Seventeen hundred general drawings and over thirty-six hundred detailed drawings of the eighteen thousand separate parts were needed. The task of drawing the components was complicate by the complex angles in the design and the degree of precision required; the position of the rivet holes were specified to within one millimeter. No drilling or shaping was done on site; all finished components, some already partially assembled, arrived on horse-drawn carts from the factory. If any part did not fit, it was sent back to the factory. The entire structure was composed of over eighteen thousand pieces joined with two and a half million rivets.

The main structure of the Eiffel Tower was completed at the end of March in 1889. On the thirty-first of March, Gustave Eiffel led a group of government officials and members of the press to the top of the tower. As the lifts were not yet in operation, the ascent by foot took over an hour; most of the party chose to stay at the lower levels. Gustav Eiffel, Émile Nouguier, the head of construction, Jean Compagnon, the City Council president, and the reporters from “Le Figaro” and “Le Monde Illustré” completed the ascent. Eiffel hoisted a large Ticolor flag as a twenty-five gun salute was fired at the first level.

The Eiffel Tower was not opened to the public until the fifteenth of May, nine days after the opening of the Paris Exposition. The lifts, however, were still not completed. Nearly thirty-thousand visitors climbed the seventeen thousand steps to the top before the lifts opened on the twenty-sixth of May. Notable visitors to the tower included inventor Thomas Edison, Edward VII the Prince of Wales, stage actress Sarah Bernhardt and “Buffalo Bill” Cody whose Wild West show was part of the Exposition.

Calendar: March 3

Year: Day to Day Men: March 3

Warmth of the Sun

The third of March in 1585 marks the inauguration of the Teatro Olimpico designed by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. Since 1994, the Olympic Theater, along with other Palladian-styled buildings in and around the city of Vicenza, have been listed together as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.

Born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, Republic of Venice in November of 1508, Andrea Palladio was influenced by Roman and Greek architecture and is considered one of those individuals who most influenced the history of architecture. He trained under noted sculptor Bartolomeo Cavazza de Sossano as an apprentice stonecutter for six years. When his contract was finished, Palladio permanently relocated to Vicenza where his career was unexceptional until 1538.

Between 1538 and 1539, Palladio rebuilt the Villa Trissino, the Cricoli residence of poet and scholar Gian Giorgio Trissino who was engaged in a lifetime study of ancient Roman architecture. Due to his work, Palladio received the formal title of architect in 1541. He took several trips, accompanied by Gian Trissino, between 1541 and 1547 to study classical monuments in Rome, Tivoli, Paletrina, and Albano. As a mentor, Trissino introduced Palladio to the history and arts of Rome as well as bestowed on him the name ‘Palladio’ which means the Wise One.

Throughout his career in Vicenza, Andrea Palladio designed many villas and governmental palaces. His first construction project involving a large town house was the Palazzo Thiene in Vicenza. After the death of its architect Giulio Romano, Palladio finished its construction. He used Romano’s design for the villa’s windows but altered the facade to express a new lightness and grace. Among the villas attributed to Palladio’s architectural designs are the Villa Pisani, his first patrician villa for a Venetian family, and Villa Cornaro, a villa at Piombino Dese that was a mixture of villa rusticate (country house) and suburban villa with a grand salon designed for entertaining.

In 1550, Palladio began construction on the Palazzo del Chiericati, an urban palace built on a city square near Vicenza’s port. It was designed with a two-story facade with a double loggia divided by rows of Doric columns. Paladio’s Palazzo del Capitaniato, the offices of the regional Venetian governor, was a contrasting design of red brick and white stone. The four brick half-columns of its facade formed a strong vertical element that balanced the horizontal balustrades and projecting cornice at the top. Designed in 1565, the Palazzo del Capitaniato was built between 1571 and 1572.

Ranked among his highest masterworks, the Teatro Olimpico was Palladio’s final architectural design and was not completed until after his death. In 1579, the Olympic Academy obtained the rights to build a permanent theater in the old fortress, Castello del Territorio, which had been both a prison and storage depot for gun powder before falling in disuse. Asked to produce a design, Palladio used the space to recreate an academic reconstruction of the Roman theaters he had closely studied. In order to fit a stage and seating area into the building’s wide and shallow space, Palladio had to flatten the semicircular seating area of a Roman theater into an ellipse.

Andrea Palladio died in August of 1580, only six months after the construction on the theater had started. His sketches and drawings were used as a guide; Palladio’s yongest son, Silla Palladio, and Vicenza architect Vincenzo Scamozzi oversaw the final construction work. Scamozzi contributed several rooms to the design and built the rusticated entrance archway that was fitted into the rough, well-worn walls. As Palladio had not left any plans for the onstage scenery, Scamozzi created trompe l’oeil scenery with oil-lamp lighting to give the appearance of long streets receding into the distance. The full Roman-style wood and stucco backscreen is the oldest surviving stage set still in existence.

The Teatro Olimpico was inaugurated on the third of March in 1585 by a production of Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex” with music by composer and organist Andrea Gabrieli. After only a few productions, the theater was essentially abandoned. The scenes created for the production were never removed and still exist in place. The original lighting system of glass oil lamps has been used only a few times over the years due to the risk of fire; they were lit in 1997 for a production of “Oedipus Rex”.

Due to conservation issues, current performances in the Teatro Olimpico are limited to four hundred attendees. As heating and air conditioning could damage the delicate wooden structure of the stage sets, performances are held only in the spring and autumn. The theater was a film location for the 1979 film “Don Giovanni” and the 2005 “Casanova”.

Calendar: February 16

Year: Day to Day Men: February 16

A Daydream Moment

The sixteenth of February in 1923 marks the opening of the sealed door to the burial chamber of the Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. During his reign of ten years, Tutankhamun restored the traditional polytheistic form of the ancient Egyptian religion from the religious-political changes enacted by the former pharaoh Akhenaten.

Born in May of 1874, British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter was from an early age interested in Egyptian artifacts; he would often visit and draw illustrations of specimens in the collection owned by the Amherst family. Impressed by his skills, Lady Amherst made arrangements for seventeen year-old Carter to assist British Egyptologist Percy Newberry in an excavation at Middle Kingdom tombs on the Lower Nile River.

After training under Egyptologists Flinders Petrie and Édouard Naville, Carter was appointed in 1899 as Inspector of Monuments for Upper Egypt by the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Based at Luxor, he oversaw excavations at nearby Thebes and supervised American archaeologist Theodore Davis’s systematic exploration of the Valley of the Kings. During his service, Carter improved the protection and accessibility to existing excavations and developed a grid-block system for tomb searching.

In 1907, Carter began his employment with George Edward Herbert, 5th Lord of Carnarvon, a financial backer for Egyptian antiquities research. Lord Carnarvon received in 1914 the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings. Carter led a systematic search for any tombs that were missed in previous expeditions, including that of Tutankhamun. The search was halted during the years of the First World War and resumed in 1917. After five years with no major finds, Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the project; howver, after a discussion with Carter, he agreed to fund one more season of work in the Valley of the Kings.

On the fourth of November in 1922, a water boy discovered a buried flight of stairs cut into the bedrock. After partially digging out the steps, a mud-plastered doorway was found stamped with indistinct cartouches. Howard Carter had the staircase refilled and notified Lord Carnarvon of the find by telegram. On November twenty-third, Carnarvon arrived accompanied by his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert. The full extent of the stairway was cleared on the next day; it revealed Tutankhamun’s cartouche on the outer doorway. The doorway was removed and the corridor behind it was cleared of rubble.

With Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn and Carter’s assistant Arthur Callender present, Howard Carter opened a tiny breach in the door of the tomb and was able to see the many gold and ebony treasures within. Carter had in fact discovered the burial tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The site was secured until the morning of the twenty-seventh of November, at which time the tomb was officially opened in the presence of a member of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

Tutankhamun’s tomb was virtually intact with all its furnishings and shrines, in spite of previous ancient break-ins. Two life-sized statues of Tutankhamun guarded the sealed doorway to the inner burial chamber. Assisted by staff members of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art which included archeologist Arthur Mace and photographer Harry Burton, Howard Carter over the next several months catalogued and preserved the contents of the chambers.

On the sixteenth of February in 1923, Howard Carter opened the sealed inner doorway and confirmed it led to a burial chamber that contained the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. His tomb was considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. Carter’s meticulous assessing and cataloguing the thousands of objects in the tomb took nearly ten years; the final work was completed in February of 1932.

Despite the significance of the find, Howard Carter received no honors from the British government. In 1926, he received the Order of the Nile, third class, from Egypt’s King Fuad I. Carter was also award an honorary Doctor of Science from Yale University and a honorary membership in Madrid’s Real Academia de la Historia.

Calendar: January 26

Year: Day to Day Men: January 26

Clear Water

On the twenty-sixth of January in 1905, the Cullinan Diamond, the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, was discovered at the Premier Number Two mine in Cullinan, South Africa. The diamond was named after Thomas Cullinan, a South African diamond magnate and owner of the Premier mine.

The Cullinan diamond, weighing 3,106 carats or 621.2 grams, was put on sale in London in April of 1905. Although there was considerable interest in the sale, it remained unsold until 1907 when the British-ruled Transvaal Colony purchased the diamond. The colony’s Prime Minister Louis Botha presented it to King Edward VII, who reigned over the territory. The Cullinan diamond was sent to Amsterdam where Joseph Asscher & Company were commissioned to cut it.

The Cullinan diamond produced stones of various sizes and cuts. The largest, Cullinan 1, was 530.4 carats, or 106 grams, was named the Great Star of Africa by Edward VII. This stone was mounted in the head of the Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross, a token of the King or Queen’s temporal power as head of state. The Scepter was redesigned in 1910 specifically to incorporate the Great Star of Africa, the largest clear cut diamond in the world. The gold clasps that hold the diamond can be opened, thus allowing the diamond to be worn as a pendant.

The second largest cut stone from the Cullinan diamond was named the Second Star of Africa. It weighs 317.4 carats or 41.7 grams, and is mounted in the Imperial State Crown which symbolizes the sovereignty of the British monarch. As with the Scepter, the Imperial State Crown was altered to accommodate the Second Star of Africa in 1909. The Imperial State Crown, at 31.5 cm tall, weighs 1.06 kilograms and has four fleurs-de-lis in the shape of lilies alternating with four crosses pattée, crosses with arms narrower at the center point. The purple velvet cap is trimmed with ermine. The gold, silver and platinum framework is decorated with diamonds, pearls, sapphires, emeralds and five rubies.

Seven other major diamonds cut from the Cullinan, weighing a total of 209.3 carats or 41.7 grams, were privately owned by Elizabeth II who inherited them from her grandmother, Queen Mary, in 1953. These were used in brooches and as part of the Coronation Necklace; the smallest at 4.39 carats was set in a platinum ring known as the Cullinan IX Ring.

The Cullinan was estimated to have been formed in the Earth’s mantle and reached the surface 1.18 billion years ago. It was found 5.5 meters below the surface at Premier Mine by Frederick Wells, the mine’s surface manager. It was three times the size of the 1898 Excelsior Diamond, the previous largest gem-quality rough diamond. As four of its eight surfaces were smooth, the blue-white hued Cullinan was once a part of a much larger stone that was broken up by natural forces. For a short period after its discovery, the diamond was on display at Johannesburg’s Standard Bank where it was seen by over eight thousand visitors.

After the period of display, London’s sale agent S. Neumann & Company created a diversionary tactic for the transport of the Cullinan diamond to London. Detectives were assigned to a steamboat that was rumored to be carrying the stone; the parcel, containing a fake diamond, was locked under great circumstance in the captain’s safe and guarded the entire voyage. The Cullinan Diamond was actually sent to London in a plain box by registered mail. When it arrived in London, the package was sent to Buckingham Palace for King Edward VII’s inspection.

Calendar: January 8

Year: Day to Day Men: January 8

Man on Deck

The eighth of January in 1877 marks the Battle of Wolf Mountain, known by the Northern Cheyenne as the Battle of Belly Butte, a confrontation between the United States Army and warriors from both the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne. Occurring during the Great Sioux War of 1876, the battle was fought in southern Montana Territory near the Tongue River.

Following Lieutenant Colonel George Custer’s defeat in the Battle of Little Bighorn, a large number of Army reinforcements were sent by the government into the Montana Territory. In autumn of 1876, a few bands of Sioux and Cheyenne tribes were returning to the reservations and agencies, now managed by the army instead of civilian contractors, to acquire food and annuity goods for the winter. These provisions had been promised to the tribes after the government demanded that they cede the Black Hills area to it.

By December, General Nelsen Miles had led a mixed force of infantry, artillery and calvary after Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull’s band and effectively defeated them. Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie defeated the Northern Cheyenne under Chief Morning Star after a destructive raid, known as the Dull Knife Fight, that left two hundred lodges destroyed, seven hundred livestock captured, and most of the Cheyenne forced to surrender. The surviving warriors trekked through snow and icy conditions to join the camp of Chief Crazy Horse in the Tongue River Valley.

Concerned about the approaching winter and the situation of the remaining Cheyenne band, Chief Crazy Horse decided to negotiate a peace with the army. However, a group of United States Army Crow scouts murdered Crazy Horse’s delegation. In retaliation, a series of small raids by the Cheyenne tried to draw out Colonel Nelson Miles’s troops from the Tongue River army post. In December of 1876, Miles led most of nine companies from the army post in pursuit of Crazy Horse at Tongue River Valley. On the seventh of January, Miles captured a few Northern Cheyennes and camped with a force of four hundred-thirty six men along the Tongue River. That night fresh snow fell and the temperatures dropped.

After early morning shots were fired. Colonel Miles set up a defensive perimeter along a ridge on the knoll later called Battle Butte. The defensive position had two pieces of artillery beside it and a clear line of fire in front. At seven in the morning, Crazy Horse and Cheyenne Chief Two Moon began a series of attacks. Due the the army’s firepower, the warriors had to regroup and attack several times; however, these attacks failed when Miles shifted his reserves. Miles’s Fifth Infantry units struggled to take the hills occupied by the warriors; despite the deep snow, the units secured seven of the hills, forcing the Sioux and Cheyenne to withdraw.

Although a draw in many aspects, the Battle of Wolf Mountain was a strategic victory for the U.S. Army as the Sioux and Cheyenne saw they were not safe from the army even in winter’s harsh conditions. Many members of the tribes returned to the reservations. By May of 1877, Chief Crazy Horse had led his surviving band to Camp Robinson to surrender.

Notes: Chief Crazy Horse was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band; his Lakota name was Tȟašúŋke Witkó, literal translation “His Horse is Crazy”. After his surrender, he resided in his village near the Red Cloud Agency, located by Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Crazy Horse had promised he would remain in peace with the army. Due to mistranslation by an Indian interpreter, the army felt that he was a threat and eventually arrested and placed in the guardhouse. Once inside, Crazy Horse attempted to escape and was stabbed with a bayonet by one of the guards. He was tended by the assistant post surgeon but died late on the night of September fifth in 1877. The identification of the guard remains questioned. Crazy Horse’s remains were handed over to his elderly parents; his final resting place remains unknown.

Chief Morning Star was a great chief of the Northern Cheyenne people and the headchief of the Notameohmésêhese band on the northern Great Plains. Known also as Chief Dull Knife, his Lakota Sioux name was Tȟamílapȟéšni. He died in 1883 and is interred at Lame Deer Cemetery on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in southeastern Montana.

Cliffside Palace

Cliffside Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado

Mesa Verde National Park is a U.S. National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. It protects some of the best preserved Ancestral Puebloan archeological sites in the United States.

The park was created by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. It occupies 52,485 acres (21,240 ha) near the Four Corners region, and with more than 4,000 sites and 600 cliff dwellings, it is the largest archeological preserve in the US. Mesa Verde (Spanish for “green table”) is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America.

The Mesa Verdeans survived by utilizing a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa’s first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico, including Rio Chama, Pajarito Plateau, and Santa Fe.