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Modern Westerners say the lights in the sky are stars, but culturally they are whatever we humans say they are. Some say they are Forces that determine human lives, some declare they are burning gaseous masses, and some see them as reminders of a gloried past by which elders can teach and guide the young—mnemonics for narratives. Lankford’s volume focuses on the ancient North Americans and the ways they identified, patterned, ordered, and used the stars to light their culture and illuminate their traditions. They knew them as regions that could be visited by human spirits, and so the lights for them were not distant points of light, but “reachable stars.” Guided by the night sky and its constellations, they created oral traditions, or myths, that contained their wisdom and which they used to pass on to succeeding generations their particular world view. However, they did not all tell the same stories. This study uses that fact—patterns of agreement and disagreement—to discover prehistoric relationships between Indian groups. Which groups saw a constellation in the same way and told the same story? How did that happen? Although these preliterate societies left no written records, the mythic patterns across generations and cultures enable contemporary researchers to examine the differences in how they understood the universe—not as early scientists, but as creators of cosmic order. In the process of doing that, the myth-tellers left the footprints of their international cultural relationships behind them. Reachable Stars is the story of their stories.
E-Book Content
Reachable Stars
Reachable Stars Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America
George E. Lankford
THE UNIV ERSITY OF A L ABA MA PRESS Tuscaloosa
Copyright © 2007 The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Typeface: Garamond ∞ The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lankford, George E., 1938– Reachable stars : patterns in the ethnoastronomy of eastern North America / George E. Lankford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1568-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8173-1568-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-5428-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8173-5428-X 1. Indian cosmology—East (U.S.) 2. Indian cosmology—Great Plains. 3. Indian mythology—East (U.S.) 4. Indian mythology—Great Plains. 5. Ethnoastronomy—East (U.S.) 6. Ethnoastronomy—Great Plains. I. Title. E98.C79L36 2007 305.8971′074—dc22 2006039790
Contents
List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Four Ethnoastronomies 20 2. The Star Husband 35 3. The Morning Stars 53 4. The Morning Star of the Winnebago 72 5. Stars in the North: Bears, Biers, and Boats 126 6. The Star Cluster 162 7. The Star Women 182 8. The Path through the Stars 201 9. The Starry Hand 226
vi
contents 10. The Serpent in the Stars 240 11. Some Ethnoastronomical Insights 257 Notes 277 Bibliography 279 Index 299
Illustrations
Figures 1.1. Location of the four tribal ethnoastronomies 22 2.1. Distribution of the Animal Tricksters oicotype of the Star Husband 44 2.2. Distribution of the Star Boy oicotype of the Star Husband 49 2.3. Distribution of the Animal Tricksters and Porcupine–Star Boy oicotypes 51 3.1. Sirius adjacent to the Milky Way 56 3.2. Distribution of the Star Boy type 59 3.3. Distribution of the Cosmogram type 69 3.4. Distribution of Morning Star traditions 71 4.1. Distribution of the Children of the Sun myth 101 4.2. Distribution of the False Bridegroom/Bead Spitter type with decapitation motif 111 4.3. Hypothesis