Grandfather's Two Families

translation by Oliver LaMère

Oliver LaMère

This translation was originally parallel, page by page, with an original syllabic text which was subsequently lost.

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(1)¹
HERE a long lodge was with ten fireplaces. There were ten men there, and their parents made twelve altogether. They were an old married couple. The young men were all good hunters and killers of game, it is said. At the time of this story, every body was (2) a good hunter, it is reported. As the country was new and game plenty, and they must not have been hard to kill. So the meat racks reached as far as it was visible from the lodge. And there were packs of meat besides, and there were caches of meat also. (3) Then finally the old man, their father, could not get enough to eat. They would put on ten kettles of food, but it would not satisfy him. He would drink up all the soup with them. He ate much. One day they tried to get him full so they cooked for him all day (4) instead of going out hunting all day. They did nothing but boil for him, but they could not accomplish it. They could not satisfy him.

So there the young men got frightened of him, but still they remained there. It was not before he ate up all the meat racks (5) and the meat packs and the caches of meat. He ate them all up. Then the oldest one, as they were out hunting, said, "Say! I am afraid of my father. He surely must be turning into something else and he might eat us, I think. We might as well run away from him, I think," he said. "That we will do," they said. So when they were ready to go away in the night, one of them (6) over there. When he got there he went in secretly and secretly he nudged his mother. She looked towards him and he gave her boiled meat. They were both warming their backs with their feet together.

Then when this young man went away, she nudged her old man and after eating a part of (7) the broiled meat she gave it to him. He had eaten ever so much and was not filled, but still she had feeling for him is why she did it. They intended that she should eat it alone, that is why he gave it to her in secret, but she did that. In the morning the old man knew that his sons had run away, and also that they brought food to (8) their mother in secret. Of all of this he knew about. Then he said, "This is what my sons think of me, they begrudge me the fruit of their hunting, I did not expect this and I suffered greatly in trying to raise them. I never did have them lack for food in raising them, and thus that they have done to me, makes my heart sore," he said.

(9) Then he got ready. He thought he would go out in the wilderness and die. So he got ready and went out. As he went along, he came to a creek, and along that he went. He went upstream, his heart was still sad. Then he said, "They shall die for this," he said, and he took a handful of snow, (10) and threw it up in the air towards where he came from, there he threw it. After he had done this, it began to snow very much. The place where he came from, there it snowed harder, and they were covered with snow.

He kept right on going up the stream. As he went along, there the ice was kind of thin and he thought he noticed something there so he looked and there unexpectedly was (11) an animal's entrails. He used his cane and broke the ice, and took it and unexpectedly it was a bear intestine. He took it and broiled it. There he ate that and went on again.

"Ah! There must be some people up the stream, that is how it came there," he thought. There the creek made a (12) turn, so there he got out of it and went across. He had no more than gotten out of the creek and started across when unexpectedly he came into a large road, and unexpectedly, there were fresh footprints in it. "What would be the best for me to do," he thought, (13) "these must have gone hunting, so I will trail them backwards and it will lead me to their lodges," he thought. So he trailed them backwards. Sure enough, there he came upon a long lodge. He went and entered it, and it was empty, and there was a kettle of food, so he looked at it, and unexpectedly, (14) it was nothing but buffalo tongues. "Oh my! if I could only eat one," he thought. "If I hurt their feelings, they might drive me away," he thought., so he did not do it. Then he sat by the door, and he was very hungry, and he longed for the kettle of food.

Then, a little after (15) noon, someone came tramping along. Outside, he came and set down a pack, and entered in. And here unexpectedly, was an old man sitting. "Oh my! my grandfather has come," he said. "Grandfather, since you have come, why didn't you sit on the spread here?" he said. (16) "That is right, my grandson, but I was afraid I might spoil one of your seats, so I sat here," he said. "Grandfather! did you dish out for yourself?" he asked. "No, my grandson, I did not, as I did not know how you do here, that is why I did not do anything," he said. He brought his pack inside, and (17) then he dished out for his grandfather. When he placed it before him, he ate very much. Then he said to him, "Grandfather, however you can manage to eat from all of them? Try and do it, as all my younger brothers will each give you food," he said.

Then after a few minutes, another one came back. The first and oldest (18) one had brought a bear. The second one back was the second oldest one, and he packed home a buffalo. Again he said as the other one, and he also gave him food. And he ate it up, and right away, another one came back again. It was the third brother. He packed back an elk and he said as the other had said. (19) He also gave him food, and he ate it up. Again the fourth brother came back. He packed home what is called a black deer. He also gave good to his grandfather. And then the next oldest one after him came back, the fifth brother, he packed home a deer. The next one after him packed home a marten, and the next one packed (20) home a beaver, and the next one packed home an otter, and the next one packed home a big raccoon. They all gave him food, and he ate them, all of it.

Then they said, "It will be best for our grandfather to sit in the middle of the lodges, so when he talks, we will all (21) hear him plainly," they said. And they all responded so. So he sat half way between them. Whatever each one has power to kill, that he kills and whatever they kill, that kind of fur they have for spreading, and the oldest one gave him a robe to sit on. He spread a bearskin down for him. They knew that he was a great eater, (22) so when they would go hunting, they would tell him to cook for himself. So he use to do that. He would use all the kettles there were and boil meat, and when they returned, they would each boil for him again.

Then one day as they were going hunting, the oldest one said, "Younger (23) brothers, I think something," said he. "Well, what do you think?" they asked. "Let us singe a bear and boil it and say that we are giving a feast and let grandfather be the feaster alone, then he might eat over much and not be so bad afterwards," he said. "Ah! that is right," they said. Therefore, the oldest one killed (24) a big bear and packed it home. When he got home, he built a fire outside and there he singed it. Then he boiled all of it, and said, "Grandfather, we wish to give a feast, and we would like to have you eat it, as there are no other people around," they said to him. And he answered, "Alright, there is nothing wrong with my appetite," he said. So then, (25) singed and boiled, he ate it up. The soup was very greasy, but they cooled it for him and he drank all of it. Sure enough he wasn't so bad after they gave him this. Thus they did to him four times, and he was a great deal better.

Then one day, as they had just left to go hunting, (26) then someone came tramping along. His gourd rattled as he came along. He came and entered. "Old man! I come to challenge your grandsons to a game," he said. "Alright!" he answered, and the other went on back. Finally, they all got back but he forgot about it and did not tell them about it. Again the next morning, (27) shortly after they had gone to hunt, he came again. "Say, why didn't you tell your grandsons as they have challenged them to game, and I told you about it," he said. "Well, I forgot it," he said. He went away again. When they came home, he forgot to tell them again. Again the next morning for a (28) third time he came, and he struck him with a warclub that he carried. The old man dodged, and he made a great hole in the ground in front of him. "Ah! I missed you but don't you dare to forget it again, or I will kill you," he said. (29) "Oh! I will tell it when my grandson, the oldest one, gets back," he said. Thus it was, he said it again. "When my grandson, the oldest one, comes back the next time, I will tell it," said he. And he would say it over, and he would not stop saying thus.

He was still saying it yet when the oldest one came back. He was talking so he listened to him (30) and unexpectedly that was what he was saying. So he ran in and said, "What's the matter grandfather! What are you going to tell?" he asked. And he said again, "When my grandson, the second born, comes back, I will tell it," he said. So the oldest one hastened down the hunting path, and there he shouted, (31) "Second born! If you are nearby, hurry back, as something is wrong with grandfather," said he. Before long, he came running up. "Grandfather! I am back," he said. And again he said, "When my grandson the third born gets back, then I will tell it," he said. So they hastened again and shouted to him, and he also came running up. "There now grandfather, he is back," they said. (32) And he said again, "When my grandson the fourth born gets back, then I will tell it," he said. Thus he said, on he went over all of them. When he said it the last time and he came running home, he even knocked all the trees down in his path, it is said. So they told him to come slower, so he stopped, and the wind became calmer. (33) Then he returned. "Oh my!" said he, "my grandsons! It is bad," he said. "it has been three times, one with a gourd has been coming to me, but I always forgot it. The last time he came, he nearly killed me, he struck at me, but I dodged back, so he missed me. And the place he hit (34) with his club is this: it is visible here," he said. That is the reason I was saying that because, if I forgot again, he would kill me. That is why I am saying it," he said.

All the men hung their heads, and after they had eaten, he said, "Now then, my grandsons, all of you (35) come and sit down here. When men are going to meet one another, they always concentrate on one another, they don't bow their heads and keep quiet," he said. You must tell your little brother also," he said, as their youngest brother did not hunt, but was in a partition, fasting. (36) That was the one he meant. He never saw him, but he knew him, as he was a holy old man, that was how he knew about him. So then they all came and sat around him. They sat around his fireplace.

Just then, one came tramping (37) outside. He could hear his footsteps as he came. Then unexpectedly walked in the Turtle. "Ah! My friends! I thought perhaps you might be gaming by this time, I thought, so I came," he said. "Oh, my grandfather! Grandfather! You are here too, I see. Who will be (38) able to game with us?" he said. Then the old man said, "I expect they will want to run a race, grandson! First born, you know how you are about running. The one that is the fleetest will be the one to run. So I will judge for you. Then the first born said that his power of running was given him by long legged bears, he said. (39) "Grandson! They are not runners," he said. Then he said it to the second born again, "Grandson! Second born, how are your running qualities?" he asked. "Grandfather! The buffaloes gave me their running powers," he said. "Grandson! They are not runners," he said. Then he said to the third born, "Grandson! How are you in running? (40) And he answered, "Grandfather, the elks blessed me with their fleetness," he said. "Grandson! They are not runners," he said, then he asked the fourth born and all the rest on down. They all said that they were blessed with the fleetness of whatever kind of animals they usually killed. The second to the youngest said, "Grandfather! the Red (41) Star blessed me with fleetness," he said. "O, O, grandson! It is quite fair, but not the best," he said. Then he asked the youngest one, "Grandson, how are your running qualities?" he asked. "Grandfather! The Morning Star blessed me with fleetness," he said. (42) "Ah! Ah! Ah, grandson! That is the one, so stop right there," he said. Then the Turtle said, "My friends, without a question, they will want to run a race and grandfather is a fleet runner. In long distance he used to beat me a little, but in a short distance (43) we used to be the same. It used to be impossible to tell which of us was the fleetest. Some would say that his breast was the least more protruding and again, they would say that my breast was the least bit protruding, they would say," he said. "Do therefore. We will run the race with them, grandfather and I," said the Turtle.

Then the next (44) morning, he was coming again with his gourd a rattling. He came right up boldly and threw the door open, and unexpected, they were all there. He entered. He had a sacred pipe with him. He held it towards the oldest one first, but he would not accept it. Then he held it towards the second born, but he would (45) not smoke it. Thus he kept on extending it to them, but none of them would smoke it for him. Finally, he got to the Turtle. "Ho!" he said out very loud, and he even took hold of part of the man's wrists. "Where were some of you killed? As I presume that you come to ask us to reinforce you and get revenge, which I have done very often," he said. "Ah! say, Turtle, you speak (46) of a far different thing. I did not come for that. I came to challenge you to a game," he said. "Well, why didn't you say so then?" he said. "Alright, we shall do it as I am fond of gambling. I haven't anything much to bet, but I will bet anything that I have," he said, and (47) then the challenger said again, "Say Turtle, I did not mean that. I meant to put up lives as stakes," he said. "To bet bodies, it is? What would we do with ours if we won from you that we should bet bodies with you?" he said, "But we shall do it anyhow," he said.

Then the other went home. When he got home, he said, (48) "Say! They use to be only ten, but now there are twelve of them. There is an old man there who is very fat and the Turtle is also there," he said. "Well, that turtle with leeches in every crease of his body, and stinker, he always makes a lot of trouble, and I wonder how he came (49) to find out," they said.

Then they went, they all went. On the way their old grandfather said, "Grandsons! Do you know of any cattails anywhere?" he asked. "Yes! There is a lot of it over here. Go after some for him," they said, so they (50) went and got him some. they brought him a bag full. He packed it and they went on. They came in sight of them, and the others gave whoops. "Now then, grandsons! Whoop back to them also, when men combat with one another, they usually utter encouragement to themselves," he said, but they would not say anything. So the old man (51) gave a whoop at them. Finally, they arrived there.

The old man was coveted very much by the giant cannibals. They wished to eat him right away because he had done nothing but eat and he was very fat. Then they said, "Now then, we will run a race, and (52) those of you that are fleetest will do the running," they said. So then the Turtle said, "Alright! my grandfather and I will do the running, and we want to run with old men of our age," he said. "Say, Turtle, you always cause confusion in everything. (53) So you may choose your fleetest and we will choose who we think is fleetest among us," they said. "Alright! We shall do it, you big fleshy, womanly fellow that speaks, my grandfather and I will (54) do the running," he said. "Now then, there will be our runners," they said, bringing up two great big fellows. Then they stuck a bare warclub there in the ground for a goal, and the ones defeated would be struck with it.

"Now then, let us (55) do our betting," they said. "Alright, grandfather is worth two of you," he said, and also the first born, the second born, and the third born, these are all worth two apiece," said the Turtle. "Ah, Turtle! How can that be, they should only be equal to one of us," they said. (56) "Well, if we defeat you we would have no else for you, and besides, we did not challenge you to this race, and we have no use for you," he said to them. "Well, let them have their way, besides they won't have any show of winning," they said. So they let them have their way about it.

Then when they (57) were about to start, the Turtle backed out saying, "Grandfather, you had better run with them alone as they can't run anyway. Let both of them run against you," he said. So he ran with them alone. "Already!" they said, so they started to run. The old man did run using his cane also. The others had (58) already crossed the valley but he was here yet, and he had not even taken off his pack from his back. His grandsons were frightened. They thought sure that they were defeated already. The others had gone over a hill, but he was still in the middle of the valley. And the others had even gone over the second (59) hill, but he was still here yet. And then they went over the third hill, but the old man was still going here yet. The Giants were happy. They had gone over the fourth hill, when the old man just got to the first hill. And it took him a long time to climb it. Thus it was. His grandsons (60) gave up all hope of winning.

Then when the old man got to the top of the hill, he sat down and took off his pack. And he took a round piece of leather that he had around his neck and rolled it ahead. On it rolled with a whirring sound. Before long, he passed them on the way. "Well, I thought you said (61) to run a race, but you are still here dancing. Who is singing for you that you are dancing?" he said, and went on by them. "Well, my friend, it will be very difficult so do your mightiest," they said to one another. Right away again, before they had gone any distance, they met him on his way (62) back. When he got back where he started, he took his pack and packed it again and began to run on. Unexpectedly, he came back in view again. "Well, a man is coming," they said. He was using his cane and coming as fast as he could. They thought sure he turned back. When he got back in the middle of the valley, the others came in sight.

(63) So they shouted at him saying, "Grandfather! If you are really wining, come faster," they said to him. And he stopped and shaded his eyes with his hand and shouted back, "What?!" "Grandfather! If you are really winning, come faster!" they shouted back to him. "Alright!" he said, and again came on with the help of his cane. And they said it to him (64a) again. "Grandfather! If you are really ahead of them in the race, come faster," they said to him. And he stopped again. He shaded his eyes with his hand and said, "What?!" And his grandsons gave an utterance of despair. "Grandfather! If you are really wining the race, try and come faster," they said. "Alright," he said, and began to set his cane down very hard and often. And the third time they said it to him again (64b)² "Grandfather! If you are really ahead of them in the race, come faster," they said to him. He stopped and shaded his eyes with his hands and said, "What?!" "Oh my!" they said, "grandfather! If you are really winning the race, come faster." "Alright," he said and began to run. And they said to him again, the fourth (65) time. This time, the others were nearly up to him, so there he ran right in and took the goal on with him.

Right away the Turtle said, "My friends, let me attend to them myself," said he, and took the warclub. "Already!" he said, and was about to kill one of them. "Say, Turtle, you had better ask them first (66) before you do that," said one of the Giants. "Ah, you womanly fellows! We won the race and we all saw it. What are you going to ask about?" he said. Then they asked one of them how the race was. Well he ... got no further as the Turtle knocked him down. "Say Turtle, you are not fair." (67) "Well, he said, 'he won from us,' didn't you hear him?" he said. Then they asked the other one, "How did he do to you?" they said to him. "Well he won." Then the Turtle knocked him down again. "Say Turtle! You did not do right because he had not answered yet when you struck him," they said. (68) He said, "'He won from us,' didn't you hear him?" he said to them. Then the Turtle killed all that was bet against them. Sometimes he would hit them a lighter blow to make them suffer, and they would cry out in pain. "Say Turtle, that is not right! You ought to kill them outright," they said to him. And he said, (69) "Well, we won them from you and they belong to us, and furthermore, you challenged us! When men win from one another, they usually own one another, and besides, I do not do this [without] a purpose. They are so very big and I am small, I wonder that I am able to kill them," he said. (70) Then the old man came forth and sprinkled the cattails over them and set fire to them, and burnt them up so that only the bones were left.

Thus they did and went home. Then the Giants said, "Say, he just barely got to the goal in time. I think (71) if we run with him again, we could win from him," they said. "Well then, let it be that!" they said. On the other hand, the Turtle was saying, after they got back, "Well, they are wanting to run again, and it is good as our grandfather and I used to run about the same, so (72) they will not win from him," he said. Right away in the evening, one came to them carrying a gourd. "You, Turtle, with your friends and grandfather, I come to challenge you to a game," he said, and the other went back.

The next morning they went again. When they got in (73) sight again, the others gave a whoop. This time the first born answered them. "Now then, we have decided to run a race again," they said. "Alright," they answered. "Of course the bets will be the same again," said the Giants. "Yes!" said the Turtle, but you will have to include some more for your dead ones. (74) They objected to it but finally he talked them into it. So the race was started again. Again the others had long since gone out of sight, but their grandfather was still in the middle of the valley. Finally, he came back in sight again. (75) "I believe he turns back there," some of them said. When they shouted to him to come faster, he would stop and ask them again. Again he had to throw himself forward to get a hold of the goal first. Right away again the Turtle took the warclub again. "Say Turtle, you did not do right the (76) other time. This time you must give the time to explain," they said, but he did the same to them as he did before. He did not let them finish speaking, and he did the same to those that were put up for bets. He made them to cry out in pain, although they asked him not to do it. Their grandfather (77) burnt them up again after sprinkling cattails on them.

The third time again they were challenged to run a race, and the Giants lost again, and the result was the same as before.

Then the fourth time they gamed, there were very many of them, and nearly all the Giants were up on bets, as all the dead ones were bet (78) by the Turtle's crowd. As the old man had been doing to them before, he did to them again. He just barely got back in time to win. As they said before, that he might have turned back, they said it of him again. "Now Turtle, this time (79) you must not do as you have been doing before. You must give them time to explain," they said. When they got back, he took the warclub and said, "Now then, ask them," he said. So they were asked and they said, "He won from us. It is impossible to beat him," they said. "Now then, Turtle, that is all!" they said. "Ah! Go on and make them (80) explain," he would say to them. "They have already explained," they would tell him, but he said, "That was what they always said, you womanly thick fleshed people," he said. Then he started in to kill them one by one. Sometimes he would strike them in the leg and break (81) their legs, and he would knock them about crying in pain. Finally, he killed all of them, all that they had won. Then their old grandfather sprinkled cattails on them and burnt them up, and there remained nothing but the white charred bones. (82) The old man had used up all of his cattails, so he carried his bag full of the Giants’ bones.

Then they went home. On the way, the Turtle said, "My friends, the womanly people are doing something, so let us chase them. They have taken flight." "My friend, I will go with (83) you," said the youngest one. So they went. When they got there, unexpectedly the village was vacant, and there were four paths leading away where they took flight. The the Turtle said, "My friend, you must not let any of them escape." Then they each took a road apiece and chased them. And when they caught up to them, (84) then they started in to kill them. When they finished them, then they went in one of the other roads. The Turtle finished one of the roads, and at the last one, there was a little boy and a little girl fleeing. One was carrying the other on its back. These the Turtle did not kill. (85) And he said to them, "I thought I would end all of you, but I thought that the Creator saw fit to create you, so therefore I will not do it. You tried to abuse humans, so henceforth you will eat what you can find at great effort across the Ocean," he said, and he made them eat grass. Then he threw them across (86) the seas. "Now then, my friend, I will go home from here so you may go back alone, and I will have no reason to worry over you," he said to his friend. So there they parted. There the tenth son came home and arrived home alone.

Then the old man said, "Now then, my (87) grandsons, I will now go and stay somewhere permanently, as I have done wrong here while on earth. I did wrong. The Creator did not create me for that purpose. Before this, I had ten children and they got tired feeding me and I killed them. I was fond of eating and they got disgusted with (88) me and they hurt my feelings, that was why I did it," he said, and "This time we have ended a whole village. Therefore, I have not done right," he said. Then the old man brought his wife to life again, and with her they went up in the heavens. The old man was the Sun, and the woman was the Moon, (89) therefore the Sun and the Moon are married [...] his grandsons were not brothers. Long ago, a village was ended by the Giants and these ten boys were left there together to grow up, and the old man (90) took pity on them and blessed them, so he came there. The youngest one was the blessed one. They were not brothers, but there they had grown up together, as they were left.

That was only the old man [who] took up the bones and carried them home. As soon as he got back, he pounded (91) them up and over the old village he scattered them. As the night advanced, it began to get noisy. The old man's grandsons were frightened. They thought that Giants had come upon them again. They would whoop and beat a drum all night. (92) In the morning, the old village that had been ended were all alive again. The old man did it. It was the same morning that the old man went away. And the oldest one also said that the was going to go about the earth. He was a bear. The second born also said the same, and he was a buffalo. The third born said it also. He was an (93) elk. All of them became the kind of animals they had been killing. The two youngest ones were stars, so they went back up above. They were the Big Star and the Red Star.

It is ended.³

The Original Retelling

Commentary

"the old man, their father" — in the story he is usually referred to as "grandfather." Grandfather, we are told, is the Sun and his wife is the Moon. Trowbridge, an early source, reported: "The stars are supposed to be the issue of the sun & moon, to possess life, and to be composed of unequal parts of the heat and cold of their parents, which accounts for the difference in their appearance."⁴

"not get enough to eat" — in astronomy allegories, eating occurs when one celestial body occludes or eclipses the light of another, typically a star. The Moon, for instance, will pass over a star and appear to swallow it, then later it emerges from the opposite end. The several planets have this same capability. However, compared to the Sun, even the Moon cannot begin to "swallow" stars when compared to the solar disc. The light of the Sun "swallows" all the stars as it illuminates the sky. The Sun also travels the ecliptic where it moves very slowly through the stars in its path.

"ten kettles of food" — which would be one for each son. So the Sun ate the food brought by each son. However, as we have seen, "eating" is homologous to occlusion, so that the ten kettles ought to represent either ten stars, or ten asterisms which the Sun passes over as it sojourns across the ecliptic. The individual stars (to include planets) encountered by the Sun as it passes down the ecliptic would be the morning and evening phases of Mercury, the morning and evening phases of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; and among twinkling stars, Regulus and Spica. This makes nine in total, but is complicated by the fact that the Sun overruns Mercury and Venus multiple times during the annual circuit of the ecliptic. As to other non-planetary stars, they should be no farther off the ecliptic than the radius of the Sun in order to count as having been occluded by it. Therefore, it seems more likely than not that the ten kettles of food represent asterisms which the ecliptic and therefore the Sun crosses. This is strongly reinforced by the second set of sons which recapitulate the actions of the first set in many respects.

StarryNight Software
The Moon and Her Son Venus at Conjunction, Sunrise, 18 Dec. 1607

"he nudged his mother" — Venus will occasionally "nudge" the Moon when the latter slightly occludes its light at an edge. In this allegory, the nudging and feeding of the Moon, in this case by Venus, occurs when the two have a conjunction just before the Moon has a conjunction with the Sun and disappears into its light.

"he gave her boiled meat" — this is the same conjunction between the Moon and Venus, but here re-homologized as a handing off of sustenance (light).

"they were both warming their backs with their feet together" — "both" refers to the woman (the Moon) and her son (Venus). Their configuration is an allegorical description of the fact that both are barely visible by the fire (the Sun). They are warming their backs sitting close to the fire. Their feet are said to be together because they are in partial (apparent) conjunction. All this is merely another way of homologizing Venus’ nudging and feeding of his mother, the Moon.

StarryNight Software

The Celestial Path of Venus at Sunrise 18 - 30 December 1607

"this young man went away" — after its brief conjunction with the Moon, the Morning Star moves away, as can be seen above. This becomes a critical datum in dating this story, since in most other cases, the Morning Star at this point is usually found moving towards the Sun.

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The New Moon at Sunset, 1625 hrs., 18 December 1607		Moon Statistics, 18 December 1607

"she nudged her old man" — this nudging is once again conjunction. As can be seen, the New Moon is now in conjunction with the Sun and is no longer visible at sunset that same day of 18 December 1607.

"a creek" — in late November the Sun begins to approach the edge of the Scorpius Milky Way near the star Antares. The Milky Way resembles a river or creek that flows through the largely black background in the night sky.

"upstream" — in relation to the horizon at sunset, the ecliptic moves ever upward as it crosses the Milky Way and beyond. The Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way gradually widens at it passes under the ecliptic, rather like a creek that is fed by tributaries widens as a result. So, allegorically, the Sun is passing upstream.

"to snow" — here the Milky Way is being homologized as snow, which it certainly does resemble. Cf. the Zuñi who say that the Milky Way is the "great snowdrift across the sky."⁵

"up the stream" — the Sun's path along the ecliptic moves at an upward angle with respect to the Milky Way at sunset. Thus, allegorically, he is going upstream.

"the ice" — here the Milky Way is being homologized to ice for the same reason that it resembles snow.

"an animal's entrails" — right through the middle of the Milky Way "creek" runs a long sinuous dark streak known as the "Great Rift." This dark cloud of dust and gas obscures the background Milky Way and creates a structure that certainly resembles a strand of intestines.

"a bear intestine" — one wonders just how the mythographer who created this allegory could see something as specific as a bear's intestines. However, the reason that it can be identified as a bear's entrails follows from the fact that the month in which this takes place is at least sometimes the First Bear Moon (q.v.). This reminds the owner of this allegory just when he may see the events related in the story. On the other hand, the list of animals hunted by each brother may represent constellations through which the ecliptic passes. That means that the first born, allegorically, the first encountered by the Sun beginning at the winter solstice, is a Bear constellation. This is strongly reinforced by the fact that the first and eldest son hunts bears and in the end, turns into one himself. The bear that he becomes is, ex hypothesi, this first constellation of the Hōcąk zodiac.

"broiled it" — as can be seen around December 16 (see below), the fire of the Sun rests directly on what we have identified as the animal's entrails. This situation is aptly homologized as the broiling of the intestines.

"went across" — the Sun traveling along the ecliptic will reach the opposite side of this part of the Milky Way around December 29.

"a large road" — here the mythologist is re-homologizing the progress of the Sun that had just been allegorically described in the creek episode. Now the Milky Way is homologized to a road. This makes reference to the theory of the pathway of souls in which this section of the Milky Way is implicated. This road is tread by the departed souls as they travel to Spiritland, as shown here in "The Funeral Customs of the Thunderbird Clan."

"fresh footprints" — these are probably the four blue/green (co) footprints alluded to in "The Funeral Customs of the Thunderbird Clan," as shown there.

"he trailed them backwards" — the Sun is once again moving from late November to late December. This direction is the opposite to that of the tracks, whose fourth footprint represents a progression in the Sun's direction, trending opposite to the ecliptic.

"a long lodge" — now the Milky Way is being homologized to a long lodge, specifically, an oval lodge, which it does resemble here.

"it was empty" — this "lodge" has the Great Rift running through it, which appears to the naked eye as a vacuity.

Cheyenne Media

A Buffalo (Bison) Tongue

"buffalo tongues" — tongues were, and still are, widely considered a very great delicacy. Buffalo themselves are a common symbol of stars. The primary reason for this is that the stars moving in lockstep across the nocturnal sky, over a smooth, arched celestial dome without topographic contours, resemble the flat prairies over which the vast herds of buffalo move en masse. Sound is often used as a symbol of light, due to their easily observable isomorphism; and buffalo are known for their loud bellows, which here translates into the light of the stars. The buffalo is the second of the brother-asterisms (see diagram below), so at sunrise the sun's light swallows up the light of the Bear Asterism, he merely "heats up" that of the next asterism in which he is to rise as he progresses along on his journey on the ecliptic, yet he is not near enough to actually "eat" its stars. This asterism is the Buffalo Asterism, and the tongues represent its constituent stars.

Don Saunders		Starry Nights Software
The Emblem of the Black Bear Subclan		The Great Rift as a Bear

"a bear" — the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way is, in many myths, homologized to a tree. The Great Rift looks, as it actually is in fact, like something superimposed upon the face of the milky background. In the story "Snowshoe Strings," the Great Rift black cloud is homologized to a bear. In another astronomy allegory, "Sunset Point," the hero Natíga ("Tree Climber") plays the role of Jupiter. There the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way is homologized to a lake, and the canoe which he is to take across it has painted on it the Black Bear Subclan emblem, which is a bear superimposed upon a tree. So both of these astronomy allegories connect this part of the Milky Way to a bear. It is therefore likely, given the position of the Sun in the middle of this, and given that the first thing that he will eat is a bear, that the Bear Constellation at this very place in the Milky Way is the asterism that he will eat first. When the Sun works its way to this spot on the ecliptic, and rises into the morning sky, this bear lying on the horizon will be the first thing "eaten" by his light.

An interesting coincidence occurs near the end of the period in which the Sun is in the Bear Constellation. On 19 December 1607 the First Bear Moon enters the sky.

Without doubt, in accord with the usual conventions of naming moons, the moon that first appeared on 30 December 1606 was a First Bear Moon. That means that by the standard count, the moon that appeared on 19 December 1607 was also a First Bear Moon. At this time, then, the sojourn of the Sun in the constellation of the Bear happened to occur in part during a First Bear Moon.

Of the animals hunted and ultimately identified with each brother, the bear is first to be mentioned. Each of the brothers is pair with the animal that he hunts. Excluding the two stars (planets), they total eight in number. They form the following sequence:

These are the animals that are being fed to the Sun. In astronomical terms, they are sequentially astronomical entities that the Sun occludes in part or whole, as that is what is meant by "eating" in this allegorical context. However, as it later turns out, the sons of the Sun just are these very animals that the Sun is occluding. As the Sun rises, it ultimately occludes everything in the sky except the clouds. Nevertheless, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that these animals are the constellations of the zodiac through which the Sun passes, as it must in order to "cook" them and later "eat" them. As we later learn, these animals just are the sons of the Sun, which implies that they are the constellations of the zodiac.

"a buffalo" — there is no known Buffalo Constellation among the related or neighboring tribes to the Hōcągara. The stars generally are said to be buffaloes, and although Morning Star is in this nonant at the time (see the chart below), as a wandering star it cannot be a component in an asterism. However, also in this nonant is the 12^th brightest star in the sky, Altair (magnitude 0.77).

Starry Nights Software		Starry Nights Software
The Elk Constellation Rising with the Sun Sunrise, 20 February 1607		The Elk Constellation Sunset, 7 March 1607

"an elk" — in accord with the diagram below, this constellation should arrive at the site of the Sun in late February and early March. There is such a constellation known among the kindred and neighboring Sioux (Dakota/Lakota). This elk constellation consists of his head and set of horns. The chin of the elk head is the star Alrescha, and the elk's rack of horns with tines extends above him through the classical zodiac constellation Pisces. This way of calculating whether the constellation is with the Sun is when it rises from the earth to when it touches back down on earth. In terms of the allegory, it becomes a matter of when the Sun "eats" the constellation. In the case of the Marten constellation, it never actually touches down on earth, so it becomes a matter of when it is closest to the Sun. In conventional terms, the Sun is "in" the Elk Constellation from March 7 to April 21, that is, the first star of the constellation, γ Piscium, rises with the Sun on 7 March 1608, and its last star, τ Piscium, sets with the Sun on 21 April 1608. However, this set of dates almost completely overlaps with that of the next asterism, the Moose Constellation, which the Sun is never "in" inasmuch as the Moose Constellation is not part of the zodiac.

Starry Nights Software		Laura Seaman
The Moose Constellation on the Horizon with the Setting Sun 6 March 1607		A Moose (Black Deer)

"a black deer" — cāsép, denotes the moose (Alces alces), an animal the Europeans call an "elk". The American name comes from the Ojibwe mōs. As we see in the diagram below, the Moose Constellation corresponds to an unknown asterism from mid-March to late April. A really good approximation to this is the Ojibwe constellation of the Moose, which overlaps with the classical Pegasus. It's not quite a true zodiac constellation, with its lower leg terminating in the star ω Piscium 16° 4' from the ecliptic. The highest star of the horns, λ Andromedæ, rises with the Sun at 0721 hrs. on 11 December 1606, and sets with the Sun at 1901 hrs. on 4 May 1607. It is present in the sky for 13 days after the Elk Constellation sets. It seems highly likely that the Hōcąk stellar moose associated with this time of year was borrowed from the neighboring Ojibwe tribe, or possibly vice-versa.

"a deer" — as we see in the diagram below, the deer corresponds to an asterism associated with the Sun from late April to early June. Aldebaran, the brightest star of the Hyades cluster, sets and rises again with the Sun at this period of time. The Hyades were known as "Ocean Duck," conceived as a waterfowl with wings spread apart in flight. However, this hardly excludes other homologies involving these same stars. We can appreciate how the "V" shape of the Hyades suggests the similar shape in the rack most bicornate mammals. It pairs up nicely with the Pleiades, whom the Hōcągara call Cāšį́c, "Deer Rump." Opposite the deer thus formed are the central stars of Orion, which are, like their classical counterparts, associated with hunting. Alnilam, the center star, is identified with Redhorn, who has the power to transform himself into an arrow, and is also Chief of the Heroka, a race of diminutive hunting Spirits. The three stars of Orion's Belt are pointing at the axis of the Hyades-Pleiades, making this its target. The existence of the Deer Rump stars make it sufficient that the arrow star has a deer as its target, and that this target may extend to the Hyades. The Pleiades set with the Sun on 16 May (of 1608), and the Hyades set with the Sun on 19 May. The Pleiades rose with the Sun on 8 May in the year 1608.

These stars are also connected to deer in another way. Among the kindred Osage, Orion is divided into two asterisms. One of these is the sword of Orion, whose stars θ and ι constitute Stars Strung Together (Mikák’e Ukíthats’iⁿ); and the other is the belt of Orion which makes up an asterism called, interestingly, "Three Deer" (Ṭa Thabthiⁿ).⁶ Three Deer is one of the ten Deities of the Sky. This deity, which is in the form of a constellation, is found in other Siouan cultures. Among the Oglala Lakota there exists a massive constellation known as Ta Yamni.⁷ This was mistranslated by Buechel who first recorded its identity in the XIXᵀᴴ century. This constellation stretches from its head in the Pleiades to its tail in the star Sirius. Orion is found in its spine and ribs. It is presently seen as a buffalo, which the Lakota call ta-taŋka.⁸ However, ta by itself denotes the black deer or moose,⁹ and in earlier stages of the language, ta referred to the deer, as many words relating to deer still contain ta- as a prefix,¹⁰ and we can easily reconstruct a proto-Central Siouan *ta, "deer." Not only are the two occurrences of the word ta in both Ṭa Thabthiⁿ and Ta Yamni cognate, but so too are thabthiⁿ and yamni, both of which mean "three," and like the word *ta, can be traced all the way back to Common Siouan. It is because the plain translation of Ta Yamni as "Three Deer" seemed to make no sense, that Buechel was unable to translate it. The Lakota constellation is broken into subsets that correspond to the various parts of the animal. It reveals its true origin as a white tail deer from the fact that Ta-Yamni-Siŋte, Ta-Yamni's Tail, is the bright white star Sirius. Ta-Yamni's head is the star cluster the Pleiades.¹¹ Both the Omaha and Osage call the Pleiades "Deer Head," which in both languages is rendered Ta-Pá.¹² It is immediately evident that this matches the Ta-(Yamni)-Pa by which the head of Ta-Yamni is known to the Lakota. As we have seen, the Hōcągara call the Pleiades Cāšį́c, "Deer Rump,"¹³ since it is so shaped and is of the bright white color of the white-tailed deer. It is easy to see how by a kind of folk etymology, that the Hōcągara could have changed this to Cā-šį́c from an original Ca-Pa (< *Ta-Pa). Much further afield, the Taos of the Pueblos of the Southwest also see the Pleiades as a deer.¹⁴

So the deer asterism associated with late April through early June correlates with what would have been the Three Deer Constellation coming to earth and being devoured by the Sun. It remains quite possible, therefore, that the deer asterism associated in this story with this period of time is none other than what was once the Hōcąk counterpart to Three Deer.

Starry Nights Software & Aert Schouman (1765)

The Approximate Form of the Marten Constellation

The presence of "a marten" (wazųgᵉra or wazągᵉra) in the list generates a problem of just what kind of a zodiac this is. This is from the story entitled "The Dipper":

And they say that the woman was also a female marten. That one also went home to the sky. When the stars are visible in the sky, it can be seen there. The Big Knives call it "the Dipper." That is she, they say. A star sits very close to that. That is he. Her husband is the only bright one nearby. 

The husband is Polaris, and his two wives are the "pointer stars" of the Big Dipper. Radin, ca. 1908, made a few notes on stars in connection with the story The Origins of the Milky Way, where he says, "wazuñgra — dipper (marten). It resembles something of a marten. Real reason is because dipper goes around North Star. Wiragóšge hañké diránina - star that moves not = North Star. Small dipper - héx síra = swan's feet."¹⁵ In this case, because Radin refers to the first Dipper in contradistinction to the "Small Dipper," he clearly means his first reference to be the other Dipper, the Big Dipper. Amelia Susman's notes read, "wazą́gara — otter, mink, marten (Dipper). Tell time at night by it."¹⁶ She is in good agreement with Radin, with both concurring that this is to be identified with the animal called wazųgᵉra, which in fact is the marten. Other members of the weasel family are identified with the Big Dipper elsewhere: the friendship tribe of the Hōcągara, the Menominee,¹⁷ see it as the kindred fisher, as do the eastern Cree,¹⁸ and the Ojibwe (⬇). The Siouan Hidatsa visualize it as another member of the weasel family, the ermine.¹⁹ Since in the "Dipper" story the marten is identified with the dipper constellation in question, we are obliged to conclude that this constellation is the Big Dipper. This constellation can be used to mark the seasons, as we see among the Micmac, for instance.²⁰ The chart below shows that the Marten has a special relationship to the period of mid-June to mid-July, centering on the summer solstice. At this time the Marten descends all the way down to the horizon. There, at sunrise, it is "eaten" by the Sun. We can trace its progress towards and away from the Sun as shown in this chart:

What the tables above show is that the Martin Constellation (the Big Dipper + ?) during the month of June gradually descends to the horizon reaching the lowest altitude for the pointer stars (Dubhe and Merak) on 26 June 1607. With respect to altitude, it is directly opposite the Sun on the horizon when it rises and "eats" these stars with its light. The pointer stars come closest to the Sun on 1 August, but by this time they have moved above the horizon by about another 4° or so.

A simpler explanation of the position and timing of the Sun's relationship with the Marten Constellation would be found in a mistake made by the raconteur in the order of animals. Did he simply switch the order of the beaver and the marten?

Marcel Kessler
An Albino Raccoon

"raccoon" — this is the last brother and the last animal mentioned. This makes a total of nine. Given what we have been able to say about the rest of the animal-stars, the raccoon should represent the ninth "house" of the Sun. There are no raccoon asterisms, as far as we know, in neighboring or linguistically related tribes, but an examination of Hōcąk literature suggests a close relationship between the Sun and a giant raccoon. An essential esoteric fact about the Sun: Earthmaker's nemesis, the Devil known to the Hōcągara as Herešgúnina, is in fact the Sun, a profound insight knowledge of which is denied to women and children. In "Bladder and His Brothers," a tale is told of One Legged One, an avatar of Herešgúnina and therefore the Sun, that he went about with his companion "dog," a giant white raccoon. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this "white dog" that follows after the Sun is none other than the Red Star. Why is he a metaphorical dog? The Red Star's brother, the Morning Star, rises to herald the Sun, and stands above him as a divinity of great power. The Evening Star, on the other hand, appears as the Sun sets, and over the course of time follows after him, setting at the same western horizon. Thus the Evening Star follows after the Sun as a lackey, a loyal subordinate much in this respect like a loyal dog. Therefore, although in fact a white raccoon, he is functionally also a metaphorical dog. Although the story says that he did not turn into the animal that he hunted, but was instead the Red Star, nevertheless, we know from "Bladder and His Brothers," that the great white raccoon was his avatar (1, 2). So in some sense, he had indeed turned into the animal that he had hunted, but only with respect to his celestial identity. Nevertheless, all the brothers who hunted are said to have made a spread for the sun of the furs from the animals that they hunted; but a spread implies a field: the field associated with each animal must then be composed of a whole set of stars. This imagery is in contradistinction to the kettle metaphor, where every brother in turn merely "feeds" the Sun, that is, present themselves to be washed out by his light. So there should also be a raccoon "spread". In the relevant period, the Evening Star proceeds through the area predicted: passing through Virgo on to Libra and into the Milky Way where the Red Star unites with the Sun. This can be seen in the reconstruction below:

Starry Nights Software

The Course of Evening Star (Red Star) from 10 October to 12 December 1607

Stars in Libra can form the body, head, and feet of the predicted Raccoon Constellation, while the stars of Serpens Caput form its lengthy tale. All this is pure conjecture, but it is sufficient to show that Evening Star passes through the right sector of zodiac at the right time and is consistent with there being a Raccoon Constellation that can be made of the stars there.

"that kind of fur they have for spreading" — so the brothers are associated with these animals in a form in which they are spread out. In astronomical terms, this is at least consistent with, and certainly suggestive of, a whole set of stars spread out: in other words, an asterism or constellation. Asterisms that are "sons of the Sun" strongly suggests constellations of the zodiac.

"he would use all the kettles there were and boil meat" — here the constellations are homologized to kettles containing the meat of the various animals whom they not only hunted, but as we learn later on, to which they themselves were identical. These are zodiacal constellations, as the Sun itself is the very fire under which the kettles are made to boil.

"let us singe a bear and boil it" & "a big bear" — this is the bear shown above formed by the Great Rift in the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way. The Sun comes into contact with this bear, singes it with his rays, and boils it in the now heated Milky Way, which, as we have seen, is homologized to water.

"the soup was very greasy" — the background Milky Way at the Great Rift plays the role of a fluid in which the bear is boiled. The granularity of the Milky Way background of minute stars, which give it a yellowish tint, is a fair image of a greasy broth.

StarryNight Software		StarryNight Software
The Situation Before the Giant Struck with His Club, 18 December 1607		The Situation After the Giant Struck with His Club, 22 December 1607

"he made a great hole in the ground in front of him" — on Dec. 18, 1607, the Sun is situated as shown in the left panel above. When the Sun makes his move to dodge the warclub, it can be seen that the area that he vacated now appears as a black hole in the background Milky Way.

StarryNight Software		StarryNight Software
Evening Star Knocking Down the Tree (Scorpius Milky Way)
Sunset, 2 November 1607		Sunset, 10 December 1607

"he came running home, he even knocked all the trees down in his path" — as we learn later on, the last of the hunting brothers is the Red Star, who is the Evening Star of Venus. Throughout most of the year 1607, Morning Star (Venus) is seen in the sky at sunrise; but in October, Venus begins pulling out of conjunction with the Sun, and becomes the Evening Star. As time progresses, he moves quickly higher and higher into the sky, and as he does so, the Scorpius-Sagittarius Milky Way tilts and gradually falls to the ground, disappearing below the horizon. The Milky Way "tree" does so as the Red Star passes through it.

StarryNight Software

The Stopping and Return of Evening Star Sunset, 24 October – 10 December1607

"so he stopped" — this is a description of what naturally occurs when Evening Star begins its retrograde motion and falls back into the Sun. He comes to a halt to initiate his retrograde motion on 22 November 1607, then returns to his lodge (the Great Rift) and the Sun.

StarryNight Software

The Path of Morning Star in Retrograde behind the Partition Sunrise, 18 Dec. 1607 – 20 Jan. 1608

"a partition" — this sequence of events records a retrograde motion that begins with Venus in its Evening Star phase, and end with its Morning Star phase doubling back and chasing after the Sun. As seen from the previous illustration, after 10 Dec. 1607, Venus disappears into the Sun, and around 18 Dec., the Sun is sitting in the center of the lodge (the Great Rift), and Morning Star is on the other side of a cloud of Milky Way stars, here described as a "partition," and sitting in another dark spot of dust and gas that constitutes a side branch of the Great Rift. The myth describes the situation of Morning Star in this cul de sac as his dwelling in a partitioned off chamber of the lodge a typical state of affairs for a very holy person. The Morning Star does not leave this chamber until at least 20 January of 1608. For over a month Morning Star, because of its retrograde motion, hangs around within the upper branch of the Great Rift which is partitioned off from the main cloud, creating an image of Morning Star residing for a substantial period in his own area of the Milky Way lodge.

"fasting" — when Venus as Morning Star retrogrades through this segment of the Great Rift, it does not occlude ("eat") any of the small visible stars in the area it traverses. Since it doesn't "eat" while in this "lodge" from 18 December - 5 January (as shown above), it has "fasted".

"they sat around his fireplace" — ex hypothesi, this means that these presumed constellations are of the zodiac, that is, they are situated on or near the ecliptic where the Sun lives.

"Turtle" — one of the four (or five, counting Redhorn) Spirits created by Earthmaker's own hands. He was sent down to earth to teach men how they should live, but instead created the institution of war, which caused such havoc that he had to be recalled. Turtle is not a figure in the astronomy allegory. "Killing" is accomplished in the allegory by one astronomical body occluding he light of another (usually homologized as "eating"). As ex hypothesi the Giants represent clouds, and being the lowest rung in the continuum of occlusion, they cannot be killed by those exemplifying cold light, and only rarely and by inference can they be dissipated by the Sun, it follows that none of the figures in the allegory can kill a Giant. Enter Turtle – his sole purpose is to effect this result.

"he packed it" — the Sun's pack consists of the Milky Way which hangs for the solar disk's back for a time as it progresses down the ecliptic. To imagine this section of the Milky Way to cattail fluff is a fair comparison.

"they would not say anything. So the old man gave a whoop" — sound typically stands for light in astronomy allegories. Inasmuch as the Sun is up and engaged with the Giants, so the stars are washed out by his light and "say" nothing.

"the giant cannibals" — the Wągᵉrúcge, which means, "Those Who Eat Men." They were giants, thought to be four times the height of ordinary men, although their women were of normal size. In astronomy allegories, eating (as we have seen) represents the process of occlusion, of one astronomical body passing in front of another so as to cause part of that body to disappear from view, a process resembling that of taking bites out of food. In astronomy allegories, people are homologized to stars (broadly construed). So Giants would have to be a kind of celestial body that occludes stars. Since they are of enormous size, one would naturally suspect that they represent individual moons, which are both large and capable of occluding even planetary "stars". However, in the present instance, such an identity competes with the idea that the Moon is the wife of the Sun. This can be circumvented, perhaps, by thinking of Giants as being individual moons, but the tension remains, as the Moon generically spoken of, is not characterized as being a Giant herself. As noted, female Giants are the same size of humans (stars), which is certainly not the case here. Elsewhere, we are told that what makes Giants cannibals is the fact that they have a piece of ice in their stomachs, and once that is vomited up, they follow a normal diet thereafter. So Giants are associated with ice. White clouds have a resemblance to snow and ice, although they do not precipitate. Dark clouds are the domain of the Thunderbirds, and unlike white clouds, they both precipitate and are the source of lighting. Snow is not associated with Thunderbirds at all, since during the winter there are no thunderstorms to speak of. So white clouds, from which no lightning issues, are associated with the cold of winter. Therefore, the Giants are said to live in the land of cold, the far north of the Arctic. They are occasionally spoken of as being "Ice Giants." In the Medicine Rite, clouds of ill omen are said to come from the north. So white clouds, which can occlude any astronomical being, and which are of gigantic proportions, make a good candidate for being the boreal Giants responsible for "eating" people (stars), and potentially even the Sun and Moon. On the other hand, despite the fact that the Hōcągara and their neighbors engaged in cannibalism occasionally, the protagonists in this story explicitly tell the Giants that they will be unable to do to the Giants what the Giants intend to do to them. This establishes the idea that the Giants can "eat" humans (stars and even the Sun), but the converse is not the case. In astronomy allegories, as a strikingly alien race, this makes them a paradigmatic enemy. So it is likely that the Giant cannibals represent white clouds with the capability to occlude ("eat") any of the celestial beings that dwell in the celestial vault above them.

BAE 37: Pl. 44

A Bald-Headed Warclub

"a bare warclub" — this is called ną̄mą́ce or mamácĕ, which is a kind of warclub with a ball at its distal end, also called mąmą́cepešára, "bald-headed warclub." This kind of warclub is used exclusively by the Thunderbird Clan. The Thunderbirds themselves, when assuming human form, are said to be bald-headed. That the Giants would use the Thunderbird style warclub reinforces the idea that they are the complementary form of cloud, the Thunders occupying the gray clouds, and the Giants the white clouds.

"in the ground" — the word for warclub is mące, from mą̄cé, "to break, crack, or tear a soft substance by cutting," which a warclub with a spike is specially equipped to do. Mące forms a pun in this context. Mą means "earth" and ce means "to divide," so that the word for warclub is homonymous with a compound word meaning "earth-divider," which is essentially its role here.

"his cane" — the starting and finishing point of this race is where the club was lain. This situates the action in the Great Rift in December. The Hōcąk astronomers knew where the Sun was situated with respect to what now were the invisible background stars of the diurnal sky. The Great Rift is situated below the Sun, and is long and slender like a tree branch being used as a cane.

StarryNight Software

The Great Rift as a Cane and a Valley Solar Noon, 22 December 1607 (Winter Solstice)

"the valley but he was here yet" — the Sun, ex hypothesi, is in the Great Rift, which is here being homologized to a valley running between two hills. Here, with respect to the progress of the Sun, it barely creeps across the rift.

"it took him a long time to climb it" — in the description of the race between the clouds and the Sun, here represented as the race between the Giants and Grandfather, the designer of this allegory is stating what appears to be the case concerning the speed of the Sun, to wit, that it is incredibly slow, especially when compared to the wind-bourne speed of the clouds, which any observer can see passing by the Sun. Even in 1607, the Hōcągara were well acquainted with the fact that the great ocean of the west, as well as the great ocean of the east, were a vast distance beyond, just as they knew that the lands of the far north were frozen tundras of ice. It was a long ways indeed to the Ocean Sea that surrounded Turtle Island. As swift as clouds might be, they could never cover such vast distances in the course of a half-day, the span of time that the Sun was in the sky above. The strange paradox was that the Sun appeared to move slowly, but in fact covered an immense amount of territory

StarryNight Software

The Sun at 1156 hrs. (Solar Noon), 21 December 1607

"the top of the hill" — allegorically, this should represent the zenith of the Sun's daily course, inasmuch as the Sun is neither moving down nor moving up, but at that moment its motion is suspended and the Sun is "seated." Since the Sun at solar noon is exactly between east and west, it is, as it were, suspended between the two opposites. It is this state of suspension in its course that makes it analogous to someone who is seated. However, the hill in question is not only the zenith in this allegory, it is the hill-like structure exemplified by the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way which is homologized in so many other ways. However, it may be deduced that the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way "hill" is at its height when the Sun, itself attached to this stellar spot, is itself at its height. However, paradoxically, at solar noon on 21 December 1607, the Sun is at its summit and the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way is at its most upright for the day, but at its lowest altitude in the sky. This fact is shown on this table:

This is, in fact, the lowest that the Sun gets at solar noon at any time during the year. So, by a striking coincidence, the Sun reaches the peak of this "hill" just at the winter solstice, which occurred at Four Lakes (Madison, Wisconsin) at 2144 hrs. LMT (Local Mean Time) on 21 December 1607. This means that the Sun is almost perfectly suspended between its decline and its ascendancy for the year as well as just for this day. So just as the Sun is "seated" in diurnal time, so too is it seated at the peak of the Milky Way "hill", and almost astonishingly, it is seated at the seam of the whole year at the precise day of the Winter Solstice.

Given that this takes place in daylight, how did they know that the Milky Way here was upright like a hill? How did they know where the Sun was situated with respect to the background stars when these stars were washed out by the Sun's brilliant light? The answer lies in the fact that the Sun's position can be extrapolated from the stars visible at sunset and sunrise. That this part of the Milky Way will have been upright can also be deduced from its position when the Sun stops illuminating the sky. The Sun will be almost "glued" to this spot on the Milky Way and will "pull" it to its height at solar noon. What isn't clear is how they would know that it is also the Winter Solstice when the Sun is situated on this "hill" of the Milky Way. Noon can be determined not only by the height of the Sun in the sky, but by the shadows that it casts. At noon these shadows will be at their shortest. So given that the Sun is at its lowest noon height, these short shadows will be at their longest. It requires astute observation to be able to perceive the longest of the shortest shadows for the year. Nevertheless, such a subtlety is possible if someone is keeping track the entire year of very long shadows, such as are cast by a tall tree or even a hill.

"he sat down" — with respect to the top the hill formed by the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way, the Sun does not significantly move. However, with respect to the sky, both the Sun and the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way move with great speed. Nevertheless, when atop the "hill," the Sun momentarily neither moves up nor down, neither east nor west, and even in terms of its annual course, being at the winter solstice, it is also in the "betwixt and between" moment of decline and ascendance. The Sun's motion, being thus momentarily frozen, makes him metaphorically "seated" in more than one respect.

"a round piece of leather" — an obvious reference to the solar disk. It’s an alloform of the Sun itself, so Grandfather becomes this disc of leather and its automatic motion propels him ahead of the Giants (clouds). This switch of symbolism is helpful since the Sun is seated with respect to the background stars, but is rapidly coursing through the sky when considered diurnally.

"it rolled" — here the Hōcąk astronomers are speculating that the solar disk spins like a rolling hoop. This concept of the Sun arises from the theological premise that a holy force will always set things into circular motion, as for instance, when Earthmaker created the Earth by casting substance from his perch above into the void below. Then the Earth assumed the holy motion by ceaselessly spinning with rapid velocity. Why is a circle holy? It is at once both finite and infinite: although it takes up a finite amount of space, the series of points out of which it is made have neither a beginning nor an end.

"a whirring sound" — people who, as children, whipped a piece of leather around in a circle will have known that it makes such a noise. Why mention a sound at all? As we have seen here and elsewhere, sound is used to symbolize light, since they have obvious isomorphisms. Inasmuch as the Sun has intense light it must also have, in this model, some corresponding sound.

"dancing" — it should be kept in mind that American tribal dancing was done in a circle. So what Grandfather is saying is that the Giants are just going around in circles rather than running to the goal.

"they met him on his way back" — if the clouds are headed back, we must imagine a shift in the wind. However, considering the facts of astronomy, there is no way in which the clouds heading back to the east could be passed by the Sun, as the Sun's course is unidirectional. However, there are two theories of how the Sun returns to the other horizon once it has reached its western limits. Trowbridge in a very early 1823 ethnology, recorded these opinions about the Sun:

The Sun is a circular plane, composed of wood, which burns perpetually. It is supposed to have life, to be furnished with heat by the great Spirit and to have for its resting place the eastern extremity of the earth before mentioned. It commences its journey every morning and having passed over the great earth & the island upon which they live, it moves suddenly under (97) it and returns to the resting place, where it remains until another day. They suppose that the day is not far distant when this luminary will cease to burn, and that then the world will be reduced to chaos. They believe the sun to be nearly as large as the earth which they inhabit.²¹

This is the only situation in which the Sun might pass the clouds going in the reverse (west to east) direction. It is also the only way in which the Sun could discharge its pack, a pack identified with the Scorpius Milky Way in which the Sun is situated as it traverses the sunlit diurnal sky. It is still carrying this pack when it reaches the horizon, as the Sun moves little with respect to the background of the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way. The stars have gone to the world below, while the Sun skirts the wheel of the fixed stars. Only once it has gotten back to the eastern horizon will it again link up with the background stars from which it had departed at sunset. Only then will it rise again into the sky rather than float around the edge of the Earth's southern extreme or zip there through the underworld.

"when he got back where he started" — we are to imagine, on the theory stated above, that the Sun scooted underground to the eastern horizon where he reconnected to his pack which would rise with him concealed by the blue background of the sky produced by the Sun's light. Even though the Sun is on the other side of the world, the fact that it is still aligned with the Milky Way pack means that he had gotten back to where he had left off.

"sprinkled the cattails over them" — the cattail fluff would be the invisible contents of the pack that Grandfather is carrying, which is to say, the inferred presence of the Milky Way that was behind the evaporated white clouds. 

"burnt them up so that only the bones were left" — given that the Giants are white clouds, during the day the Sun can cause them to evaporate, that is, he can burn them up. All that would have been left of them is the cloudy bones formed by the Milky Way that the Sun is packing invisibly in the blue sky (see below).

"took the goal on with him" — the goal, as we saw above, is the baldheaded warclub, which represents the Great Rift. As the Sun rises, it "carries" the background stars with it towards its highest altitude at solar noon. Therefore, he is carrying the warclub-goal with him as he goes.

StarryNight Software, Pixaby (b0red)

The Sun Packing the Bones of Giants Solar Noon, 27 December 1607

"he carried his bag full of the Giants’ bones" — another reference to the Sagittarius-Scorpius Milky Way. It may be seen that the two branches of this section of the Milky Way, at this time standing vertically, resemble two femur bones. So this pack is one and the same as the pack he had been carrying all along, only now re-homologized to meet the new circumstances of the developing story.

"four paths" — a reference to the four cardinal directions (east, south, west, north).

"they started in to kill them" — the interpretive problem here is How can Morning Star said to be killing white clouds (Giants)? It is certainly the case that Venus is not eating the clouds, as according to the allegory, this would seem to imply that Morning Star can occlude the white clouds, which it could do only if it were in their foreground. However, occlusion is homologized to eating, and it is never said that Morning Star or Turtle ate the Giants, but only killed them, which is to say, made them disappear. This would certainly seem to be a power of the Sun, but is it a power of Venus, and its Morning Star phase in particular? He himself is called Wa'įkipíraka, "Girded in Blankets,"²² unless his name should be rendered as Wa'įgipįraga, "He Likes Blankets." In either case the blankets clearly refer to clouds. It is no doubt for this reason he is said to have founded the Thunderbird Clan.²³ As clouds are typically seen on the horizon before sunrise, Morning Star is seen standing above them or even wrapped in them. So it is evident that Morning Star is conceived as having command over the clouds with which he is associated. The waiką "Bladder and His Brothers," says that Morning Star's older brothers are clouds.²⁴ In our present story, clouds are Man-eaters (Wągerúcge), where the men who are eaten are stars; but the planets also "eat" (occlude) the stars, which would make Venus a Man-eater, although not necessarily a Giant, as the clouds dwarf him in size. As the youngest among his cloud brothers, he would be considered the most powerful. Therefore, Morning Star has control over the clouds, and would be able to kill his weaker brothers.

"the Ocean" — Te Ją in Hōcąk, meaning "the surrounding body of water." This is exactly the same as the Ὠκεᾰνός | Okeanós, the Ocean Sea, that the ancient Greeks also imagined surrounded the earth. The Giants were tracked down and annihilated on three of the four paths (cardinal directions), but on the last, they were cast across the surrounding sea. This last cardinal direction will have been the north, as the Ice Giants are said to have come from the frozen far north.

"eat grass" — what would this mean in the context of this allegory? If the Giants (clouds) eat people (occlude stars), what does it mean to say that they can be forced to eat grass? Besides astronomical bodies, white clouds occlude the light of the blue sky itself. Yet clouds should be eating the blue sky, so how can they eat something that is green? In Hōcąk green and blue are denoted by a single word, cō. So grass and the sky are both cō. Having a single word to cover this span of the spectrum is found in a number of other languages, as for instance, Tibetan.²⁵ Therefore, saying that the Giants (clouds) were made to "eat" (occlude) something cō, is entirely in keeping with the white clouds grazing on the blue sky. This is in contradistinction to the clouds at night grazing on the stars, who are here made into people. So by being forced to graze on the blue sky, the Giants are rendered incapable of cannibalism.

"the seas" — geographically, the land on the other side of the Ocean Sea divides the lateral world into two distinct domains. In this allegory, the land where the Giants were thrown to eat grass is the day sky. Therefore, the lateral division of the world stands for the division of the upper world from the lower world, or rather the day sky from the night sky. These Giants, who would be the Good Giants, since they are not cannibals, would inhabit the day sky. When the Sun sets, it is, on one theory, thought to descend into the underworld and light the sky there until such time as it arrives on the opposite horizon in the east and rises again into our own sky. So the Bad Giants, the cannibals, were for the time being banished from the night sky. This cloudless night allowed all those "people" (stars) eaten by the Giants to reëmerge and out of the area where the Giants (clouds) had been.

"you may go back alone" — here Turtle is being identified with the land mass surrounded by the Ocean Sea known as "Turtle Island." In this form, he will not ascend to the sky like Morning Star.

"the youngest one was the blessed one" — that these two sets of brothers represent the same thing is reinforced by the recognition that the youngest in the first set of brothers is the same as the youngest in the second set of brothers, i.e., the Morning Star of Venus.

"it began to get noisy" — here again sound is being used to symbolize light. The inhabitants of the village are the stars of night who come to life with the departure of the Sun.

"all of them became the kind of animals they had been killing" — the last two brothers are Red Star (Evening Star = Bluehorn) and Morning Star. The others are spirits of some kind that correspond to the animals that they hunt. We may add that the penultimate brother, who hunted raccoons, became the Red Star. All these male Spirits were the sons of the Sun, and must have some intimate association with the solar nature to be so characterized. And because they metamorphosed into the these several animals, the same must be said of the animals as well. Each of these animals was "cooked," "eaten," and were identified with the offspring of the Sun. In an astronomy allegory, what else could they be than the constellations of a zodiac, each asterism of which is seen as that particular animal. This myth has encoded what we can now appreciate as something akin to the lost zodiac of the Hōcągara. The zodiac, having nine constellations, fits into the scheme of three seasons, each of three moons. This system is illustrated here:

The Circle of Nine Asterisms [Enlarge]

Apart from the Bear and the Marten, which are known from other sources, the stars that make up each animal image are a matter of pure conjecture. On the other hand, the sequence of these zoömorphic constellations is clearly set out in the allegory, so we can at least give a rough approximation of their positions in relation to the ecliptic.

"the Big Star" — this is the Morning Star of Venus (its sacrificial emblem is the inset at the right). Although not mentioned last, he is the most powerful and holiest of the stars, and is, therefore, the tenth and last brother. This is confirmed by the title given to this story: wi L Ko deKe xeAe te K, Wiragošge Xetega, "Morning Star," transliterated at the bottom of the page in Radin's orthography as Wiragocge Xedera, "The Morning Star."

"the Red Star" — Wiragošge Šujᵉra, the Evening Star of Venus. This phase of Venus is no more red than its Morning Star phase. The difference is that Evening Star is born in the red of the sunset, whereas Morning Star dies in the corresponding red of sunrise. The Great Star also gradually becomes visible against the background of the crimson sky, but as it does so, it very soon after "dies" under the glare of the Sun's light. Evening Star, on the other hand, emerges from the red background to begin its sojourn in the sky rather than to end it. It is in this sense that it is "born" of the red sky and is therefore the "Red Star." This appellation is not without precedence, as the Maya call Venus chac ke, "red star."²⁶ There are times when it actually appears red. This is also a feature not just of Venus, but of the other inner planet, Mercury, of which it is said allegorically that the Twins look just like their uncle Red Star. The phenomena that make stars on the horizon look red is set out by Fred W. Price:

The planet Mercury is never seen far from the sun, is low down in the sky when it becomes dark enough to see it and its apparent movements are fairly rapid; hence it was named after the mythological swift-footed messenger of the Gods. It resembles a star and because it lies so close to the horizon it twinkles. The ancient Greeks therefore called it the Twinkler or Sparkler. It often has a rosy pink hue, an effect due to atmospheric dispersion.²⁷ ... It usually looks like a twinkling rose-coloured star but the color and twinkling are both due to the low altitude.²⁸ ... Optical anomalies are also experienced for Venus when it is low in the sky.²⁹

Because of its color fluctuations, the Crow also call the Morning Star of Venus, "Crazy Star."³⁰ This is probably the simple solution to the very difficult problem of why the ancients referred to the star Sirius as being "red" when it was, as we see it today, a bright white.³¹ In addition to this consideration, a star near the horizon may be called "red" because it is bathed in the light of the sunrise or sunset. For that matter, its appellation as such may derive from both of these ideas. It is not a coincidence that the Pawnee in a rite paint the impersonator of the Evening Star completely red.³² The Morning Star is symmetrical in this respect, and the Pawnee depict him as a man completely painted red, from head to toe.³³

Summary of the Allegory

It is rare to find an astronomy allegory in which some characters are explicitly said to be heavenly bodies. Here we have the Sun and Moon denuded, so to speak, and later we are told that two of the sons are the two phases of Venus. Given that the main character, the Sun, is not hidden under a figurative character, it becomes much easier to decipher the places that the Sun visits and the events that happen to "him." When tabulated, these events can be seen to be surprisingly restricted in time, with places on the celestial sphere, and the actions of other astronomical bodies, being repeatedly characterized. The Milky Way, for instance, is said to be a creek, a sheet of ice, snow, greasy soup, and cattail fluff. The Sun's journey over this stretch of the celestial sphere is characterized and re-characterized clothed in this shifting symbolism that portrays events that take place over a period of less than two years. It is helpful to set this tight repetition out in a table as we see below:

This appears to be a story of some age, at least with respect to other astronomy allegories that have been dated. A great deal is mentioned of eating, which in astronomy codes represents the occlusion of one astronomical body over the light of another in its background. The Sun, of course, occludes everything in the welkin other than the clouds. The Sun's appetite is so ravenous that he ends up eating all of his sons, and in the end, even his wife, the Moon. These sons are, ex hypothesi, nine asterisms plus the Morning Star that the Sun's light swallows up first on his course across the sky. This course is the ecliptic, and stars that are first consumed by the Sun's light would therefore constitute counterparts of the constellations of the zodiac or at least proximal to the ecliptic. This is expressed in two ways: first he eats from the kettle of food prepared by each son in turn, then unsated, he devours his very own sons. He then wanders aimlessly in the wilderness where we come to our first identifiable point of time. It is abundantly clear that the Sun arrives before the Milky Way "creek". The whole process is repeated with a different set of sons who portray the very same objects as did the first set of offspring.

Dating the Story

The Sun typically reaches this part of the Milky Way in mid December. Here the Milky Way is wide and ovaloid, falling within the constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius. It has the Great Rift running through its center, and so creates the appearance of a large oval lodge. However, the dark interior is split off near its higher end, seemingly forming a distinct chamber, which the story represents as a partitioned compartment. There is where Morning Star, the youngest (strongest) and holiest of the brothers dwells, never venturing forth to hunt. Such a stationary situation is uncharacteristic of any astronomical object over time, and certainly not Venus which speeds past even the rotating stars. However, planets do offer an exception to this rule when they fall into retrograde motion. To an observer on earth, every now and then the planets, unlike the "other" stars, will reverse course and head back the way they came. After a period of this retrograde motion, they once again reverse course and continue in the direction that the vast herd of other stars are galloping. If Morning Star is indeed dwelling in this partitioned space in the Great Rift, then Venus can't just be passing through, and the only way that it can actually dwell someplace is through retrograde motion. So the question becomes, When did Venus make its retrograde motion through precisely this part of the Great Rift? Tracking the motion of Venus in Starry Sky software, Morning Star of Venus loops around within the confines of this "partition" from 18 Dec. 1607 – 20 Jan. 1608, as shown above.

The turning back of Venus as the Evening Star and his knocking over the Milky Way tree can only occur with retrograde motion taking place in the vicinity of the Scorpius Milky Way. The narrative follows this with a mention of Venus as Morning Star living behind a partition. This too is satisfied by Morning Star dwelling in a separate branch of the Great Rift, which it does in a conspicuous way by completing its retrograde motion precisely in this area of the Great Rift. This is seen to occur in 1607-1608, but what of other candidates that might also exhibit this same pattern in the progress and situation of Venus with respect to the Sun and background stars? The retrograde of Venus should occur here once every Venus cycle of eight years. When we look back to the previous cycle, we do not find exactly the same situation of Venus against the background stars. In mid-December of 1599, Morning Star also has retrograde motion within the partitioned space, but when the Sun is in the center of the lodge (main Great Rift), Morning Star is in conjunction with it, and only appears in the partitioned area after the Sun has left. The same proves to be true of the previous cycle beginning in December 1591. Moving ahead one Venus cycle from 1607, in 1615 we find an ideal retrograde motion beginning simultaneously with the Sun being in the center of the "lodge" and moving away. The allegory satisfied by the events of 1607-1608 is also satisfied, perhaps even better, by those of the next Venus cycle of 1615-1616. Nevertheless, this later cycle creates an enormous temporal gulf from the focal point of the allegory hitherto, the period of 1607-1608. The Sun, who is the center of attention and the primary subject of the allegory, is not tracked through this long expanse of time. There is no account of the Sun passing through eight iterations of the celestial background features that have hitherto been described in allegorical terms. The expected account of the adventures of the Sun's travels through this immense gulf of space and time is completely absent, making it highly unlikely that it is this Venus cycle period that is being described in the partition episode. Furthermore, such a quantum jump in time is completely inconsistent with the pattern thus far established of repeated descriptions of the period running from 1606 to 1608, to which the rest of the narrative has been restricted. Even greater jumps in time can be excluded for additional reasons. In the next Venus cycle of 1623, Morning Star still has retrograde motion in the partitioned area, and in 1631 it also has retrograde motion, but it occurs mostly above the partition area. After this date, Morning Star is not even in the partition area when the Sun is in the middle of the "lodge".

Comparative Material. "For the Omaha, the stars are the children of the moon and the sun."³⁴

Closely related to the Omaha, the Osage believed that the Wazházhe Clan descended from the stars. Before the creation of humanity, these stars made a quest: "Way beyond a part of the Wazházhe lived in the sky [as stars]. They desired to know their origins, the sources from which they came into existence. They went to the sun. He told them that they were his children. Then they wandered still further and came to the moon. She told them that she gave birth to them, and that the sun was their father. She told them that they must leave their present abode and go down to the earth and dwell there." It appears that the Osage also believed that the stars were the children of the Sun and Moon, but it is not clear that they believed that all stars were of this descent, or just the ancestral stars. However, given the Omaha beliefs on this matter, the former seems very likely.³⁵

"The Paiute of North America describe the stars as the children of the sun and moon. Because the sun loves to eat his children, the stars disappear whenever he rises above the horizon. However, the moon, their mother, often dances happily across the sky with the stars."³⁶

In a Kickapoo tale, a man suddenly loses his ability to kill game, so his wife secretly meets with a bear in the wilderness and obtains bear meat from him. However, she gives it to her son, but instructs him not to tell his father that they have eaten. One day, despite her instructions, the boy hides meat in his mouth, then feeds it to his father. His father now realizes what has been going on and eventually kills his wife.³⁷

Concerning the marten (Martes americana) as the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), the Ojibwe see it as the closely related fisher (Pekania pennanti), both of whom belong to the subfamily Guloninae. "The constellation Ursa Major (Great Bear or Dipper) is called wǝdji‧´g [ojiig] "fisher" or "black cat" (Mustela pennanti). The four main stars of the group form the body of the animal; the stars trailing behind (the handle of the dipper) represent the fisher's tail, the bend showing the bent tail of the animal. The story accounts for the presence of the fisher in the sky, relating how the various animals tried to reach the north star, but eventually froze to death. The fisher is still trying to reach it and he is the nearest, but he only keeps going round and round it (representing the revolution of the constellation about the North Star) without being able to get there."³⁸

"From the conception that the Sun and Moon were husband and wife many legends concerning them were created, chief among these being the old Persian belief that the stars were the children of the Sun and Moon."³⁹

Here is a Yoruba myth collected and retold by James Mooney. "Long ago, the Sun and the Moon were married to each other. The Sun would sail across the sky, blazing in all his glory, till he would reach the end of the world where Sky and Earth meet. At night, when his light would be hidden, his wife the Moon would sail gently across the sky, till the Sun rose again in the morning. The Sun and the Moon had many children. The boys were like their father the Sun, already blazing with light even though they were little. The girls were like their mother the Moon, glowing softly. Now the young suns greatly admired their father the Sun, and wanted to be like him. They too wanted to sail across the sky down to the end of the world where Sky and Earth met. But their father would not take them with him. So one day the young suns gathered together in a body, and began following their father the Sun as he started off on his journey across the sky. ‘Go back!’ ordered the Sun. ‘You may not follow me! There is place for only one Sun in the sky!’ But the young suns replied, ‘We want to be like you! We too want to sail across the sky all day!’ The Sun again ordered his sons to return home to their mother the Moon, but the boys would not listen. They insisted on following him. At this, the Sun grew angry, and also afraid – he felt that the brilliance of his sons might outshine him very soon. So, in anger and fear, he turned upon his sons and tried to kill them. The young suns ran in fright and took refuge with their grandmother Yemaja, the goddess of brooks and streams. Yemaja, to save her grandchildren from the wrath of the Sun, turned them into fish and hid them in the sea and the rivers and streams of the earth. But the daughters of the Sun and the Moon had remained quietly at home with their mother. They are still with her, and we can see them, following the Moon at night, when the Sun’s fierce light is hidden. And so there came to be fish in the sea and the rivers and streams; and also stars in the sky."⁴⁰ 

In India some believe that the Sun and Moon are the parents of the stars. This is from the Bhuiya of Champajor, Keonjhar State: "The Moon was eating a roasted bel fruit and the Sun asked her, ‘What is that you are eating?’ The Moon replied, ‘My children.’ ‘Then give me a little.’ The Sun ate the fruit and found it sweet. Pleased with this the Sun ate all his own children, except one which ran away like the lightning."⁴¹

"The primitive natives of the Malay peninsula believed that the firmament was solid. They imagined that the sky was a great pot held over the earth by a slender cord, and if this was ever broken the earth would be destroyed. They regarded the Sun and Moon as women, and the stars as the Moon's children. A legend relates that the Sun had as many children as the Moon, in ancient times, and fearing that mankind could not bear so much brightness and heat, the Sun and Moon agreed to devour their children. The Moon pretended to thus dispose of hers, and hid them instead; but the Sun kept faith, and made way with all her children. When they were all devoured, the Moon brought hers out from their hiding-place. When the Sun saw them she was very angry, and pursued the Moon to kill her, and the chase is a perpetual one. Sometimes the Sun comes near enough to bite the Moon, and then men say there is an eclipse. The Sun still devours her children, the stars, at dawn, and the Moon hides hers during the daytime, when the Sun is near, only revealing them at night when her pursuer is far away."⁴²

A Tingguian (Itneg) folk tale from the Philippines is similar: "In the olden days, like the moon, the sun had also star children which were yellowish in color, very bright and very hot. The star children of the moon, however, were reddish and cool. That moon was scared hat his stars would wither and die if they play with the star children of the sun. The moon suggested to the sun that they kill their children who were crowding. When the sun had killed her children, the moon merely hid behind the clouds, the heavens with their number. In the evening, when the clouds faded, the moon stars appeared. This angered the sun so he gave chase to the moon. Thus, when he overtakes the moon, we have the so-called eclipse. Every morning, the sun kills the moon stars that he catches."⁴³ 

In another Filipino story, "the sun god Arao (probably Apolaki) and the moon goddess Buan (probably Mayari) both had large families of stars, but Buan believed her stars could not survive the heat of Arao. They both agreed to destroy their stars. While Arao devoured his, Buan hid hers in the clouds, where they would occasionally emerge. Upon seeing this, Arao was filled with rage and is eternally in pursuit of Buan, trying to destroy her. Eclipses are explained by Arao getting close enough to bite her. At dawn, Buan hides the stars and brings them forth only when her eldest daughter, Tala (the evening and morning star) says the sun is too far away to pursue them."⁴⁴

Among the Vasaya of the Philippines is a story in which the Sun and Moon are married and the stars are their children: "Once upon a time the Sun and the Moon were married, and they had many children who were the stars. The Sun was very fond of his children, but whenever he tried to embrace any of them, he was so hot that he burned them up. This made the Moon so angry that finally she forbade him to touch them again, and he was greatly grieved. One day the Moon went down to the spring to do some washing, and when she left she told the Sun that he must not touch any of their children in her absence. When she returned, however, she found that he had disobeyed her, and several of the children had perished. She was very angry, and picked up a banana tree to strike him, whereupon he threw sand in her face, and to this day you can see the dark marks on the face of the Moon."⁴⁵

Links: Sun, Morning Star, Bluehorn (Red Star), Moon, Celestial Spirits, Turtle, Giants, Raccoons, Moose, The Twins, Redhorn, Gourd Rattles.

Stories: featuring Sun as a character: Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, The Children of the Sun, The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head, Hare Burns His Buttocks, The Birth of the Twins, The Man who was Blessed by the Sun, The Origins of the Milky Way, Red Cloud's Death; pertaining to the Moon: The Markings on the Moon, Black and White Moons, The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head, Sunset Point, Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, Hare Kills Wildcat, Berdache Origin Myth (v. 1), Turtle and the Giant, A Deer Story; featuring Turtle as a character: The Mission of the Five Sons of Earthmaker, Turtle's Warparty, Turtle and the Giant, Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married, Turtle and the Merchant, Redhorn's Father, Redhorn's Sons, Turtle and the Witches, The Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, Trickster Soils the Princess, Morning Star and His Friend, The Race for the Chief's Daughter, Kunu's Warpath, Redhorn Contests the Giants, Redhorn and His Brothers Marry, The Skunk Origin Myth, The Hocąk Migration Myth, Porcupine and His Brothers, The Creation of Man, The Twins Join Redhorn's Warparty, The Father of the Twins Attempts to Flee, The Chief of the Heroka, The Spirit of Gambling, The Nannyberry Picker, Hare Secures the Creation Lodge, The Markings on the Moon (v. 2), The Green Man, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, The Coughing Up of the Black Hawks, The Petition to Earthmaker, The Origins of the Milky Way; with Bluehorn (Evening Star) as a character: Bluehorn's Nephews, The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head, Children of the Sun, Bluehorn Rescues His Sister, The Man with Two Heads, Sun and the Big Eater, The Green Man (?), Brave Man (?); featuring Morning Star as a character: Morning Star and His Friend, Little Human Head, Bladder and His Brothers, The Origins of the Milky Way; about stars and other celestial bodies: The Dipper, Įcorúšika and His Brothers, The Seven Maidens, Morning Star and His Friend, Little Human Head, Turtle and the Witches, Sky Man, Wojijé, The Raccoon Coat, Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, The Star Husband, Bluehorn's Nephews, The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head, The Meteor Spirit and the Origin of Wampum, The Children of the Sun, Heną́ga and Star Girl, The Origins of the Milky Way, The Fall of the Stars, featuring Giants as characters: A Giant Visits His Daughter, Turtle and the Giant, The Stone Heart, Young Man Gambles Often, Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, Redhorn Contests the Giants, The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father, Morning Star and His Friend, The Reincarnated Grizzly Bear, The Old Man and the Giants, Shakes the Earth, White Wolf, Redhorn's Father, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, The Roaster, Redhorn's Sons, The Meteor Spirit and the Origin of Wampum, Thunder Cloud is Blessed, Little Human Head, Heną́ga and Star Girl, Rich Man, Boy, and Horse, Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, How the Thunders Met the Nights, The Origins of the Milky Way, Ocean Duck, The Blessing of a Bear Clansman, Wears White Feather on His Head, cf. The Shaggy Man; having characters who are fat: Sun and the Big Eater, The Green Man; mentioning moose: Deer Clan Origin Myth, The Quail Hunter, Hunting at Green Lake; mentioning martens: Great Walker's Medicine (v. 2), The Dipper; mentioning bear entrails: The Shaggy Man, Kaǧiga and Lone Man, The Brown Squirrel; mentioning snow: Waruǧábᵉra, The Glory of the Morning, Holy One and His Brother, Wolves and Humans, The Four Steps of the Cougar, Redhorn's Father, The Old Man and the Giants, Old Man and Wears White Feather, Great Walker's Warpath, White Wolf, North Shakes His Gourd, The Fleetfooted Man, Lake Wąkšikhomįgra (Mendota): the Origin of Its Name, Witches, Thunderbird Clan Origin Myth, Trickster Gets Pregnant, The Raccoon Coat, Silver Mound Cave, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married; making reference to the baldheaded warclub: Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, Morning Star and His Friend, Thunderbird Clan Origin Myth, Wears White Feather on His Head; mentioning feasts: Thunderbird Clan Origin Myth (Chief Feast), The Creation Council (Eagle Feast), Hawk Clan Origin Myth (Eagle Feast), Waterspirit Clan Origin Myth (Waterspirit Feast), A Waterspirit Blesses Mąnį́xete’ų́ga (Mąką́wohą, Waną́cĕrehí), Bear Clan Origin Myth (Bear Feast), The Woman Who Fought the Bear (Bear Feast), Wolf Clan Origin Myth (Wolf Feast), Buffalo Clan Origin Myth (Buffalo Feast), The Blessings of the Buffalo Spirits (Buffalo Feast), Buffalo Dance Origin Myth (Buffalo Feast), Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle (Buffalo Feast), The Blessing of Šokeboka (Feast to the Buffalo Tail), Snake Clan Origins (Snake Feast), Blessing of the Yellow Snake Chief (Snake Feast), Rattlesnake Ledge (Snake Feast), The Thunderbird (for the granting of a war weapon), Turtle's Warparty (War Weapons Feast, Warpath Feast), Porcupine and His Brothers (War Weapons Feast), Earthmaker Blesses Wagíšega (Wešgíšega) (Winter Feast = Warbundle Feast), Big Thunder Teaches Cap’ósgaga the Warpath (Winter Feast = Warbundle Feast), The Boy who was Blessed by a Mountain Lion (Winter Feast = Warbundle Feast), White Thunder's Warpath (Winter Feast = Warbundle Feast), The Fox-Hocąk War (Winter Feast = Warbundle Feast), Šųgepaga (Winter Feast = Warbundle Feast), The Man Whose Wife was Captured (v. 2) (Warbundle Feast, Warpath Feast), Black Otter's Warpath (Warpath Feast), Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth (Warpath Feast), Kunu's Warpath (Warpath Feast), Trickster's Warpath (Warpath Feast), The Masaxe War (Warpath Feast), Redhorn's Sons (Warpath Feast, Fast-Breaking Feast), The Girl who Refused a Blessing from the Wood Spirits (Fast-Breaking Feast), The Chief of the Heroka (Sick Offering Feast), The Dipper (Sick Offering Feast, Warclub Feast), The Four Slumbers Origin Myth (Four Slumbers Feast), The Journey to Spiritland (Four Slumbers Feast), The First Snakes (Snake Feast), Whiskey Making (Medicine Rite), Spear Shaft and Lacrosse (unspecified), Pete Dupeé and the Ghosts (unnamed); mentioning the Ocean Sea (Te Ją): Trickster's Adventures in the Ocean, Hare Retrieves a Stolen Scalp (v. 1), Otter Comes to the Medicine Rite, The Rounded Wood Origin Myth, The Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, Trickster and the Children, The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head, Wears White Feather on His Head, White Wolf, How the Thunders Met the Nights (Mąznį’ąbᵉra), Bear Clan Origin Myth (vv. 2a, 3), Wolf Clan Origin Myth (v. 2), Redhorn's Sons, Sun and the Big Eater, The Journey to Spiritland (v. 4), The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father (sea), The Dipper (sea), The Thunderbird (a very wide river), Wojijé, The Twins Get into Hot Water (v. 1), Redhorn's Father, Trickster Concludes His Mission, Berdache Origin Myth, Thunder Cloud is Blessed, Morning Star and His Friend, How the Hills and Valleys were Formed.

Themes: spirits come to earth in order to rescue humanity from enemies who threaten their existence: The Mission of the Five Sons of Earthmaker, Bladder and His Brothers, Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, The Hare Cycle, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, The Raccoon Coat, Redhorn's Sons, The Redhorn Cycle, The Roaster, Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, The Spirit of Gambling, The Reincarnated Grizzly Bear, The Trickster Cycle, Wojijé, Redhorn's Father, Turtle and the Merchant; the human incarnation of the sun eats enormous amounts of food: Sun and the Big Eater; gluttony: The Big Eater, Sun and the Big Eater, Hare Visits His Grandfather Bear; someone is rejected by at least one member of his family: Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, The King Bird, Kaǧiga and Lone Man, Moiety Origin Myth, The Chief Who Shot His Own Daughter, The Story of the Medicine Rite; someone eats so much that his closest relatives flee from him (to avoid starvation): Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater; a (grand)father abandons his family: The Father of the Twins Attempts to Flee, The Two Boys, Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, The Birth of the Twins, The Two Brothers, Trickster Visits His Family; a man flees until he reaches a lodge belonging to ten brothers with whom he then lives: Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater; a man is adopted into a family who live in a distant village: Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, Moiety Origin Myth, Origin of the Decorah Family, The Captive Boys, The Journey of the Prophet’s Acolyte; hunters kill so much game that they can only pack the tongues: The Twins Visit Their Father's Village, The Roaster, The Nannyberry Picker, Redhorn's Father; each member of a group of brothers specializes in the hunting of just one kind of game animal: The Quail Hunter, The Brown Squirrel; a group of brothers return from the hunt in the order of their birth: Sun and the Big Eater, The Quail Hunter, The Old Man and His Four Dogs; a challenger comes shaking a gourd rattle: Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, The Roaster, How the Thunders Met the Nights, The Race for the Chief's Daughter, Redhorn Contests the Giants, White Wolf; an old man is told by a Giant that his grandsons are challenged to a contest, but he keeps forgetting to tell them until the Giants (attempt to) club him, then he remembers by repeating it all day long: Sun and the Big Eater, Bladder and His Brothers; contests with the Giants: Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, Redhorn's Father, White Wolf, The Roaster, Young Man Gambles Often, Little Human Head, Redhorn Contests the Giants, Redhorn's Sons, Morning Star and His Friend, The Reincarnated Grizzly Bear, Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, The Old Man and the Giants, The Meteor Spirit and the Origin of Wampum, Shakes the Earth, The Origins of the Milky Way, The Shaggy Man; anthropophagy and cannibalism: A Giant Visits His Daughter, Turtle and the Giant, The Witch Men's Desert, The Were-Grizzly, The Roaster, Redhorn's Father, Hawk Clan Origin Myth, The Lost Blanket, Young Man Gambles Often, White Wolf, The Shaggy Man, The Twins Get into Hot Water, Partridge's Older Brother, The First Fox and Sauk War, The Fox-Hocąk War, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, Morning Star and His Friend, Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, The Seven Maidens, Šųgepaga, The Reincarnated Grizzly Bear, The Woman who Loved Her Half-Brother, The Blessing of a Bear Clansman, Shakes the Earth, The Stone Heart, Thunder Cloud is Blessed; racing around the edge of the world: Origin of the Hocąk Chief, Elk Clan Origin Myth, Pigeon Clan Origins, The Race for the Chief's Daughter; an old man has a disc shaped object which when rolled makes him the fastest man in any race: Sun and the Big Eater; a spirit has so much speed that he tears down trees trying to come to a stop: Sun and the Big Eater; Morning Star is a fast runner: Morning Star and His Friend (v. 2); an old man wins a race: Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater; the bodies of Giants wagered in a game, are burned up using cattail floss as fuel: The Meteor Spirit and the Origin of Wampum, The Roaster, Redhorn's Father; warriors following the scattered tracks of enemies, go down one track, kill all they followed, then go down each of the other tracks in turn until they have made casualties of all the enemy: Redhorn's Sons, Young Man Gambles Often; good people (and spirits) completely annihilate a race of bad spirits except for two, whom they allow to live (so that they do not undo the work of the Creator): Sun and the Big Eater, Įcorúšika and His Brothers, How the Thunders Met the Nights, Bluehorn Rescues His Sister, Redhorn's Father, Morning Star and His Friend, Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle; ground up bones of evil spirits are used to resurrect their victims: Partridge's Older Brother, The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father, The Woman who Loved Her Half-Brother; someone is, or becomes, a star: The Seven Maidens, The Dipper, Morning Star and His Friend, Heną́ga and Star Girl, Turtle and the Witches, Įcorúšika and His Brothers, The Star Husband; some of a group of brothers are Stellar Spirits and others are animals: Įcorúšika and His Brothers, Sun and the Big Eater, The Big Eater.

Notes

¹ the presumed English translation, underlined, is cut off at the top of the page. Below it is written, wi L Ko deKe xeAe te K. At the bottom of the page, this is transliterated as Wiragocge xedera. The title in English would be "The Great Star," the conventional designation of the Morning Star of Venus.
² the page following the first page numbered "64" was inadvertently also numbered "64".
³ Paul Radin, "Morning Star (Wiragocge Xetega)," Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society) Notebook 8: 1-93.
⁴ Charles C. Trowbridge, "Manners, Customs, and International Laws of the Win-nee-baa-goa Nation," (1823), Winnebago Manuscripts, in MS/I4ME, Charles Christopher Trowbridge Collection (02611), Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, 85-102 [97].
⁵ Dorcas S. Miller, Stars of the First People: Native American Star Myths and Constellations (Boulder: Pruett, 1997) 183.
⁶ Francis La Flesche, The Osage Tribe: Two Versions of the Child-Naming Rite, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 43^d Annual Report (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1928) 74.
⁷ Ronald Goodman, Lakota Star Knowledge: Studies in Lakota Stellar Theology (Rosebud Sioux Reservation: Siñte Gleska University, 1992) 54, where Buechel's manuscript page is reproduced. Lakota Dictionary, Lakota-English / English-Lakota. New Comprehensive Edition. Compiled and edited by Eugene Buechel and Paul Manhart (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002) 303, s. v. Tayamni. In the older dictionary of Riggs, tayamni is also said to mean "three pairs" in the Dakota dialect. Stephen R. Riggs, A Dakota-English Dictionary (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992 [1890]) s. v. tawáŋji.
⁸ Goodman, Lakota Star Knowledge, 8.
⁹ Riggs, A Dakota-English Dictionary, s. v. ta. John P. Williamson, An English-Dakota Dictionary (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1992 [1902]) 110a, s. v. "moose."
¹⁰ See in Riggs, A Dakota-English Dictionary, ss. vv. ta, "the moose," tahá, "a deer-skin," tahákalala, "a woman's buckskin dress," Tahéćapśuŋwi, "the moon in which deer shed their horns," tahíŋ, "a buffalo's or deer's hair," táḣiŋća, "the common deer, Cervus capreolus," takáŋ, "the sinew taken from the back of the deer and buffalo," Takíyuḣawi, "the moon when the deer copulate," tamtóka, "the male of the common deer, a buck," tápa, "a deer's head," tapáġa, "the diaphragm of deer, etc.," taśáka, "the hoofs or nails of deer." Williamson, An English-Dakota Dictionary, ss. vv. "deer," "moose."
¹¹ Buechel and Manhart, Lakota Dictionary, 303, s. v. Tayamni. Goodman, Lakota Star Knowledge, 54.
¹² La Flesche, A Dictionary of the Osage Language, 138a, s. v. Ṭa-pa (where it is mentioned that the Omaha have the same term for the Pleiades); 307a, s. v. "Pleiades." Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, The Omaha Tribe, 2 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press: 1992 [1911]) 1:177.
¹³ Mary Carolyn Marino, A Dictionary of Winnebago: An Analysis and Reference Grammar of the Radin Lexical File (Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, December 14, 1968 [69-14,947]) 156, s. v. cįtc; 176, s. v. tca.
¹⁴ Miller, Stars of the First People: Native American Star Myths and Constellations, 178, 210.
¹⁵ Paul Radin, Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1908) Winnebago I, #3: 107b.
¹⁶ Amelia Susman, Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, May 18 - Aug. 3, 1938) Book I, p. 19, word #380, wazą́gara.
¹⁷ Miller, Stars of the First People: Native American Star Myths and Constellations, 66-69.
¹⁸ Miller, Stars of the First People: Native American Star Myths and Constellations, 76-77.
¹⁹ Miller, Stars of the First People: Native American Star Myths and Constellations, 240.
²⁰ Stansbury Hagar, "The Celestial Bear," Journal of American Folk-lore, 13 (1900): 96; George E. Lankford, Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007) 117.
²¹ Trowbridge, "Manners, Customs, and International Laws of the Win-nee-baa-goa Nation," (1823): 97.
²² John Harrison, The Giant or The Morning Star, translated by Oliver LaMere, in Paul Radin, Winnebago Notebooks, Freeman #3892 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society) Winnebago III, #11a, Story 8: 92-117.
²³ "The Morning Star, A Winnebago Legend," collected by Louis L. Meeker (National Anthropological Archives, 1405 Winnebago, A.D.S., Nov. 22, 1896).
²⁴ Meeker, "The Morning Star, A Winnebago Legend"; "The Morning Star," in David Lee Smith, Folklore of the Winnebago Tribe (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) 105-110.
²⁵ isun Zhang, Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo [The Great Tibetan-Chinese Dictionary] (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khaṅ [Nationalities Publishing House], 1993) s.v.
²⁶ Anthony F. Aveni, Skywatchers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001) 184.
²⁷ Fred W. Price, The Planet Observer's Handbook, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 75.
²⁸ Price, The Planet Observer's Handbook, 88.
²⁹ Price, The Planet Observer's Handbook, 124.
³⁰ George E. Lankford, Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007) 30.
³¹ Kenneth Brecher, "Sirius Enigmas," in Astronomy of the Ancients, edd. Kenneth Brecher and Michael Feirtag (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979) 91-116.
³² Robert L. Hall, An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997) ...
³³ Big Crow, "6. How Evening Star's Daughter was Overcome," in George Dorsey, The Pawnee Mythology (Washington, D. C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1906) 1: 38.
³⁴ Miller, Stars of the First People: Native American Star Myths and Constellations, 233. "The stars are believed to be the children of the sun and moon."
³⁵ Fletcher and La Flesche, The Omaha Tribe, 1:63.
³⁶ Earth and Space > Stars and Mythology, Electronic text (viewed 29 July 2025).
³⁷ Kickapoo Tales, collected by William Jones, trs. by Truman Michelson. Publications of the American Ethnological Society (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1915) IX: 67-72.
³⁸ Frank G. Speck, Myths and Folk-lore of the Timiskaming Algonquin and Timagami Ojibwa, Canada Department of Mines. Geological Survey, Memoir 71, #9, Anthropological Series (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1915) 22-23.
³⁹ William Tyler Olcott, Sun Lore of All Ages: A Collection of Myths and Legends Concerning the Sun and Its Worship (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, the Knickerbocker Press, 1914) 39.
⁴⁰ James Mooney, (work unspecified).
⁴¹ Verrier Elwin, Myths of Middle India (London: Oxford University Press, 1949) 56.
⁴² Olcott, Sun Lore of All Ages, 39-40.
⁴³ Anonymous, "The Sun and the Moon," (Source unspecified).
⁴⁴ Percy A. Hill, Philippine Short Stories (Manila: Oriental Commercial Company, 1934) 65.
⁴⁵ "The Sun and the Moon," in Mabel Cook Cole, Philippine Folk Tales (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1916) 201; Rudolf Rahmann, "Quarrels and Enmity between the Sun and the Moon. A Contribution to the Mythologies of the Philippines, India, and the Malay Peninsula," Folklore Studies, Vol. 14 (1955): 202-214.