United States · Tradition
Indigenous sacred sites in United States
Explore 114 sacred sites in United States connected to Indigenous. Compare locations on the map and find respectful cultural and visiting guidance.
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Traditions
Showing 1-48 of 114 matching sites
Angel Mounds, Evansville, Indiana
Evansville, Indiana, United States
For 350 years, Angel Mounds was the center of a world. The Mississippian people who built this sacred city aligned their mounds with solstices, tracking celestial events...
Antelope and Buffalo Springs (Chickasaw National Recreation Area)
Sulphur, Oklahoma, United States
In the Arbuckle foothills of Oklahoma, five million gallons of pure water gush daily from the earth....
Antelope Canyon
Page, Arizona, United States
Deep within Navajo land, narrow sandstone passages open into chambers of flowing stone and cascading light....
As Nieves Latte Stone Quarry
Songsong / Sinapalo area, Rota, Northern Mariana Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, United States
At As Nieves on Rota, nine massive latte shafts and seven capstones sit exactly where their carvers left them, mid-quarry, for reasons no source can confirm....
Aztalan Mounds, Wisconsin
Lake Mills, Wisconsin, United States
On the banks of the Crawfish River, platform mounds rise from prairie grass where they have stood for a millennium....
Bandelier National Monument
Sandoval County, New Mexico, United States
In a volcanic canyon carved by centuries of water and wind, the Ancestral Puebloans built homes into the soft tuff cliffs, dug kivas into the earth, and left petroglyphs...
Bear Butte, South Dakota
Sturgis, South Dakota, United States
Rising alone from the South Dakota plains, Bear Butte has drawn seekers for ten thousand years. For the Lakota, it is their most sacred altar....
Big Horn Medicine Wheel, Wyoming
Big Horn County, Wyoming, United States
At nearly 10,000 feet in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains, stones form a wheel 80 feet across, with 28 spokes radiating toward the sky. No one knows who built it....
Black Elk Peak, South Dakota
Custer, South Dakota, United States
Rising as the highest point in the Black Hills, Black Elk Peak stands at the center of the world in Lakota cosmology....
Blanca Peak, Colorado
Fort Garland, Colorado, United States
Blanca Peak rises in Colorado's Sangre de Cristo Range as one of the four most sacred mountains in Navajo religion....
Blue Lake, New Mexico
Taos County, New Mexico, United States
High in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico, an alpine lake sits at 11,300 feet, closed to all but the people who emerged from its waters....
Blythe Intaglios
Blythe, California, United States
In the Colorado Desert, fifteen miles north of Blythe, six colossal figures lie etched into the earth....
Bryce Canyon National Park
Bryce Canyon City, Utah, United States
At the edge of Utah's high plateau, thousands of stone spires rise from natural amphitheaters in formations found nowhere else on Earth....
Caguana Ceremonial Indigenous Heritage Site
Utuado, Puerto Rico, United States
In the mountain heart of Puerto Rico, thirteen stone-lined courts stand beneath the sacred Cemi Mountain, where the Taino believed gods made their home....
Cahokia Mounds, Collinsville, Illinois
Collinsville, Illinois, United States
Eight miles from downtown St. Louis, across the Mississippi, 70 earthen mounds mark what was once the largest city north of Mexico....
Canyon de Chelly, Arizona
Chinle Agency, Arizona, United States
Canyon de Chelly rises 1,000 feet above a valley where Navajo families still farm, herd sheep, and practice traditions their ancestors carried here three centuries ago....
Capitan Mountains, New Mexico
Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States
The Capitan Mountains rise from the desert of south-central New Mexico in an unusual east-west ridge, climbing from Chihuahuan sagebrush to spruce-fir forest across 4,500...
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico
San Juan County, New Mexico, United States
In the high desert of New Mexico, the ruins of Chaco Canyon stand as testimony to a civilization that achieved extraordinary things....
Chief Mountain (Ninaistakis), Glacier County, Montana
Babb, Montana, United States
Chief Mountain rises alone at the edge of the Rocky Mountains, a solitary peak standing sentinel where the plains meet the sky....
Crystal River Mounds, Florida
Crystal River, Florida, United States
On Florida's Gulf Coast, six mounds rise above the Crystal River where, for sixteen centuries, peoples gathered to bury their dead with copper from the Great Lakes and...
Effigy Indian Mound, Iowa
Allamakee County, Iowa, United States
High above the Mississippi River, on bluffs overlooking one of America's great waterways, ancestors built the earth into the shapes of bears, birds, and water spirits....
Emerald Mound, Stanton, Mississippi
Stanton, Mississippi, United States
Rising from the Mississippi landscape, Emerald Mound covers eight acres and stands as the second-largest Mississippian ceremonial mound in the United States, surpassed...
Enchanted Rock, Texas
Fredericksburg, Texas, United States
Rising from the Texas Hill Country, this massive pink granite dome has drawn humans for over ten thousand years....
Etowah mounds, Georgia
Cartersville, Georgia, United States
In the rolling hills of northwest Georgia, six earthen mounds rise above the Etowah River where the Mississippian people built one of the most powerful chiefdoms in...
Garden of the Gods, Colorado
Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States
Garden of the Gods rises from the Colorado plains as one of America's most sacred landscapes, a place where the Ute people believe humanity was created....
Giant Springs, Great Falls, Montana
Great Falls, Montana, United States
At Giant Springs, water that began its journey as snowmelt in the Little Belt Mountains emerges after 3,000 years underground—crystal clear, a constant 54 degrees, flowing...
Grand Canyon National Park
Grand Canyon Village, Arizona, United States
For at least 12,000 years, humans have stood at the edge of this chasm and felt something shift....
Grave Creek Mound, Moundsville, Ohio
Moundsville, West Virginia, United States
Rising sixty-two feet above the Ohio River valley, Grave Creek Mound stands as one of the largest conical burial mounds in North America....
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado
Mosca, Colorado, United States
The Great Sand Dunes are cultural property to 18 Indigenous tribes who gather sand here for healing rituals and sand paintings....
Guadalupe Peak, Texas
Salt Flat, Texas, United States
Rising 8,751 feet above the Chihuahuan Desert, Guadalupe Peak stands as one of the four sacred mountains of the Mescalero Apache, where creation narratives place their...
Hikiau Heiau, Hawaii
Captain Cook, Hawaii, United States
On the shore of Kealakekua Bay, massive stones rise in witness to what came before and what persists....
Hikinaakala Heiau, Kauai
Kapaa, Hawaii, United States
At the mouth of the Wailua River on Kauai's eastern shore, the foundation stones of Hikinaakala Heiau mark the exact point where the rising sun first touches the island....
Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks
Newark, Ohio, United States
The Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks rise from Ohio's rolling landscape as monuments to a 2,000-year-old vision....
Horseshoe Bend
Page, Arizona, United States
A thousand feet below the overlook, the Colorado River completes its patient arc through Navajo Sandstone, forming the near-perfect horseshoe that has drawn both...
House of Taga
San Jose, Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, United States
House of Taga holds the largest latte stone formation in the Mariana Islands, twelve massive pillars once supporting a chief's house, now reduced to a single upright shaft...
Hovenweep Ruins, Utah
Shiprock Agency, Utah, United States
On the high desert where Utah meets Colorado, stone towers stand at the edges of canyons, their windows aligned with solstice and equinox....
Iao Valley State Park, Maui
Wailuku, Hawaii, United States
In the West Maui Mountains, mist drifts through a valley that has been sacred to Hawaiians for centuries....
Inyan Kara Mountain, Wyoming
Sundance, Wyoming, United States
Rising from the Wyoming plains at the western edge of the Black Hills, Inyan Kara Mountain holds profound significance for the Lakota people as part of an interconnected...
Island Lake, Colorado
Silverton, Colorado, United States
Island Lake near Silverton offers what might be called a contemporary nature pilgrimage....
Jeffers Petroglyphs, Comfrey, Minnesota
Comfrey, Minnesota, United States
On a ridge of red Sioux quartzite in southwestern Minnesota, approximately five thousand rock carvings stretch across one of the oldest continuously used sacred sites in...
Joshua Tree National Park, California
Joshua Tree, California, United States
Rising from the meeting place of two deserts, Joshua Tree's otherworldly landscape of giant granite boulders and twisted trees has drawn seekers for millennia....
Keahiakawelo (Garden of the Gods), Hawaii
Lanai City, Hawaii, United States
On the remote northwestern shore of Lanai, red rock towers rise from barren earth in formations so otherworldly that visitors struggle to reconcile them with typical...
Kilauea
Volcano, Hawaii, United States
On Hawaii's Big Island, Kilauea volcano rises as the dwelling place of Pele, goddess of fire and creator of the Hawaiian Islands....
Kincaid Mounds, Brookport, Illinois
Brookport, Kentucky, United States
For 350 years, Kincaid Mounds served as the heart of a chiefdom where thousands gathered for ceremony, governance, and trade....
Kukaniloko Birthstones, Hawaii
Wahiawa, Hawaii, United States
In the pineapple fields of central Oahu, stones rise from the earth that are not quite stones....
Lake Jackson Mounds, Tallahassee, Florida
Tallahassee, Florida, United States
In the rolling hills north of Tallahassee, six earthen mounds rise from the red clay of Florida's Panhandle....
Lassen Peak, California
Mineral, California, United States
Lassen Peak stands as the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range and ancestral homeland of the Atsugewi, Yana, Yahi, and Mountain Maidu peoples....
Marksville mounds
Marksville, Louisiana, United States
For two thousand years, the mounds at Marksville have held the dead. The Marksville culture that built them was connected by trade and ceremony to peoples across North...
Key questions
Indigenous sacred sites in United States questions
What is included in this Indigenous guide to United States?
This guide includes 114 sacred places within the Indigenous tradition in United States.
Can I view these United States sacred places on a map?
Yes. Switch to map view to compare their geography, then open a site page for history, visiting context, and nearby places.
Can I widen this Indigenous guide?
Yes. Use the location links to widen from region to country or from country to the global facet hub without losing the selected facet.