©Michael Sherwin, Red Fox, James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway, Vinton County, OH State Route 32 (SR 32), also known as the James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway, is a major east–west highway across the southern portion of the state of Ohio. This region of Ohio is known for its numerous archaeological sites and is often referred to as the center of the Native world nearly 2,000 years ago. The James A. Rhodes Appalachian Highway was built along and upon ancient migration routes and Indian trails.

©Michael Sherwin, Factory, Ohio River, Marshall County, WV The small town of Moundsville, WV near the Ohio River is replete with ancient archaeological sites and earthworks, including the Grave Creek Mound, one of the largest conical burial mounds in the United States. I visited the area just before sunrise in a dense fog. While exploring sites along the banks of the river just outside of town, I stopped to make an image of fog rising from the water. In the process of setting up my tripod and camera, the fog had lifted revealing a large factory that seemed to rise out of the river like an optical illusion or mirage.

©Michael Sherwin, Shrum Mound, Columbus, OH One of the last remaining ancient conical burial mounds in the city of Columbus, Ohio, Shrum Mound was constructed about 2,000 years ago by the Adena people. The mound is named after the Shrum family who owned a farm where it was located. Currently, the mound sits in a one-acre park surrounded by a busy highway, privacy fences, an old limestone quarry and a modern townhome development. From the top you can see the city skyline eight miles away. Burial mounds like this dot the landscape of Ohio, although many have been destroyed by agriculture and development.

©Michael Sherwin, John Wayne Point, Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, NM Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, known by the Navajo as Tse’Bii’Ndzisgaii, is said to be one of the most photographed places on earth. Set aside by the Navajo Tribal Council in 1958, the park covers almost 92,000 acres in northern Arizona and southern Utah and lies within the Navajo Nation reservation. The towering sandstone rock formations that have been sculpted for millennia have achieved some Hollywood fame as the backdrop of many movies and television shows, beginning with several John Wayne films including Stagecoach in 1939.

©Michael Sherwin, Shawnee Lookout State Park, North Bend, OH Perched above the confluence of the Ohio and Great Miami Rivers, Shawnee Lookout Park was an important observation point and may be the largest continuously occupied hilltop Native American site in the United States. Standing at the lookout today, one can imagine the strategic importance of this site and the protection it offered, while also pausing to reflect on the impacts of modern industry. Railways and roads crisscross the landscape while power plants dot the horizon.

©Michael Sherwin, Register Cliff, Platte County, WY Register Cliff rises above the North Platte River near Guernsey, Wyoming. The area was a popular camp site along the Oregon Trail and many emigrants carved their names and the dates of their passage in the chalky limestone bluff. Most of the inscriptions are from the 1840s and 50s, peak years of travel along the trail.

©Michael Sherwin, Stockade Wall, Fort Phil Kearney State Historic Site, Banner, WY Fort Phil Kearny was an outpost of the United States Army that existed in the late 1860s in present-day northeastern Wyoming along the Bozeman Trail. The fort was established at the height of the Indian Wars to protect prospective miners traveling the trail north from the Oregon Trail to the gold fields in present-day Montana. The fort’s eight-foot-high walls covered over 17 acres of Native land, the largest stockade fort in the west. Bitter from decades of forced removal and broken treaties, and opposing the invasion of their hunting grounds, the Sioux Indians attacked the fort viciously. When the Sioux finally triumphed, the fort was evacuated in 1868. It was one of the few instances during the Indian Wars when the Army was forced to abandon a region it had occupied.

©Michael Sherwin, Mural, Point Pleasant Riverfront Park, Point Pleasant, WV The small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia was the site of the Battle of Point Pleasant, where over 1,000 Virginia militiamen defeated a force of Algonquin confederation of Shawnee and Mingo warriors led by Shawnee Chief Cornstalk in 1774. The conflict resulted from escalating violence as British colonists moved into land south of the Ohio River where Indians held treaty rights to hunt. As a result of the victory, the Indians lost the right to hunt in the area and agreed to recognize the Ohio River as the boundary between Indian lands and the British colonies. A 150-foot-long mural painted on a flood wall by artist, Robert Dafford, commemorates the battle and depicts the early, more peaceful lives of Indigenous people.

©Michael Sherwin, Reconstructed Burial Mound, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Chillicothe, OH Nearly 2000 years ago, American Indians built dozens of monumental mounds and earthen enclosures in southern Ohio. These earthwork complexes were ceremonial landscapes used for feasts, funerals, rituals, and rites of passage. During World War I the Mound City Group site was occupied by a military training center known as Camp Sherman. In the early 1920s after Camp Sherman was razed, the Ohio Historical Society excavated the site and began reconstruction of the earthworks and mounds. All the mounds and walls visible at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park are modern restorations based upon an extensive record of documentary and field research stretching back more than 150 years.

©Michael Sherwin, Prairie Juniper, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND The badlands of North Dakota were, and continue to be, a spiritually significant landscape for a diversity of Native cultures. People considered the buttes the homes of many animal spirits and came to the badlands on vision quests and for other rituals in addition to hunting and gathering. This large Prairie Juniper stands like a sentinel above the formidable badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park below.

©Michael Sherwin, Matò Pahà, Bear Butte State Park, Meade County, SD The sacred mountain of Bear Butte in South Dakota is a holy site for many American Indian tribes. The Lakota people call it Matò Pahà or “Bear Mountain,” a reference to the fact that its profile resembles a sleeping bear. Revered leaders like Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull all visited this mountain to pray, and it continues to be a place of pilgrimage for Indians throughout the United States and Canada. Vision quests, sweat lodges, and other ceremonies are frequently held on the mountain.

©Michael Sherwin, Eagle Feather, Medicine Wheel National Historic Landmark, Bighorn National Forest, WY The Bighorn Medicine Wheel sits at nearly 10,000 ft. high in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. No one really knows when it was built, but the cultural history of the site dates back over ten thousand years. The Medicine Wheel, sometimes known as the Sacred Hoop, has been used by generations of Native people for health and healing. It embodies the Four Directions, as well as Father Sky, Mother Earth, and Spirit Tree, all of which symbolize dimensions of health and the cycles of life. It’s also believed that the wheel was used to predict the positions of the Sun and other bright stars in the sky around the summer solstice. This eagle feather stuck into one of the fence posts bordering the wheel was likely a prayer offering. Both Bald and Golden Eagles (and their feathers) are highly revered and considered sacred within Native religions.

©Michael Sherwin, Wild Horses and Road, Crow Indian Reservation, MT The Hidatsa Crow (originally known as “Apsaalooke”) were nomadic Plains Indians who grew wealthy and strong through their association with, and acquisition of the horse. They assisted the United States military as scouts against the Tribe’s traditional enemies, the Lakota and Nez Perce, yet they did not get any better treatment. They were forced by the government to cede most of their land and pushed on to a reservation in present-day southwestern Montana and northern Wyoming. In this photograph, an empty road runs across the dry hills while a herd of wild horses moves in the opposite direction. Two forms of locomotion that have transformed cultures and defined the history of the American West, creating a sort of visual archaeology. The smog-filled sky is a result of one of the worst forest fire seasons recorded in the American West.

©Michael Sherwin, Laundry, Indian Mound Campground, New Marshfield, OH The Serenity Hills Campground (formerly known as Indian Mound Campground) surrounds a large burial mound with campsites bordering it on all sides. This Indigenous burial ground has been a sacred site and place of burial for over a thousand years. It is significant to living Indigenous peoples as a cemetery where their ancestors are buried. Although they were forcibly removed from their homeland, they have continued to come here to pray and connect with their ancestors. While wandering the grounds, I noticed a makeshift clothesline hanging in front of the ancient burial mound. Numerous white t-shirts hung on the line, some with American flags and another with the words, “How can I think outside the box when they won’t even let me out of it”.

©Michael Sherwin, Suncrest Towne Centre, Morgantown, WV Suncrest Town Centre is a strip mall that sits on a former Monongahelan culture sacred burial ground and village site in Morgantown, West Virginia. Initially, Wal-Mart owned a lease for the land, but backed out when they learned it was an ancient Native American burial ground. The land was donated to West Virginia University to be used as an archaeological site. However, WVU sold the land to a development company who eventually excavated the site and shipped the skeletal remains and artifacts to the Seneca tribe in New York.