It would be so cool if the Native Americans independently discovered the Method of Loci (or something similar)! If so, I wonder if they also developed the same rules of thumb as the Greeks/Romans, like: space your loci apart, always view your loci from the same angle, store a fixed number of items at each loci, etc.

I'm aware of one interesting example where someone created a memory palace around an object that's not a building (or a route along a street). IIRC a person became blind and wanted to write a book, so s/he stored plot points at different parts of an intricate vase s/he was familiar with. (In medieval Europe, the fingers of the left hand were also used for memory purposes.)

Using a stylized bird gives you readily apparent loci: the beak, the head, each of the three feathers of each wing, etc.

Magnifying the bird and turning it into a path is clever, since your sense of place, amount of fatigue while walking, and on which side the sun hits you, would all help cement the route in your memory.

Memory Palace, as in used for memorization, is covered in Moonwalking with Einstein (a book). It's certainly an interesting way to memorize things, in this case competitions for memorizing a deck of cards.

Andro Linklater in Measuring America says this is one of the great tragedies of forcibly relocating Native Americans from their traditional lands: the loss of the oral histories bound to routes and landmarks on those lands. So the theory isn't without some precedents. I'm not sure what evidence he puts forward for this though.

Sounds almost like Songlines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songline

Thats one interesting theory. Made me think of hedge mazes.