Other names : BlackFeet (U.S.A.) Region : North America 19th-20th centuries
In the Blackfoot sky, as among many other Plains Indians, the Sun, his consort the Moon, and their son Morning Star, play an important role. This sky culture has four constellation line figures, and names for the Milky Way, the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula, three planets and three stars.
The Blackfoot is an Algonquian-speaking tribe living in the northern Great Plains of North America.
In the Blackfoot sky, as among many other Plains Indians, the Sun, his consort the Moon, and their son Morning Star, play an important role. This sky culture has four constellation line figures, and names for the Milky Way, the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula, three planets and three stars.
The Blackfoot used to draw stars on their tipis. They believe that when people die, their spirits go into the sky and become stars, thus ever increasing the number of stars in the heavens.
The Morning star is a legendary hero described in the myth of the ‘Feather Woman’[#3]. The ‘Feather Woman’ (called So-at-sa-ki) lived on Earth and wished to marry the Morning star. One day, the Morning star came to Earth and took her to the sky, he introduced her to his parents, the Sun and the Moon. The lovers had a child, Poïa, the ‘Young Morning star’...
Jupiter is associated with Poïa, the son of the Morning star and the ‘Feather Woman’. After disobeying her parents-in-law, the ‘Feather Woman’ had to return to Earth with her baby Poïa. On Earth, Poïa loses her mother and endures many suffering during his childhood. Courageous, he manages to return to heaven to be with his father. Since then, they are seen together during the conjunctions of Venus and Jupiter.
The sources give little information about other planets. Mars is known as ‘The big Fire Star’[#3].
In a family lived six brothers and two sisters. The older sister secretly loved a bear that the father killed. Transformed into a bear, the big sister kills her parents and pursues her brothers and her little sister. The youngest of the brothers, Okinai, thanks to his powers as a medicine man, installs his family in a large tree but the bear climbs it, and the chase begins again...
Since then, the seven brothers and their sister have been circling in the sky, pursued by the bear (older sister). They form the constellation of the Big Dipper : The little sister is the star Alcor and Okinai is the star Alkaïd[#3].
The location of Okinai (Alkaïd, at the end of the handle of the Big Dipper) allowed the Blackfoot to tell the time at night[#3].
The two main stars in Gemini (Castor and Pollux) are ‘Ashes-Chief’ and ‘Stuck-Behind’, two legendary twins[#2]. ‘Ashes-Chief’, also called ‘Rock’, is brave and evil. Stuck-Behind, also called ‘Beaver’, is timid but good. Once, they climb a tree with forbidden fruits, guarded by a giant snake.
The six stars of the Pleiades (called ‘Lost Children’ or ‘Bunched Stars’) represent six poor children. According to the myth, they lived a long time ago in a blackfoot camp. After the buffalo hunting, they did not receive the traditional calfskins. As they were naked, the other children made fun of them. The six ‘Lost children’ went to heaven to ask the Sun to help them take revenge[#3]... The hunting season of the buffalo is in spring when the Pleiades are visible in the sky of the northern hemisphere.
The ‘Lodge of the Spider Man’ is the brightest six stars of the Western Northern Crown. The stars represents the stones laid in a circle which used to hold down a tipi. This constellation is also associated with the myth of the ‘Feather Woman’.
The ‘Spider Man's Fingers’ is a possible configuration of stars in Hercules[#1]; they would represent five fingers spinning a thread to let the legendary ‘Feather Woman’ down from the sky.
The North Star is called the ‘Star that Stands Still’. All the other stars walk around it. In the myth of the ‘Feather Woman’, The North Star is a hole... Seen from the Earth, it lets rays coming from the sun's house pass through. It is the place of passage between heaven and Earth. The ‘Feather Woman’ goes through it when she comes back to Earth on the spider-man's thread.
The Orion Nebula is the stone knife of the mythical person Blood-Clot. Killed by other Indians, he ascended to heaven. He is also called ‘Smoking-Star’[#2].
The Milky Way, called the ‘Wolf Trail’, represents the shortest path from the sky to the Earth. It is also the path that leads to the world of spirits[#3].
Comets announce famines[#3].
Eclipses announce the death of a great leader[#3].
This sky culture for Stellarium is a transcript of the broad survey of North-American astronomical traditions in the book ‘Stars of the first people: Native American star myths and constellations’ [#1] (from p. 243). The basic information is not collected by this recent author. It is attributed to anthropologists from the early 1900s: ‘Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians` published in 1908[#2], and ‘The old north trail, or, Life, legends and religion of the Blackfeet Indians’ published in 1910[#3]. The blackfoot indians are divided in three tribes : Siksika, Kainah and Pikuni. These sources concerns the Siksika and the Pikuni. The sources include many associated star stories and mostly English names.
- [#1]: Dorcas S. Miller. Stars of the first people: Native American star myths and constellations. Westwinds Press, 1997.
- [#2]: Clark Wissler and D. C. Duvall. Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians. Published by the American Museum of Natural History, New York. 1908. Available at https://archive.org/details/mythologyofblack00wiss (accessed Jan 2022).
- [#3]: Walter McClintock. The old North trail, or, Life, legends and religion of the Blackfeet Indians. Macmillan and Co., Limited, London. 1910. Available at https://archive.org/details/oldnorthtrailorl00mccluoft (accessed Jan 2022).
- [#4]: Doina Bucur. The network signature of constellation line figures. arXiv e-prints. arXiv:2110.12329 [cs.SI]. 2021. Available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.12329.
This sky culture was contributed by Doina Bucur ([email protected]). It was digitised for the cross-culture analysis of constellation line figures in reference [#4], ‘The network signature of constellation line figures’.
Images : Guillaume Duprat for Stellarium.
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