Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion, art, science, food, and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. The Pawnee Indians, like the tribes in other areas, watched the movements of the moon, the sun, and the stars during the course of the year. This was an important way of marking time and determining when some ceremonies should be held.
With regard to Pawnee astronomy, anthropologist Gene Weltfish, in her book The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture, reports:
“The earth lodge served as an astronomical observatory and as the priests sat inside at the west, they could observe the stars in certain positions through the smokehole and through the long east-oriented entranceway. They also kept careful watch of the horizon, right after sunset and just before dawn to note the order and position of the stars.”
In his book Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, Peter Nabokov writes:
“So intimate was Pawnee identification with the stars that they tried to lay out their villages to approximate their positions in the sky.”
Each Pawnee village had its own origin story which detailed how a patron star or constellation had bestowed a medicine bundle upon their founding father. English geographer G. Malcolm Lewis, in his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 1: A New World Disclosed, reports:
“Each village was named after its star, and the relative locations of the villages on the prairie reflected the positions of the stars in the sky. The status and role of each village, especially its ceremonial role, was determined by its star.”
Stars are important spiritual entities among the Pawnee and other tribes. In their 1917 book Corn Among the Indians of the Upper Missouri George Will and George Hyde write:
“The religion of the Pawnees was a star cult overlaid with a very highly developed system of ritualistic practices.”
The Pawnee traditionally saw the four cardinal directions and the four semi-cardinal directions as associated with stars:
West: marked by Evening Star with the moon as her helper
East: marked by Morning Star with the sun as his helper
North: marked by North Star
South: marked by South Star
Northeast: marked by Black Star. The Northeast is also associated with thunder and is represented by the bear and the color black.
Northwest: marked by Yellow Star. The Northwest is associated with lightning and is represented by the mountain lion and the color yellow.
Southwest: marked by White Star. The Southwest is associated with the winds and is represented by the bobcat and the color white.
Southeast: marked by Red Star. The Southeast is associated with the clouds and is represented by the world and the color red.
Open Thread
