So What Is Up There?

So What Is Up There??





What do you see when you look up at the night sky? Are the stars all jumbled up and mixed together or do some shine brighter then others and form patterns?

For thousands of years people have looked up at the night sky and created stories about what they interpreted those patterns of stars to be. Different cultures saw different things in the night sky and created there own unique stories that related and made sense to them. Some used the same constellation but called it by a different name and had a different story for it.

Most civilizations and cultures had stories about the night sky to explain why the stars were there in the first place or to explain the natural world around them. To Native Americans oral story telling is a very important part of their culture it is very easy to picture them sitting around a campfire at night telling a story about their tribe and relating it to something in the night sky above them.

Examples of this would be:

Orion

The Greek constellation Orion
In Greek mythology Orion was a great hunter who was very boastful about his skills. The Earth Goddess heard of this and sent a scorpion after Orion to teach him a lesson. They battled and Orion soon realized that he was no match for the scorpion’s armor. Apollo saw Orion swimming away in retreat and tricked Artemis, Goddess of the hunt into shooting him with an arrow. After this the God’s placed Orion in the winter night sky followed by Scorpio in the summer night sky.

The Chinook Tribe of Southwest Washington saw something different in the constellation of Orion. They saw a canoe race, a big canoe where his belt would be and a little canoe where his dagger is. They were racing to catch salmon in the Big River, which was their version of the Milky Way.

Many people can spot the Milky Way and see it as a band of stars arching across the night sky. The Algonquin Tribe saw something different. To them it was the Path of the Spirit’s, where their people go after they leave earth to continue on their journey. Each star is one of their campfires burning bright as they stop for the night and rest on their journey.



Cassiopeia

The Greek version of the story tells of a very beautiful but vain queen named Cassiopeia, who boasts about her daughter Andromeda. After promising her daughter in marriage to one of Poseidon’s son’s, her plans change and a battle ensues. Cassiopeia is turned to stone by Perseus and placed in the night sky by Poseidon. As punishment for her vanity and indecisiveness half the time she is sitting upside down in a chair in the sky.

The Yakima Tribe of Central Washington see the constellation of Cassiopeia differently. Their story is that a hunter killed a great elk and stretched the skin out to dry. He used wooden stakes to stretch the hide out and when it dried he placed it in the night sky. The stars of the constellation are where the wooden stake poles poked through.


The Moon

We see the cycles of the moon every month just as the Native Americans who lived here before us saw them. They had names for the moon every month which represented something that was happening in nature around them at that time. Here is an example of what the Cherokee Indians called the moon at different points of the year.

January- Cold Moon
February- Bony Moon
March- Strawberry or Windy Moon
April- Flower Moon
May- Planting Moon
June- Green Corn Moon
July- Ripe Corn Moon
August- Drying Up Moon
September- Black Butterfly Moon
October- Harvest Moon
November- Trading Moon
December- Snow Moon

What do you think was happening in their lives during each month and what can you tell about what was important to them??