The legend of Devils Tower

Devils Tower (a.k.a. Bear Lodge, Rock Tree) is a geological curiosity in Wyoming's North East. Well worth a trip if you are ever in the area. The tower sticks out a good 250m from the prairie around it. Geologists agree that it is an "intrusion" of cooled magma into a softer sedimentary layer of earth and that the soft stuff has eroded away. Exactly how this happened is a mystery as there is little evidence of volcanic activity in the area.

I like the Kiowa tribe's version anyway. In this legend, a group of seven sisters were being chased by a huge bear. They came to a flat rock which told them to hop on. The rock grew into a huge tower, which the bear started to claw at creating huge grooves in the rock. The sisters then fled up into the cosmos and became stars, and so did the bear in hot pursuit. This is why at times of the year they can be seen directly above the tower as the constellation Pleiades (what we call Matariki in NZ), being chased by another bear shaped constellation.