Redhorn's Father

retold by Richard L. Dieterle

(64)¹ A boy and his grandmother, Old Woman, lived together alone. The boy, who was called "Young Man," wore no clothing at all, save for a single feather in his hair. One day when they were out picking herbs, Old Woman told him, "A man cannot kill game without a bow and arrows." He was indignant that she had not told him of this long ago, so she said, "I will make you a bow and arrows, but first you must cut me some hickory. He went to the bluff to fetch the hickory, but came back with basswood. Only on the second try did he bring back hickory. Out of this Old Woman made a bow, and when it had been dried and hung up, she told her grandson to get some dogwood, the kind with gray bark. However, he came back with poplar. Only on the second attempt did he get it right. "Indeed," she said, "all this will be very difficult."

Later on, Young Man asked his grandmother for her elk horn club, which she gave him. Early the next morning, he went out hunting armed only with her club. Soon he spied a big buck and hid himself in ambush. At the right moment he jumped out, but had to chase it down. Finally, he caught up with it and killed the big buck with his club. Then instead of preparing the deer, he packed the entire animal back with his trumpline. Old Woman thought this was really funny, and showed her grandson how to properly pack a deer. (65) Nevertheless, she was amazed at his prowess. "It is good, grandson," she said, as this had been the first venison that they had ever eaten.

The next day Old Woman said to her grandson, "Indeed it will be very difficult. Today you must kill a turkey so that we can use its feathers for the arrows." So he went out and killed two of them with her elkhorn club. She cooked the meat and blew up the skins, which she hung up to dry in the lodge. On the morrow she said, "Grandson, it is going to be difficult: we need a sturgeon fish for glue." She told him to go down to the river and gave him a bone awl to use as a hook. He cut a hole in the ice and dropped in his hook. Along came a likely looking fish, so he simply asked it, "Are you the kind that they call a 'sturgeon'?" "No," replied the fish, "I'm what they call a 'pickerel'. Sturgeons stay in the deep part of the river." So he cut another hole in the center of the river's ice and when a fish came along, he asked, "Are you what they call a 'sturgeon'?" He replied, "Yes I am." "Are there any more of you here?" he inquired. "No," replied the sturgeon, "but others are following after me." So Young Man killed two of them and brought them back to his grandmother. Old Woman told him, "Grandson, this is another kind of meat that is good to eat." Then she made glue and put the feathers on his arrows. Still they lacked arrowheads, so the next day Old Woman went to a certain man's house with a sack of acorns. These she traded for arrowheads. Soon she had a bunch of arrows each with an arrowhead affixed to it, but Young Man had no other way of carrying them except in his hand.

(66) The following day he went out hunting with his new bow and arrows. He thought to himself, "I'll kill all kinds of animals with these." When he saw deer approaching, he put an arrow in the bow, then commanded the arrow, "Go!" To the complete puzzlement of the boy, the arrow went nowhere. He then tried putting it in the fork of a tree and commanding it to go, but to his dismay this didn't work either. So he trudged home thinking that he might as well throw them out. When his grandmother heard how he had tried to hunt with them, she thought it was pretty funny. She took the bow and fired an arrow at one of the inflated turkey skins hanging in the lodge. When he saw her do this, he understood at last how it was done. The very next day he went out and bagged a fine deer and with its skin he made himself a quiver. Thereafter, he hunted nothing but deer, and was so successful that his grandmother stopped collecting herbs and vegetables altogether.

Old Woman now went up to the bluff to cut some hickory, but this time she split it in two and made a lacrosse stick from it. Young Man had no idea what this was for, so she made a ball and showed him how the game went. "This is what men do when they gamble," she explained. Soon he got the knack of it and played so much that he neglected his hunting. One day he told his grandmother, "Today I am going to practice alone, and you must not under any circumstances watch me." Then he went off to the open prairies. Off in the distance Old Woman could hear the roar of a great crowd. (67) "Who could all these people be?" she thought to herself; "and where did they all come from?" The crowd roared its enthusiasm again. Even though she had been told not to watch him, she could not resist taking a look. When she did look, all she saw was Young Man walking back by himself. No one else was to be seen anywhere. Without saying a word, he grabbed his bow and arrows and returned that evening with a deer. "I have interfered with your game," she confessed. He replied with a simple, "Yes." The next day he went forth to play lacrosse, and just as before there was a great commotion. Old Woman could not resist taking a peek, but when she did, all she could hear was the whistle of eagle feathers on his head. The next day went as the previous two, so that on the fourth day the boy felt compelled to say something: "If you don't stop spying on me, you'll cause my defeat." Just then it began snowing, and the snowflakes were unusually large. "They are challenging you, grandson," she said, "and if you accept, you must tie me up before you leave." The next day he did exactly that. She could hear the crowd roar, and desperately tried to untie herself, but it was to no avail. In the evening she could hear people shout, "We have won!" Then her grandson, wet with sweat, entered the lodge. "Nephew, did you win?" she asked. "Yes," he replied, as he began untying her. After that victory, he stopped playing lacrosse, and went back to hunting.

One morning Old Woman said to him, "Grandson, it is now time that you practiced acting like a son-in-law." "So what should I do?" he inquired. "A son-in-law," she replied, "always drives a herd of elk to the edge of the village and kills them all. Then he packs only their tongues." (68) So Young Man went out hunting for a whole herd of elk. When he spotted them, he felt xop (spiritual power) within himself. After he had driven the herd towards home, he killed everyone of them with a single arrow. When he returned home, he was packing only the tongues. Old Woman's heart was glad. "You have done well, grandson," she declared, "now you should get a woman for yourself." "How am I to do that?" he asked, "as there are no people anywhere in this region." She said, "Actually, there are many people nearby."

The next day he prepared to go out, but Old Woman said to him, "You don't look good in that bearskin blanket." Three times she adjusted his costume, and only on the fourth try was she satisfied. She dressed him in a white blanket with red leggings, and placed over his neck a gorget and a necklace of wampum. She gave him a stone pipe to carry and a fisherskin pouch with tobacco and kinnikinnick in it.² Old Woman now instructed him on what he must do and what he could expect to happen: "You will head east at a run, and you will come to a large prairie. There in the center is a big bluff. Run as fast as you can right up the bluff to its summit. When you arrive at the top, yell koroc ("I win"). Someone will echo you perfectly, and when you look around, there will be someone who is completely naked except for moccasins and a bow and arrows. As hard as you try, you will not be able to evade him — he will be with you everywhere. In the evening he will ask you to tell a story, and if you refuse, he will tell a story about what we are doing right now. He will help you and be your friend."

So the next morning he set out for the east and when he reached the prairie, he began to run. Eventually, he ran right up the bluff and yelled koroc when he reached the top. Just then someone else yelled the same thing from behind him. It was Naked One. "Look," said Young Man, "I was here first, so clearly I won." They briefly argued about the matter, then decided to sit down and smoke. Naked One proceeded to smoke black ash, while Young Man smoked his tobacco and kinnikinnick. When he smelled that, Naked One quit smoking. Young Man watched his expression, then gave him some tobacco, saying, "Because I said koroc first, I am giving you some tobacco!"

(69) That morning, Young Man set out again, but Naked One, who wanted to go with him, asked him to wait up while he fixed a broken moccasin string. However, Young Man thought to himself, "This man is entirely too clever, I must find a way to lose him." So he shot an arrow to a far distant pine. Then he spoke something, and as he said, so it happened: and just like his arrow, he immediately landed in a thicket there. In the afternoon, he came to a big log, and there he hid himself. But Naked One did exactly as Young Man had done, and soon he was standing by the log, asking, "Why are you hiding?" Young Man replied, "Who says that I'm hiding? It is just a custom among my people to act this way."

They camped there and after they built a fire, Naked One went out to get them something to eat. He came upon a small mound and gave it a kick — out came a bear. When Naked One brought it back, Young Man put an arrow in his bow. Naked One said, "Don't touch this bear," but Young Man ignored him. Consequently, Naked One gave him the bear. Young Man accepted it and declared, "Because I said koroc first you have blessed me." Young Man singed the hair off the bear, and as he handled it, it became small, just like a red squirrel. Then he prepared a platform of sticks upon which to roast it, and as he placed the pieces of meat on the rack, (70) they were restored to their actual size. Naked One stuck an arrow in the ground by the fire and said, "If you don't eat this whole bear, I will shoot you with this arrow." Young Man was pleased, and began steadily eating until he had consumed the entire bear. Naked One was pleasantly surprised and smiled at the thought. You claimed, "I said koroc first, yet I ate the whole bear. If you don't eat, it will look bad — so I'll go out and get something for you." He went out and kicked a little mound and a bear ran out. When he returned with the bear, he forbade Naked One from touching it, but Naked One disobeyed him. "Since you have not done as I have asked," said Young Man, "then you might as well keep the bear." Then Naked One handled it until it became like a red squirrel, but Young Man stuck arrows by the fire and said, "If you leave so much as a mouthful of this uneaten, I will shoot you with these arrows." Even though the meat was now restored to its former size, Naked One ate every bit of it. So now they were even.

As they smoked their pipes, Naked One said, "Why don't you tell me a story?" Young Man replied, "How could I, since I was the one who said koroc first?" "You know," said Naked One, "you're right — since I said koroc first, I should be the first one to tell a story." So he told this story: "Once there was a boy. His grandmother taught him how to run fast, then she taught him how to hunt. She thought she was holy, but the boy thought he was even more so. She taught him how to be a son-in-law, then dressed him in finery and sent him off to look for a bride. (71) Just as she had told him, he came across a bluff, and when he got there he ran even faster to its summit. There he yelled koroc, but there was a naked man already there who yelled the same thing first. Then he fired an arrow into a thicket, and he himself did just as his arrow had done. He went off and hid, but the naked man did just as he had done and found him. He said, 'It is the custom of my people to do thus — I was not hiding.' Then they built a fire. Thus they were, and, hohó, that is where we are now!" "Is that all there is to it?" asked Young Man. Naked One reiterated, "It was I who said koroc first, so now you tell a story." "How about this," he said — "a young man with ten brothers ran away from home entirely naked, and although his brothers wondered how he could survive, they did nothing to stop him. Then he thought to himself, 'Why did I do such a thing?' but he was too ashamed to return. So he wandered in the wilderness. Then he saw a young man dressed to go courting and thought to himself how he might find a way to get some of that clothing for himself. He waited at the base of the bluff where the man ran up, but he could not beat him, and the other one was able to say koroc first."

(72) Naked One thought to himself, "How indeed will I get some of that clothing?" He thought that he might take some while Young Man slept, but he stayed awake all night long. When the sun rose, Naked One fell asleep. Young Man saw that Naked One was asleep, so he arose and took off all his clothing and ran off with only his bow and arrows. Naked One awoke and saw that he had left and yelled, "I said koroc first, so why are you leaving me?" But there was no answer. Young Man had gone some way when he found a pile of clothes in front of him. He began to put them on, when unexpectedly, there was Naked One, who declared, "I said koroc first, so why did you leave these clothes with me?" Young Man replied, "You are not an animal. How could I lead you to my bride when you are naked?" Young Man gave him some of the clothes. "It is good!" said Naked One, "and if someday it is necessary, I shall die for you. Nevertheless, you gave me these clothes because I said koroc first." When Naked One put on some of the clothes, the two of them looked almost exactly alike, except that Naked One's arrows had no feathers, and his bow was serrated on one side.

Off they went to the village where they stopped at the lodge of an old woman, who said, "Come in, grandsons!" She put down a new mat and a bearskin for them to sit on. With her lived a young man, her grandson. She said to them, "You have come to court the chief's daughters." They both laughed and denied it. "Don't try to deny it — I know what you have come for," she said, "and as we speak his daughters are out gathering wood for me." Then she threw two small handfuls of beans into a little pot. The two young men thought to themselves, "We will have to go hungry today."(73) Yet when they started to eat it, they found that it was so filling that they could not finish it. In order not to be discourteous, Young Man said, "We cannot eat it all, but we will give some to our friend here." The old woman's grandson took it, and swallowed all that was in the wooden spoon, and turned the bowl upside down.

Finally, the three daughters of the chief showed up with the wood. They were Hinų, Wihą́, and Aksia. The first one to enter was Hinų, but when she saw the men, she exclaimed, "Oh!" then quickly turned around and left. Then Wihą́ entered, put down her wood, and quickly left without a word. The last to enter was Aksia, who looked very closely at both men, and noticed that they looked the same, each with a single middle eagle tail feather on their heads; but that Naked One had a snake skin headband, and their bows and arrows were different. She noted every detail, but when she went out, the other girls asked her what they were wearing. This annoyed her: "The idea of it!," she exclaimed, "you were there before I was." Without further discussion, they all went home to the chief's lodge with the exciting news.

The girls went inside the chief's lodge and sat to the side, gossiping about what had happened. The men were gambling at the Moccasin Game, and [Mud] Turtle was one of them. When he overheard what the girls said, he realized what was really going on. Aksia whispered in her father's ear all that had happened at the old woman's place as her father drowned out her voice by speaking loudly. Then Turtle said, "It's getting late." One of the players countered, "You're just saying that so that you can quit the game." (74) "No, that's not it," he replied, "I'm expecting friends who should have arrived yesterday." "No," they replied, "no one is coming — you just want to quit." Turtle rejoined, "It is the custom for men to talk on late about some subject — that's what has delayed my friends." The chief remarked sarcastically, "You call everyone who shows up here your friend. That is what you always do." Turtle said confidently, "I'll wager all the stakes here that I can describe them, even though I have not yet seen them." This was accepted, and Turtle described what each visitor was wearing, down to every detail that Aksia had told her father. The chief generously pushed the wampum over to Turtle saying, "Those women are yours, I give them back to you."

Then Turtle left for his own home and there he instructed his wife to cook dried beaver meat with sweet corn. He set out for the old woman's place to fetch the two young men, but found quite a crowd there, everybody offering them food. In the distance the two young men could hear the sound of rattles, so they asked the old woman, "Who is that coming now?" "That," she said, "is none other than Turtle." They smiled. Turtle walked right in — "There you are," he said, "I expected you yesterday. Perhaps you were delayed." They smiled and replied, "That's it exactly." He took them back to his own lodge where he fed them and gave them much wampum. "You must spend a long time with us," Turtle urged. Then they all went back to the old woman's to spend the night. (75) Turtle escorted them over to the chief's lodge, and while they stood outside, Turtle went in and said to the girls, "They consented." And sometime afterwards they returned to the old woman's place. The next morning someone named "Curly Hair" came over with an invitation, so they all went to his elk hide lodge where his wife Long Hair was waiting. Turtle told them, "These are our friends. We can stay here overnight if we wish." Curly Hair gave them wampum, and said, "This is what we gamble with. If you want to, you can join in the game." While they were there, they were again extended an invitation. This man too lived in a lodge covered with elk hide. They sat down for a meal of mashed corn and wild rice, a delicious dish that the two young men had never tasted before. Turtle told the young men, "This is another one of our friends." "Indeed I am," replied Trickster. After Trickster gave his visitors wampum, they departed. Naked One left during the night to visit the chief's lodge. When he returned, he said, "I have decided to marry Hinų." Young Man said, "I have a plan: let's take the old woman's grandson and let him sleep between us." So it was, and in the morning they made him a costume just like the one they were wearing: red leggings, a white blanket, and a fisherskin pouch. (76) When the old woman woke up she was amazed not to find her grandson in his usual place by the door, so she went outside looking for him. When she got back the three of them were standing there dressed in the same kind of costume. "Grandmother," said Young Man, "which of us is the one who stays with you?" "You are," she said pointing to Young Man. When she was told of her mistake, she pointed to Naked One. When they showed her that they had placed her grandson in the middle, she was pleased. All three of them would get married: Naked One would marry Hinų, Young Man would marry Wihą́, and her grandson would marry Aksi. That same night, they all married.

The next morning when they woke up, the old woman reminded them, "Sons-in-law should go hunting." "All right," said Young Man, "then go to the chief and get a bunch of arrows from him." She went right over to the chief's lodge and returned with a supply of arrows. So the three of them along with Turtle went hunting. Along the way they stopped to figure out how they would proceed. Young Man wanted to get a whole herd of elk, but Naked One and the grandson decided that they would go after bears. Naked One kicked a hill, and a bunch of bears came piling out. They killed all of them. The grandson shot into an old burnt out stump, and a bear stumbled out and fell over dead. Turtle went back to get help in packing one of the bears, and while he was gone, they killed six more. When Turtle arrived at the chief's lodge, he said, "My friends are acting like sons-in-law, and have killed so much game that they cannot pack it all. I would have been here long ago, in my younger days, but now I am old and don't move so fast anymore." The chief commanded the crier to order every head of a household to go out and help. Soon many men were out there helping, but it still took them all day. Young Man returned that evening driving a herd of elk before him. When he got near the village he killed them all, (77) but packed only their tongues. The old woman came out to see what she could do, but she could not even carry the pack of tongues on her back. So he told the woman, "Grandmother, go tell them that the elks are just over the hill, and they can get them in the morning." Before nightfall, Young Man came back driving a herd of deer, everyone of which he dispatched. Turtle met him and said, "So you've decided to live here. I'm glad." "So am I," replied Young Man. Turtle added, "I'll help you," whereupon he took some moss and threw it against the river bank and it changed into beavers of all sizes. These too they brought home with them. They now had so much meat that they stopped hunting. Then Young Man went to live in the chief's lodge with his new wife.

Now the man eating Giants (Wą́gᵋrúcge) had come to challenge the people to gambling in which the stakes were life or death. Many people wept, for they saw little chance for victory. Turtle declared, "Have no fear, for I alone could handle them, but I now have my friends with me." The chief confessed, "I am out of my element here, so I shall leave everything up to you brave men." A Giant had come to see the chief, but Turtle had met him on the way and told him that they could all camp on the prairie as that would be a good place to play lacrosse. The Giant returned to his people and said, "A man told us to camp on the prairie, but I don't think he was really the chief." "Ha!" they said, "that's Turtle. He's a clever guy, and a difficult opponent." Back at the village everyone had gathered at the chief's lodge. Turtle said, "Let's listen to what these guys are saying. He then spread wood ashes on the ground and pressed his ear to them. (78) He reported, "They say that they will have lacrosse sticks ready by morning." That morning the Giants showed up and said, "Let's play lacrosse." "That's fine," replied Turtle, "we have a pile of things here to wager." However, the Giants responded, "we don't have anything to bet against you." So Turtle called a conference at the chief's lodge, and invited Curly Hair and Trickster among others. Meat was served and tobacco smoked, as Turtle explained who the Giants were, and their sons-in-law who came with them. These were Red Fox, Red Tailed Hawk, Rough Legged Hawk, Fisher, and Pretty Woman with Red Hair, who was a very fast runner. They decided to play Curly Hair against Red Fox, Naked One against Red Tailed Hawk, Trickster against Fisher, and Young Man against Pretty Woman with Red Hair. Then Turtle warned, "Trickster, whatever you do, don't do something foolish!"

The next morning everybody walked out to the prairie. They erected a pole and put their best clothes on it: these they would wager; but the Giants had an altogether different aim: "We will wager men," they declared. "If I'd known you were betting yourselves," replied Turtle, "I would have come by in the night and killed every one of you; but if you're game, then we'll bet half the village against you." It was agreed, and the Giants proposed further that they use their ball. The Giant's ball was a red stone sphere. Turtle was incredulous: "We can hardly use that — if someone got hit with it, they would be killed on the spot!" So they used another ball. The toss up was made, and Red Fox got the ball with Curly Hair in hot pursuit. When Curly Hair caught up to him, he cleaved Red Fox nearly in two. The Giants were outraged, and complained bitterly that this was a foul, (79) but Curly Hair just picked up the body of Red Fox and threw it to the side with a curse: "Some of those with whom you keep company have caused the people great suffering. From now on you will hunt for mice." Red Fox jumped up alive, but ran off never to be seen again. "Your son-in-law has gone off to hunt mice," Curly Hair said contemptuously to the Giants. When the game resumed, Red Tailed Hawk took off with the ball, but Naked One clobbered him with his stick, then threw him to the side. "Earthmaker did not make you so that you could be a bane to humanity. From now on, you shall feed on snakes." With that, Red Tailed Hawk flew off and no longer aided the Giants. They began the game again, and this time Rough Legged Hawk ran off with the ball, but the grandson caught up to him and gave him a blow with his lacrosse stick, then threw him to the side. "The Creator did not create you for this purpose," he said, "so from now on you shall only eat mice." Then Rough Legged Hawk flew away and fraternized with the Giants no more. Once again they tossed the ball up, and this time Fisher ran with it. Fisher was part bear and part fish. Trickster doggedly pursued him until he finally chased him up a tree. Trickster knocked Fisher down with his stick. He threw the body to the side and foolishly declared, "For all time you shall have to eat honey whenever you find it!" Fisher ran away, but hardly felt chastised for his former allegiance.

The game started up again. This time Pretty Woman with Red Hair got the ball and ran off with it, but she did not get far before Young Man took it from her. Young Man wore bobs that covered his earlobes. These he now removed, revealing two living faces, one on each earlobe. The little faces grinned at Pretty Woman with Red Hair until she felt embarrassed. They began winking at her and sticking out their tongues. The Giants could stand it no longer, and fell down in fits of laughter. Pretty Woman with Red Hair laughed and laughed at the antics of the little heads, but while they fell into uncontrollable mirth, their opponents scored and won the game. (80) So Turtle proceeded to kill all the Giants who had been wagered, except Pretty Woman with Red Hair, whom they took home with them. From that day forth, Young Man was also called, "Human Heads for Earrings."

When Turtle got home, he spread wood ash on the ground, and put his ear to it so that he could hear what the Giants were saying. They complained to one another, "If we had used our own ball we would have won." The next morning Turtle went out to visit the Giants. They told him, "This time we will play with our own ball," but Turtle refused to hear of it. The Giants pressed their suit: "We ask as the losing party, and as such our request cannot be denied." Thus Turtle had no choice but to agree. That morning they all assembled to play lacrosse again with lives as the stakes. The game began with the red stone being used as the ball. The Giants, pretending that it was an accident, flung the stone into the gallery of human spectators, killing many of them. Then Turtle got the ball, and he flung it among the Giants and felled many of them in turn. This made the Giants angry, so they took the ball and threw it with all their might right at Turtle. However, Turtle had a taut rawhide shield about him, and when the ball struck, it bounced back and knocked Giants every which way. So many were killed that Turtle said, "Say, that worked out well — why don't you throw it again?" Once again Turtle's team won the match, and killed the Giants who had been wagered. They took cattail down which they spread over the dead bodies, then set them afire until they burned them completely to ash. The Giants told Turtle, "We will dance tonight, and tomorrow we will return to play some game or other." Then the two sides went back to their camps.

Turtle and the crowd all met at the chief's lodge. There Turtle once again listened in to the conversation of the Giants by pressing his ear to the ashes on the ground. He could hear the water-drum, and the Giants said, "All our young people have fled, and now only we elders are left to answer the drum." The next morning, Turtle and his three friends went after the Giants. When they arrived at their village, they immediately killed the drummer. (81) They ran after the others, but the trail came to a fork. They followed one branch and soon overtook the Giants ahead of them, killing every last one of them. Then they turned back to chase the others, down the second trail, which led to the Ocean Sea. There by the seashore they caught up with the remaining Giants, killing all of them except a girl and a boy. These they spared with a warning: "Never again must you abuse the two legged walkers." Then Turtle and his friends returned to the village satisfied.

Not long afterwards, a son was born to Young Man. The chief said to him, "You have stayed here a long time, so your own people must be wondering what happened to you. You should go back home now to bring an end to their worry." So Young Man took his wife and Pretty Woman with Red Hair and traveled with Naked One back to the place that they last camped when they first came to the village. That morning as they were about to leave, Naked One announced, "Here we shall part, for I shall make my home in this place." So they parted company, and Young Man traveled on to his own land. When his grandmother saw him, she was very impressed with the child and with Pretty Woman with Red Hair.

Young Man went out hunting one day and brought back a bear. After he had singed off the hair, he told Old Woman, "Bring me your club." "What would you want that for," she asked, "has somebody done something wrong?" Young Man took two bowls of bear meat and set them on the table in front of Pretty Woman with Red Hair. "You have become accustomed to eating human flesh," said Young Man, "and if you do not eat all the food set before you, I will strike you with this club." He stuck the club in the ground beside him and watched her carefully so that she would not go outside. She ate everything, but suddenly jumped up and bolted for the door. She was a swift runner and ran as fast as she could, but unexpectedly, she found herself still in front of the lodge. (82) She began vomiting. This went on for a long time, until finally she vomited up a piece of ice. It was this piece of ice that had caused her to eat people. From that time on, she was perfectly normal and ate what other people ate. Sometime later she gave birth to a son who was called "Redhorn."

After the birth of his second son, Young Man announced, "Grandmother, having made this country safe to live in, I have accomplished all that I came to earth to do. Now, therefore, I shall return to my spirit home." Then he ascended into the sky.

Commentary. "Old Woman" — this appears to be Grandmother Earth.

"Young Man" — this name was probably Hocįcį́ga in the original Hocąk. As odd as it might seem, it is a feature of the Redhorn mythology that Redhorn is his own father. So Young Man is Redhorn, and both of them are identified with Įco-horúšika (Įcorúšika), "Wears Faces on His Ears."

"wore no clothing at all" — this shows that originally Young Man's raiment differed in no way from his future friend Naked One.

"hickory" — used for making bows throughout Native America.

"basswood" — an interesting mistake, since basswood bark is used used in the making of rope, the string of the bow being an equally essential component of the device. However, bowstrings were usually made of sinew rather than rope.

Bruce Marlin		Leslie Day		Missouri Dept. of Conservation
Hickory		The Basswood Tree		Rough Leaved Dogwood		Black Poplar

"dogwood" — Gilmore identifies this kind of dogwood as "CORNUS ASPERIFOLIA Michx. Rough Dogwood. Maⁿsa-kte-hi (Omaha-Ponca), 'real arrow tree' (Maⁿsa, arrow; kte, real; hi, plant body). Maⁿsi-hotsh (Winnebago). Nakipistatu (Pawnee), 'real arrow tree' (nahaapi, tree; kipis, arrow; tatu, real). This was the favorite wood for arrow shafts."³ The Hocąk given here is mąsihoc, more likely mąsixoc, possibly from mą, "arrow"; si, "foot"; and xoc, "gray"; but since the wood is extremely hard, it seems more likely to have derived from mąs-i-xoc: mąs, "iron"; hi, "to be"; and xoc, "gray."

"poplar" — wašgé. This kind of wood is classified as a hardwood and is frequently used today for arrow shafts.

StarryNight Pro Plus 7

Orion as an Elkhorn Club

"elk horn club" — this part of Orion has elsewhere been compared to an ax. As can be seen in the reconstruction above, it fits very nicely into the contours of an actual elk horn club. The elk is associated with stars because calves have a coat covered in bright white spots calling to mind a field of stars.

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Orion Chasing the Pleiades (Cašįc)		A Deer Flagging

"the big buck" — Orion chases after the Hyades and the Pleiades in the sky until all three set together on the horizon. This can be homologized as Young Man (Alnilam) chasing a deer since the Pleiades are called Ca-šįc, "Deer Rump," recalling the bright white patch on the rump of a Virginia deer when it "flags" by fleeing with its tail up.

Duane Raver		Duane Raver
A Sturgeon		A Red-fin Pickerel

"sturgeon" — a large archaic fish with bony armored scutes located laterally on its body. They can reach a length of 7-12 feet, and really large ones can weigh as much as 3,400 lbs. Their roe is used in the production of caviar. Sturgeon glue, called "isinglass," is made from dried sturgeon swim bladders that are boiled down into a gelatin. Sturgeon glue is less viscus and has a higher adhesion than other forms of animal glue.

"pickerel" — Esox americanus, a relative of the pike that somewhat resembles a sturgeon. They are large, reaching a length of 16 inches and a weight of 2¼ pounds, although they don't begin to reach the proportions of sturgeons.

"a certain man's house" — this is likely Bear, as this incident recalls the episode of the similar story in the Hare Cycle where the hero visits his uncle Bear bearing acorns as a gift. Bears are very partial to acorns, a fact reflected in the language, where an acorn is denoted by the word huc and a bear by the almost identical word hųc. Why Bear in particular should have arrowheads is unclear. However, see the next entry.

"she traded for arrowheads" — notice that there is no suggestion that they manufacture these themselves. Big game arrowheads were made of straightened snapping turtle claws. It was always said that stone arrowheads were never made but were acquired only by accidental discovery. In the religious concept of things, there is no room for accident or chance. Stumbling upon an arrowhead lying on the ground is understood to have been a prearrangement by the Spirits to benefit the discoverer. The Spirits most likely implicated in such beneficence would be the Héroka, the spirits of the bow and arrow and of hunting generally. Young Man, who also has the identity Wears Heads on His Ears as we shall learn below, is therefore the same as Redhorn, who is Chief of the Heroka. The bear's connection to the bow and arrow system is that the bowstring is typically made from the gut of bears. In the directional code, Young Man represents the east/west axis defined by the Sun. In ursine mythology Blue Bear is the Island Weight of the east where the Sun rises, and Red Bear is his counterpart in the west where it sets. The ursine bowstring is the propellant base of the arrow of direction, whereas its head points the direction in which it traverses through the air to its ruddy end point in the realm of Red Bear. So there is some connection between Young Man, the embodiment of the Heroka, and bears.

"he went out hunting" — this episode of how Young Man acquired his arrows is almost identical to the story "Hare Acquires His Arrow."

"he hunted nothing but deer" — the Pleiades are not far ahead of Orion, and the constellation chases after them in the night sky. The Pleiades are known as Cašįc, the "Deer Rump" in Hocąk.

NAA INV 06610200

Hocąk Lacrosse Sticks

"a lacrosse stick" — an essential piece of gear needed to play what the Hocągara called kisik.

"alone" — Orion is alone when it is not in the sky with the other stars. This happens when it heliacally sets, which is to say, when it sets with or before the Sun and rises with or after daylight. This period of absence begins about 20 May, and ends circa 4 July when Mintaka rises with the Sun.

"the open prairies" — this is the night sky where the buffalo (stars) roam.

"the roar" — sound is often a symbol of light and conversely. Young Man, as we learn at the end of the story, is Redhorn. Redhorn, as Įco-horušika, "Wears Faces on His Ears," is a fixed star, one that is almost certainly in the Cingulum of Orion. The roar is the great light of the vast crowd of stars, all of whom are assembled for the same activity on a flat surface (a "prairie"), albeit gently curved, as the celestial sphere is. This "prairie" is indeed far off.

"no one else was to be seen anywhere" — apparently, the night sky is being treated as the lodge of Old Woman (Grandmother Earth). It is under the nocturnal roof that the earth sleeps and she is not visible. When she awakens and leaves this roof, the Sun is up, and the nocturnal host seemingly disappears.

"without saying a word" — when a star sets (goes below the horizon), it seems to disappear into the earth. Thus, the star "visits" or "returns" to Grandmother Earth. When this happens he does not say a word, which is to say, using sound for light, he becomes visibly "silent." 

"with a deer" — his bow and arrows are the other stars in the Cingulum-Gladius asterism (as shown below). As indicated above, the Pleiades are called Ca-šįc, "Deer Rump," and set at about the same time as Alnilam.

"interfered" — when Old Woman Earth comes out of her sleeping lodge, the night sky, her world becomes visible. However, by making things visible to her outside this nocturnal lodge, she has incidentally illuminated the sky, and in so doing, has caused the nocturnal host to disappear in the light. It appears that Earth sees only with the rising Sun, which makes her visible, which is to say, lifts the darkness from her. The fire at the center of the lodge is homologized to the Sun, which is with the Earth once it sets. However, when the Sun is contained in the Earth, it is dark outside. Here the darkness of the Earth is a darkness of her vision. Once the Sun rises the darkness is lifted from her eyes, but the only stars that she sees are those who are now with her, which is to say, those who have set below the horizon, the edge of the Earth. Given that her vision is the product of the rising Sun, it follows that if Earth is within her lodge she must be with the Sun and therefore incapable of seeing the stars. Attempting to lift the darkness causes the stars to disappear. So when she parts with the Fire in her lodge, the Sun is up, and the stars have disappeared. Thus she has interfered with their game.

"the whistle of eagle feathers" — the eagle is a diurnal bird. As such we see him identified with the sky, as the Greek Zeus is often identified with both the sky and the eagle. The whistling of the eagle feathers is the sound of the wind passing over them. As a mere whistle, it is a faint sound. Given the convention in astronomy myths of sound denoting light, whistling must represent faint light. In the context of this myth, this event occurs when Young Man (Alnilam) is returning to Grandmother's lodge, which is the earth. She sticks her head out of her lodge, but we are not told of what she saw, but of what she heard. Again, light is homologized to sound. So, in twilight, Alnilam is approaching the lodge of the Earth, which is to say, he is setting. This references a particular time of the year, around November 24, when Alnilam sets achronically at sunrise. What are the eagle feathers? They are features of a diurnal raptor, which in this allegorical context are features of the day sky. They are located above the head of Alnilam. When this star achronically sets, the only stars in its vicinity still visible above it are Betelgeuse and Bellatrix. The light washes out all other stars just above Alnilam. So the faint, washed out, light of these two superior stars constitute the whistling, the surviving faint light still shining when all the neighboring stars have had their light extinguished by the rising sun. The evocation of the head is interesting since it is said of the Night Spirits that the last of them are the oldest since their heads are shown to be gray by the twilight of the approaching day.

At sunset, ca. 24 November 1750 (the year is arbitrarily selected), Alnilam defines almost due west (about 268° 38'). When Alnilam achronically rose on 2 January 1751 at 1734 hours, the "arrow" of Orion pointed straight up and Alnilam lay almost due east (91° 20') at sunset. It should be noted that even though this myth assigns the east/west axis to Alnilam and the up/down to Mintaka, this latter star achronically sets on 24 November at 0825 hrs. at an azimuth of 269° 50', and achronically rises at 1735 hrs. on 31 December 1750 at an azimuth of 89° 51'. We now know that Mintaka best defines the east/west axis, but given the measurement technology available to the Hocągara at the time, it will have been impossible for them to have determined which of the three Cingulum stars best served this role. They gave this preëminence to the central and brightest star, Alnilam.

"snowing" — this again points to the cold time of the year. The obvious analogue to snowflakes is the field of stars which fall like snow from the sky as they descend from their transits, the zeniths of their paths, to the ground in the west. The unusually large ones are counterparts to the moons that nocturnally follow the same path to fall from the western sky. The bright white light of these moons are homologized to ice (see below), and consequently, inasmuch as they fall from the sky, must be considered metaphorical giant snowflakes. That the stellar host crosses en masse the horizon line is obviously analogous to a lacrosse team crossing a goal line. Therefore, the descending snowflakes crossing the goal line of the horizon are a taunt and a challenge, and the fall of very large snowflakes symbolizes the corresponding size of the challengers, who we must suppose to be Giants, the beings who contain ice within their bellies.

"you must tie me up" — if she is made to stay with the solar Fire in her lodge for a long enough time, then they might complete their game. At a certain time of year (13 December) Young Man's star rises at dusk and sets at morning twilight.⁴ Symbolically, then, Old Woman Earth does not "see" him, and the game goes on for a long time. Finally, he "wins" (crosses the horizon line) because the game is not stopped (washed out by the Sun's light), which coincides with the fact that the Earth during the whole period he is in the sky, cannot "see" him. At this time of the year, the earth is temporally bound and cannot part from the solar Fire that enables the darkness to be lifted from her, the very thing that interferes with the kisik game.

"he stopped playing lacrosse, and went back to hunting" — after ca. 13 December, Alnilam rises before the Sun sets. This means that Young Man's star waits in concealment behind the blue of the sky, then emerges stealthily to chase after the stars ahead of him until they "die" by setting at the horizon.

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The Cingulum as an Arrow that Kills the Stars in Front of It

"he killed everyone of them with a single arrow" — the Cingulum makes a good arrow shaft, and the stars in front of it form a perfect bow. This arrow aims at the stars in front of it that are, as shown in the illustration, situated just above the horizon, which marks Grandmother's place and village. When they set, as they are about to in the reconstruction, they all "die." So with his single arrow, Young Man has killed all the elk in front of him.

"tongues" — the tongues were considered a delicacy. In the context of astronomy, the tongues are associated with vocalizations, and sound represents light. The tongues represent the small part of the animal tied to vocalization, and are therefore like stars in being small and concerned with radiation of sound/light. While the tongue is not as responsible for sound as the lungs, they nevertheless are responsible in part for the qualities of sound, features which correspond in light radiation to differences in color, and to twinkling, a form of intermittent radiation. He packed these tongues home, which is to say, as he crossed under the horizon where his Grandmother Earth lives, he brought with him all the stars in front of him which set at the same time.

"no people" — as time progresses towards early May, the stars at the same altitude as Alnilam heliacally set, they become invisible and are not seen in the sky for a period of time, since they rise and set during the daytime. Although they cannot be seen, they still retain their relative spatial order to one another. So it may seem as if there were no stars at all, and that in descending into the earth they literally disappeared, yet they are in fact actually just as they formerly were in the night sky.

"bearskin blanket" — the background color of the sky is often allegorically described as a Spirit's hair. Young Man is habitually dressed in the hair or fur of the black bear, since (as Alnilam) he is usually visible in the black background of the night sky.

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The White Blanket and Red Leggings of Alnilam

"a white blanket with red leggings" — when Orion rises near the Sun some time after ca. 20 June, the horizon is usually layered so that nearest the ground the sky is red, then higher up the clouds that hang low on the horizon are white, then still higher, the sky is blue. Such a striation is seen in the illustration above. The white clouds surround Alnilam, who is Young Man in the allegory, and the lower stem of the Cingulum of Orion, which is defined by Alnitak, is bathed in a red glow which is readily homologized into red leggings. The fact that Mintaka has no clouds surrounding him may contribute to his having been called "Naked One."

Charles van Schaik

Wakąjáskawįga (Annie Blowsnake), 1882 Wearing Multiple Strands of Wampum Necklaces

"wampum" — small, typically bright white shells often strung on necklaces. Like gold and silver originally, they were valued for their beauty. In allegories, these shells or shell-beads often stand for stars. Despite the fact that wampum is typically small shells, the word most often used for wampum is worúšik. This word also means, "earbobs, earrings," and is in fact its primary meaning, since it comes from wa-ho-ru-šik: wa-, "something"; horúšik, "to wear on the ears." This latter can be further analyzed as: ho-, "the place where"; ru-, "by hand, pulling toward the body"; šik, "to hang, suspend (as on a pole, from the ear, etc.)." Horúšik therefore meant, "to be suspended by moving something with the hand towards the body." The term came to be applied specifically to things worn on the ear. This is of considerable interest in the present context, since Young Man, who is also Redhorn, is known as Įco-horúšik-ka (> Įcorúšika), "Wears Faces on His Ears." The philology of the word worúšik tells us that the original paradigm of wampum was some kind of ear piece. Such earpieces and such a figure as Įcorúšika, are both found with widespread dissemination in the Mississippian world. How they found a home in the Hocąk Nation is a topic that has not be explored. Nevertheless, it seems likely that face-bearing earpieces were disseminated with the same function as belts of wampum were presented in historical times. Otherwise, it is difficult to account for how earrings had become a paradigm of wampum in language when they ceased to be such in recent practice.

"head east at a run" — since he is with Earth (Old Woman) he has set and is situated in the Earth. He is, of course, like all stars that have set, moving east at a fast pace. When he reaches where he (Alnilam) will rise, he will be standing before the night sky, which as we have seen, is characterized as a "prairie."

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Alnilam at Transit, 0051:21 Hours (Solar Midnight), 13 December 1700. The Red Circle at the Intersection of the Celestial Equator with the Meridian Shows the Cingulum-Gladius Asterism

"a big bluff" — when the Cingulum can be seen in the night sky from rising to setting (13 December), the Milky Way is upright like a high bluff. As they rise, Alnilam and Mintaka move in an arch traced by the celestial equator. When they reach their highest altitude, when they reach the meridian, the Milky Way is still an upright bluff. So their path resembles the scaling of a bluff.

"summit" — this refers to the transit of the stars Alnilam (Young Man) and Mintaka (Naked One). Alnilam transits 4 minutes and 21 seconds after Mintaka, so they reach their summit at about the same time.

"koroc" — this word is otherwise unattested. It is not likely to mean "I win," since it does not appear to be in the first person. The initial /k/, the velar /k/, is often confused with /x/, the palatal /k/. Likewise, /o/ is often confused with, and frequently transmutes into, a /u/. This makes it plausible that the original word whose use was intended was xurúc, "to inch along." This may be a modification of xuru, "to overcome (in running ?)," attested by Radin-Marino. Since the infinitive and third person plural are the same, what is being said is, "He is poking along." This amounts to a more pejorative way of declaring victory.

"evade" — this is because Naked One, in the stellar code, is identical with Mintaka, the lead star in the Orion Cingulum, and as the star Alnilam, Young Man, is just behind him. The fact that his friend will be with him everywhere shows that these are fixed stars, as this cannot be said of any pair of planets, let alone a planet and a star.

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Alnilam Transiting 1744:26 hrs., March 15, 1700		Mintaka Seen After Alnilam's Transit 1750:42 hrs., March 15, 1700

"argued" — given that ceteris paribus the structure of the Cingulum is such that Mintaka will always transit first, how is it possible for Young Man as Alnilam to claim that he arrived first? There is one kind of circumstance in which Alnilam transits but Mintaka is not present, and that is when the solar glare occurs around the time that these stars transit. A possible example of such a time can be found on the Ides of March, 1700, as shown above. The reconstruction suggests that this only occurs for a couple of days, March 14-15 of that year. At the opposite time of year (182 days later), near the Autumnal Equinox, this phenomenon occurs on both 12 and 13 September. The year is arbitrarily selected. The date shifts forward as time passes, as this situation occurred in 2018, for instance, only on March 18. That there should be days on which this occurs is suggested by the difference in the magnitudes of Alnilam and Mintaka, which are 1.68 and 2.25 respectively.

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The "Smoking Star" Opposite Alnilam

"smoke" — as can be seen in the illustration above where a Hocąk cataline pipe is superimposed over this part of Orion, Alnilam is opposite the Orion Nebula, M42, which is readily homologized to smoke owing to the fuzziness of its appearance to the naked eye. That M42 suggests such an analogy is seen in the fact that the Blackfeet refer to this nebula as the "Smoking Star."⁵ It should be noted that it is not red when observed through our atmosphere, but has a rather greenish hue. Opposite Mintaka (Naked One) there is nothing but the black of night which is homologized to black ash.

"a broken moccasin string" — since Naked One represents the up/down axis his moccasins represent the fact that this axis is rooted in the earth and finds its practical definition and exemplification in the orientation of standing. This is reflected in the fact that his broken moccasins are not equipt to move forward and backwards, the defining characteristics of the east/west and north/south axes. In the stellar code, when the Cingulum stars transit, the Gladius stars align straight up and down. So the base star of the Gladius asterism can be thought of as the moccasin, and the two stars above it can be homologized to its string. If this is the concept expressed here, then there is an obvious defect at the base of the string: the M42 nebula presents a fuzzy appearance like a frayed spot on a string.

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Milky Way as a Pine Tree 2006 hrs., 20 January, 1701		Milky Way as a Thicket 0406 hrs., 21 January, 1701

"pine" — the Milky Way is often homologized to a pine tree. During certain times, the Milky Way will stand upright making it look somewhat like a tree.

"thicket" — how is it that Alnilam aims its arrow at a pine tree but ends up in a thicket of brush? This odd switch from pine tree to brush is a function of the astronomical code: the Milky Way stands upright initially, but as the night progresses, it progressively tilts until, as the Cingulum sets, it is lying horizontally just above the horizon. So when Alnilam lands on the earth, it is not at the base of the vertical Milky Way (the pine tree) but in a reclining Milky Way that resembles a thicket of short foliage that extends along the horizon.

"in the afternoon" — in astronomy codes, night and day are switched.

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The Big Log in Which Alnilam Was Hiding

"he came to a big log" — from December until sometime in April, when the Orion stars are seen in the evening, when they set and come to ground, they are found in a small patch of dark sky between the horizon and the now horizontal Milky Way. The Milky Way is often homologized to a tree when it is upright, so now that it has collapsed on the horizon, it is like a log. Alnilam may be seen hiding in this narrow open space below it.

"did exactly" — in terms of dimensions, when Young Man, the representative of the east/west axis, transformed himself into a counterpart of his own arrow, he then assumed its trajectory. That trajectory is launched for maximum distance by tilting the bow at 45°. However, in Cartesian coördinates, such a trajectory would involve about as much travel in the vertical axis as the horizontal axis. So Naked One, who represents the up/down axis, can replicate the same path blazed by the arrow of Young Man. In the stellar code, the Gladius stars that define the up/down axis of the stellar arrow when they first rise are tilted at 45°, and at descent from transit, tilt at 42° at setting. Much the same angle is derived whether the arrow passes through Alnilam or Mintaka.

"he was standing by the log" — since Naked One is Mintaka in the astronomy allegory, he is necessarily standing next to Young Man as Alnilam, since the two are adjacent stars.

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The CG Stars Kicking the Milky Way Knoll 0640 hrs., 4 January 1700		The First Bear Moon Falling Out of Milky Way Knoll 0640 hrs., 5 January 1700

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	The CG Stars Kicking the Milky Way Knoll 0640 hrs., 1 February 1700		The Second Bear Moon Falling Out of the Milky Way Knoll 0640 hrs., 2 February 1700

"a small mound and gave it a kick" — during January and February, the time of the Bear Moons, the Milky Way lies very close to the horizon when the Cingulum is near the ground. The Cingulum-Gladius asterism is here homologized to a foot, and given its position, it seems to be kicking the Milky Way knoll. The full Bear Moon then tumbles out during a period of one to three days.

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A Full Bear Moon Opposite Orion 1836 hrs., 4 January1700

"a bear" — the bear episode allegorizes a set of astronomical events that occur seasonally. Apparently the mound in question is the Milky Way, although it could hardly be described as "small." What is important is that Young Man, the astronomical Alnilam, is aligned with a large astronomical object. As we see from subsequent actions, the object in question changes sizes. The only celestial object to do this is the Moon. There is a double reason why the Moon here is homologized into a bear:

1) the bear is the largest predator in the ecosystem;
2) there is only one time of year in which the Cingulum of Orion is at a level with the full Moon at its rising, and that is during the month of January. This month is known on the Hocąk calendar as the "First Bear Moon." Therefore, the Moon at this time is already identified with the bear;
3) the best time for hunting bears is when they are in a state of torpor after having been flushed out of their winter hibernation dens.

For these reasons the Moon that the two friends are going to eat is a bear.

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The Moon Opposite Orion Over the "Fire" of the Sun 0453 hours, 2 August 1701

"singed the hair off the bear" — the outer covering of the Moon is its light. Therefore, it is the light that corresponds to the fur of the bear to which it is homologized. The light of the Moon and the corresponding hair of the bear is gradually removed by increasing proximity to the fire of the Sun. This happens at nearly the opposite time of year around July/August when the Moon is again opposite the Cingulum of Orion while at the same time very near to solar conjunction.

"it became small" — not only does the bear's proximity to the fire show us that we have moved to the late summer, but the fact that the bear has magically shrunk in size. In early August the Moon opposite the Cingulum is a barely visible sliver of its former self.

The Red Squirrel

"red squirrel" — this is not an accidental analogy. "Red squirrel" is the common name for Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, also known as the "pine squirrel." The Hocągara call it zik zi, the "brown squirrel." In the origin myth of the red squirrel (The Brown Squirrel), this creature is portrayed as having originally been a human bear hunter. Two other bear hunters, known only by their birth order names, Kųnų́ga and Heną́ga, represent the other two species of squirrels. The Hocągara call the gray squirrel zik-xoc, which is literally "gray squirrel." The fox squirrel is known as zik-mąk-zi, "the brown-breasted squirrel," a common color pattern of the upper Midwest, although the pelage of this species varies widely geographically. These two species are social and cooperative in contradistinction to the red squirrel, which is solitary. The two social species are acorn hunters, but in primordial times were bear hunters. As we noted above, huc denotes acorns, and is probably akin to the word for bear, hųc. So originally, all the squirrel people hunted huc/hųc. However, the red squirrel person cheated by using a small white bear which he hid in his lodge to magically kill bears that he tracked. Despite the fact that he was given help by the other two squirrel people, he refused to share the bear that he had killed with their help. In the end, Kųnų́ga transformed him into a red squirrel, condemned to be solitary and to feed off nothing but pine nuts. Reference here to the red squirrel brings to mind not only its connection to bears, but evokes the theme of selfishness, a character trait rejected by both Naked One and Young Man.

Young Man is identified with Redhorn, Chief of the Héroka, a race of diminutive hunting Spirits who never miss their mark. In the myth The Brown Squirrel, Red Squirrel (called Zik Zi, "Brown Squirrel") is a bear hunter who uses magic to kill his prey. Red Squirrel confesses that he fears only one thing, the Ae lo tto Ke doAotto (he pųjoke šuc), the "red projecting horn." This turns out to be the red cedar arrow. The "projecting horn" referenced here, is the sharpened tip of this red arrow that extends just beyond the edge of the bow when it is fully drawn, and represents the lethal aspect of the arrow. It may be noticed that when the characterizing term pųjoke is removed, the cedar arrow itself is hešuc, "red horn," which is identical to the name "Redhorn," Ae doAotto K, Hešuc-ka, where -ka is a definite article indicating, in this context, a personal name. It is cooperation and the technology of the red horn, supplemented by the spiritual blessing of the deity of the hunt, Redhorn, that allows man, who is by his nature as defenseless as the squirrel, to possess the power to hunt the ursine apex of the food chain. This episode reminds us that Redhorn-as-Young-Man used the red horn to remove the red squirrel from the apex of the food chain, and to reduce the status of the bear to that of his alter-ego, the red squirrel.

The allusion to another disguised Redhorn myth makes some interesting points. Young Man and Naked One, who as friends have a relationship stronger than brotherhood, correspond to Kųnų́ga and Heną́ga in the Brown Squirrel myth. They are eaters of huc (transposed into hųc in the story), whereas Red Squirrel is cursed to eat only pine nuts. He falls from grace as a huc/hųc eater because of his anti-social greed. Young Man and Naked One reduce the giant Bear Moon, which is a hųc, down to a huc or acorn. The bear, like the red squirrel, is asocial. This tiny asocial counterpart of the hųc is then easily cooked over the fire of the Sun, as is the inevitable fate of every great full moon, even the Bear Moon. Cooking, as we know from Lévi-Strauss, is a transformative process in which the things of nature are transformed into those of culture. Here the little seed of an animal, having been cooked, is transformed into a Bear once more, a transformation from huc to hųc. Only now the bear is edible. In a social context, the wild, asocial bear can now be internalized to sustain and grow the social body. The selfish red squirrel is the acorn (huc) out of which the nourishing bear (hųc) is assimilated. The acorn is the seed of the oak tree, the tree which the Thunders most favor with their lightning strikes, which are also viewed as a kind of eating. The lightning too is a form of fire that instantly cooks whatever it strikes. The bear is the foreigner, the dangerous warrior, who has been captured and transformed into something that can be "eaten" or assimilated for the revitalization of society, making up for the casualties of war and the ravages of disease and accident. The red squirrel version of the dangerous bear is easily assimilated ("cooked"), since it has been reduced to size, to harmlessness. It is into the Thunderbird Clan that all such prisoners are adopted. They are thus the transformed dangerous bears that have been reduced to red squirrels, then "eaten" like acorns. They are metaphorical acorns, yet they may, unlike the bear, no longer kill the people who hold them. Instead, as the new metaphorical seeds of the Thunder Clan, they grow the social body. They are then re-transformed from red squirrels back into formidable bears, killers of people, warriors of the Thunder Clan. Our myth then has the process repeated in theme and variation style, by having Young Man and Naked One each consume a whole bear. They are like initiates who must be transformed from the relative asociality of the wild child into the socially disciplined warrior, the bear who kills people, and from time to time eats them. In this, they lay the foundation for friendship, a cultural brotherhood, by sharing and sacrificing. They each internalize the bear supplied by the other, the once small seed of the Thunders that itself was transformed from the untamed, external, hostile anti-social force into the cooked, internalized, sustaining social force of sharing, cooperation, and sacrifice. In this process lies the bonds of friendship which form the bulwark of the defense and growth of the social body.

What is the relationship of the Moon to this process of transformation? When the Moon reaches the apex of its size and strength when it stands opposite the Cingulum of Orion, it is called the "Bear Moon." There are two such Moons, corresponding roughly to January and February on our calendar. They are so called because this is the time of the year that bears begin to hibernate, and this is also the best time at which to hunt them, since a bear flushed out of its den at the base of a knoll will stumble out groggy and disoriented. In this condition, they are much easier to kill. From this time on, every Moon that passes by Orion is a little smaller than the one of the previous month. Thus, they gradually shrink until they have been reduced from a celestial bear into a little red squirrel. The Moon that is cooked by the Sun hovers above the tops of the pines in the Wazija, the "Great Pinery," as the national home of the Hocąk Nation is called. It becomes a tiny fraction of its once great size, and is found, like the red squirrel, in the tops of the pine trees whose nuts it eats. At this time, the month on the opposite side of the calendar from the Bear Moons, the Cingulum is right there by the solar fire as it too undergoes conjunction with the Sun. As the Cingulum now rests in the eastern morning side of the solar fire, the Moon begins a slow process of growth at the opposite western, evening side of the same fire. As the Moon waxes, it gradually grows in size, and drifts into that sector of the sky inhabited by Orion. So it grows until once again it becomes a full Bear Moon at the opposite time of the year from when it was roasted in the solar fire of conjunction as Orion sat nearby. Thereafter, each month that the Moon drifts into the vicinity of Orion, it has grown smaller. It is said that Spirits eat away at the Moon until it is entirely consumed. Here we see that same concept employed with respect to Orion, as every time the Moon comes opposite this asterism, it is eaten away substantially more. The whole annual cycle is repeated twice, once for each of the Bear Moons. Therefore, Young Man and Naked One each consume a "bear" (a Moon).

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The Restoration of the Size of the Bear-Moon, 1705 hrs., 12 January 1702

"they were restored to their actual size" — what is being allegorically described here is a cycle (described in the previous entry) which begins when the full Bear Moon is opposite Orion not long after the Cingulum achronically rises at sunset (ca. January 1) to the time not long after the Cingulum heliacally sets (late May) opposite the last visible Moon, and back again.

"an arrow in the ground by the fire" — as we see in the reconstruction of the sky for 12 January 1702, when the Cingulum-as-arrow rises parallel to the Moon, it is "stuck in the ground." This is almost due east on the horizon, which is very near where the Sun rises, and therefore is near the fireplace. This recalls the Feast of Those who have been Blessed by the Heroka:

This society gives a feast whenever they wish and they are free to invite anyone. A group of Society members sponsor the feast, which is held in a long lodge. Every participant brings his bow and arrows and is responsible for supplying a deer. Each member paints his bow and arrows in the particular color with which the Heroka have blessed him. The bows are stuck in the ground in a row with the arrows behind them. They make these rows between the first two fireplaces. The leader of the Society paints his body the same color as his arrows and has a headdress with a single horn surmounted on it. Instead of using gourds for percussion instruments, they fashion strings of deer hooves which they rattle during songs and dances. The members have been blessed by the Heroka with certain songs which they sing at various times during the ceremony. The ceremony, which precedes the feast, begins with a dance. The leader of the dance carries a flute from which he plays a song both before and after the dance. One of the members takes his bow in hand and the rest follow behind him carrying their arrows. The followers whoop while they pat their mouths with their hands. Only the men perform this dance, there being only a few dances in which women can participate at all, and those are restricted to post-menopausal women. After the dancing, they begin the feast. They eat with forked sticks that have been whittled down at one end. When the feast is concluded, they take their plates in hand and dance out of the lodge.⁶

The Cingulum arrow is planted upright between two fireplaces: the one at which the sun rises on that date, which is a little ways down the horizon towards the southeast, and where the ecliptic is seen crossing the horizon at this time. The latter defines the fireplace at the opposite time of the year, around July 9. The leader wears a single horn on his head which symbolizes One Horn, another name for Redhorn, who in this myth is called "Young Man." He is the same color as his arrow since the participants are identifying with the arrow. The single horn represents the arrow (as in the myth of the Brown Squirrel), and like the arrow, it is a weapon. The deer hooves recall the fleetness of the deer which corresponds to the speed of the arrow. The arrows are picked up and moved with respect to the fireplaces just as the Cingulum stars move with respect to these fireplaces and are lifted up during the course of the night. In the convention in which sound represents light, the intermittent whoop made by patting the mouth corresponds to the intermittent light emitted by twinkling stars.

"began steadily eating until he had consumed the entire bear" — the whole bear is the full Moon, and the bear completely eaten up is the luna silens. The myth requires that the protagonist be in proximity to the Moon, which occurs but once a month, and for part of the year, not at all. The process of moving from the full Bear-Moon to the Moon that is entirely eaten away can be tabulated:

Once the Moon reaches conjunction, so too will have the Cingulum of Orion, since by definition it must be opposite the Moon.

"I'll go out" — this begins the cycle anew, with Mintaka replacing Alnilam, which makes no practical difference since these two stars are adjacent to one another.

"ten brothers" — in the stellar code the number of major stars in the asterism other than Naked One's star, Mintaka, do seem to number ten, although we are counting Alnilam and Alnitak in the group. The table below shows these stars in order of apparent magnitude with a celestial map of their positions. It is interesting to note that the highest star of the whole group in relation to crossing the meridian is Mintaka (Naked One). The Cingulum stars are in red, and the Gladius stars are in blue.

Rank (Mag.)	Star	Bayer	Magnitude	Altitude at Transit	Position
1	Alnilam	ε	1.69	45° 31' (5)
2	Alnitak	ζ	1.88	44° 48' (6)
-	Mintaka	δ	2.20	46° 23' (1)
3	Na’ir al Saif	ι	2.75	40° 48' (11)
4	Algiebba	η	3.35	44° 14' (7)
5	σ Orionis	σ	3.77	44° 8' (8)
6	M42	θ	4.00	41° 9' (10)
7	31 Orionis	-	4.71	45° 34' (4)
8	22 Orionis	ο	4.72	46° 13' (2)
9	42 Orionis	c	4.58	41° 52' (9)
10	27 Orionis	p	5.07	45° 43' (3)

In "Įcorúšika and His Brothers," Įcorúšika, whom we later learn is Young Man of our story, was said to be one of ten brothers. If we collapse the Deer and Elk Clans into one, the list of Hocąk clans would then number 11 so that each brother corresponded to a clan.

"he stayed awake all night long" — in astronomy myths, day and night are switched, so that in an allegory things that transpire in the sky at night are transposed in the narrative to events that occur during the day, since stars are "awake" at night, and people during the day. So we must conclude that the direction exemplified allegorically by Young Man was manifested all day long. This makes some sense when we consider that Young Man represents the east/west directions, which are defined by the rising and setting Sun. By definition, the Sun defines this directional axis by its course during the day, meaning that Young Man's axis was manifest ("awake") during the day. In the stellar code to say that Alnilam was visible ("awake") all day ("night") long would be a gross exaggeration, but it was visible for sometime in the daylight hours when Mintaka, a star of lesser magnitude, had disappeared in the solar glare.

"when the sun rose" — in the stellar code, night and day are switched, so this means that the Sun was setting. Mintaka is the first to heliacally set, given the slight downward tilt of the setting Cingulum stars.

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Mintaka Setting with the Sun Before Alnilam

"Naked One was asleep" — given the slight tilt of the Cingulum when it sets, Mintaka is first to dip below the horizon. When a star becomes invisible it is said to "sleep." So when Mintaka sets with the Sun, it will do so slightly before Alnilam does the same. Thus, Alnilam is at least briefly awake as Mintaka sleeps. The heliacal setting of each star in the Cingulum can be seen in this table for the date 21 May 1701 (the year is arbitrarily chosen):

As can be seen, Alnilam heliacally sets almost exactly one minute after Mintaka, so for that minute, Young Man is awake while Naked One is asleep.

"took off all his clothing" — as Alnilam leaves the horizon, he dips below the clouds, which in the allegory constitute his clothing. This is standardized to some extent, as we see in Morning Star's by-name, "Wrapped in a Blanket," where the blanket is meant to evoke the image of clouds. Therefore, Young Man as Alnilam leaves his clothing of clouds behind as he sets with the Sun at the horizon.

"ran off" — rather than saying that Alnilam's character Young Man has fallen asleep, the myth shifts its accent to the fact that he is traveling from one horizon in the west to the opposite horizon in the east, where he will rise with the Sun about a month later. This allegorical technique of shifting to a different symbol system is rather like transposing into another key in music.

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Mintaka Alone Above the Horizon

"Naked One awoke and saw that he had left and yelled" — "awoke" means "became visible." When the Cingulum rises, first Mintaka is invisible when Alnilam can be seen, since Mintaka is of 2.25 magnitude and Alnilam is significantly brighter at 1.68. So Alnilam keeps traveling while Mintaka is still "asleep." However, several days later Mintaka "awakens," and when he rises, inasmuch as he is the first above the horizon, he does not initially "see" Alnilam, since that star lags behind him. Mintaka/Naked One "yells," which means, given sound for light, that he now emits light. His yelling is merely synonymous with (a symbolic variant of) awakening.

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Alnilam Rising with Mintaka Invisible		Mintaka Appears in Front of Alnilam

"a pile of clothes in front of him" — when the Cingulum first rises with the Sun there is enough solar glare to make Mintaka impossible to see with the naked eye. This is not true of Alnilam (or Alnitak for that matter). This is because Mintaka has an apparent magnitude of 2.25, whereas Alnilam has the brightest magnitude of the three stars at 1.68, with Alnitak about the same at 1.71. What greets Alnilam as it rises before its own light is washed out by the solar glare is usually a bank of clouds hanging low on the horizon. In the stellar code, clothing (what they wrap around themselves) is clouds. So what greets Young Man (Alnilam) as he reaches an important point in his flight, is a pile of "clothes," which is to say, clouds.

"there was Naked One" — at some point, several days later, Mintaka finally becomes visible after sunrise. Since Mintaka is situated in front of (above when rising) Alnilam, allegorically Naked One suddenly appears in front of Young Man.

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Serrations on One Side of the Sidereal Bow		A Miniature Serrated Bow and Featherless Arrows Strapped on a Hocąk Warbundle

"his bow was serrated on one side" — concerning the very existence of such bows, we discover that at least in Warbundles, a bow of this kind can be found along with the other attendant article belonging to Naked One: his featherless arrows. Such bows and arrows are miniaturized to fit into the bundle, or in the case of the wolf hair bundle illustrated above, strapped on its exterior. What the serrations signify, if anything, can only be guessed at.

In the stellar code, when 31 Orionis and Algiebba are added to the Cingulum, the result forms an arc of stars that can be homologized into a bow. There are at least two notches in one side of this bow, one where Alnilam is slightly indented, and another where 31 Orionis is likewise misaligned between Mintaka and Algiebba. This is Mintaka's bow, since this star is in the middle, almost exactly between Alnitak and Algiebba.

In the directional code, we discover that when Alnilam transits, that is, crosses the meridian, so too do all the Gladius stars. These stars then make a straight line pointing up to the zenith in one direction and, in the other direction, down to due south (about 5½ seconds short of 180°). During the night, the Gladius stars swing like a pendulum, pointing up at rising about 45° to the left, and at setting, 42° to the right. This pendulum is Naked One's arrow. The up/down axis is naturally divided into the two directions of up and down by the baseline of the earth's surface. Ultimately, the choice of this as a baseline is conventional, as anyone above or below the earth would redefine what is up and down from his new position. The surface of the earth is seldom flat and uniform, being broken by hills, and given the trees that grow on its surface, which usually count as extending into the Above World, the profile of earth's baseline is not smooth, but serrated. This serrated baseline is the bow in which the up arrow rests, and we have seen that it finds a concrete image in the line of Gladius stars that point upwards towards the zenith when the Cingulum stars transit.

"the lodge of an old woman" — this lodge seems to be the night sky in which the Cingulum stars form a group. The old woman is a personification of the night sky and ought, therefore, to be a Nightspirit. This is consistent with her offering them (black) bearskins upon which to sit.

"bearskin" — this tends to reinforce the idea that the night sky is being referenced by the lodge in which the old woman lives, since no pelage more than the black bear's is better suited to capture the tone of the night sky. It is against the background of darkness that the stars of the Cingulum are seated. In the Medicine Rite, where the reënactors seat themselves are the four stations in the lodge that represent the four quarters of the world, their seats are said to be bears. However, this lodge is the one in which Alnitak's figure lives. His seat has been bearskin all along. In the Medicine Rite, the End of the Road, which is the designation of the seat in the south, is occupied by a "dark haired one." As Radin says, "Each seat was originally covered with an animal skin, this one with a bear skin. Frequently it was referred to as the bear or the bear's lair. 'To be wrapped in a dark haired skin' is a metaphorical way of referring to the seat."⁷ The darked hair bear of the south is Black Bear. Therefore, Alnitak is especially associated with the "Bear's Lair" seat, the holy seat of the black bear, the seat of the south. This is precisely the directional axis associated with Alnitak. So the three friends associated with all three dimensions are seated as directional bears similar to the Medicine Rite scheme, except these "bears" do not represent the four cardinal directions, but the three dimensions.

"grandson" — in the stellar code, this would be Alnitak, the third of the Cingulum stars when they rise or set. The Grandson also represents the north/south axis in the dimensional code. The primordial Black Bear, upon whose terrestrial kin's fur they are seated, rules over the south direction where he is seated at the edge of the world. The use of the host's bearskin rugs upon which the three star men are seated is meant to reinforce the connection of Grandson to the north/south axis. This axis has a negative valence. In the south resides Disease Giver, who, as his name indicates, is the ultimate author of all illnesses. The South Wind is said to know the most about death. The north, on the other hand, is not any more auspicious. It is said to be the "evil place." There in the Medicine Rite the dark clouds are swept. These dark associations owe to the fact that in the very far north above the Arctic Circle, there are days when the Sun does not rise at all. Thus the north is associated with darkness. Therefore, it is not surprising that the personification of the north/south axis, Alnitak, is the grandson of the dark night sky.

"beans" — represent stars. When they are thrown into the pot, that is, into the sky, the fire is under the pot, so the sky is made luminous by the presence of the Sun at the horizon. Only a handful of stars can remain visible once the sky starts to light up from the impending rise of the Sun.

"they could not finish it" — when the beans were first thrown onto the fire to cook, there were only a couple of handfuls. In the stellar code, we can appreciate that of stars of the Cingulum's magnitude or greater (about 2.90), only a few dozen can be seen in the early daylight. Allegorically, the beans now being off the fire means that that the Sun has set. As the Sun sets, however, a great myriad of stars emerge into view, which is to say in allegorical terms, thousands of beans now appear in the pot, far more than the guests can eat.

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The Wooden Spoon Full of Beans 0520 hrs., 24 January 1700		The Swallowing of All the Beans 0720 hrs. (21 Minutes Before Sunrise), 24 January 1700

"swallowed all that was in the wooden spoon" — the Cingulum and Gladius stars together resemble a wooden spoon. With all the stars (beans) now out at night, as time passes, dawn begins to manifest itself. Just as was seen in the astronomy myth, "Ocean Duck," where the stars that were within the Hyades were ingested by the light of the early morning sky, so the stars within the "spoon" of this part of Orion were swallowed up by the light of daybreak. The reconstruction above shows this by superimposing on the asterism an actual wooden Hocąk spoon.

"turned the bowl upside down" — on the surface of the story, turning the bowl upside-down is a gesture to indicate that its contents are now empty. However, in the deeper structure, when the Grandson swallows all the bean-stars as the Sun is about to rise, the two hemispheres of the celestial sphere have switched, and what had been the upper bowl of the night sky has rotated up in the Below World, while the lower bowl that is the day sky has now turned upside down to function as the celestial vault of the Above World. This shows us that the Grandson has swallowed all the bean-stars from the ascension of daylight just before the day sky bowl has been turned upside down with the day sky taking over the Above World's celestial hemisphere, its inverted bowl.

"the three daughters" — given the code of directionality, the three complements to the spatial dimensions would be the three rough counterparts in time, the complement of space itself. These would be past (Hinų), present (Wihą́), and future (Aksia), in order of birth. Since time is unidimensional, these must suffice as its directionality, although the present is rather more like the origin point of a coördinate system. In the stellar code, they represent the three Gladius stars of Orion, as discussed below.

"the last to enter was Aksia" — notice that they enter in the order of their birth, the oldest first and the youngest last. This is also the order in which they rise. See the reconstruction below. Notice also that they must be entering the night sky, since they retain their birth order only when rising. This birth order is past (Hinų), present (Wihą́), and future (Aksia).

"they looked the same" — in the directionality code, each of them represents a dimension. The three dimensions do in fact "look" the same, since each is interchangeable with the other, that is, while each is a right angles to the others, their general orientation is purely arbitrary. The orientation that we give to the axes of the dimension is the product of their functionality. In the stellar code, all three of the Cingulum stars look the same. They have a narrow range of apparent magnitude from 2.25 - 1.68. As to appearance, they are all of essentially the same color, a slight bluish tint, as can be seen from their B-V Index:

The B-V color index for the Cingulum stars is: Alnitak, -0.20; Alnilam, -0.18; Mintaka, -0.18. So Alnilam and Mintaka are literally identical in color being a blue-white, and Alnitak is -0.02 closer to blue, which to the naked eye is indistinguishable from its other two associates.

"a single middle eagle tail feather on their heads" — on a bird, a straight line from head to tail passes through the middle tail feather. An axis of a dimension is a straight line. A bird in the prone, flying level, will define an axis on a plane above the earth, and a bird flying straight up or down will follow the up/down axis. By uniting the tail with the head, the image expresses the idea that the top = the bottom. This is meant to convey the fact that forward/backward, left/right, and up/down are also arbitrarily fixed. It is a transposition of the idea that all the dimensions look alike. It asserts that the same is true of all the directions within those dimensions. What we call "left" or "right," "forward" or "backwards," "up" or "down" is purely a matter of convenience and convention (the relativity of a frame of reference).

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The Gladius Stars as an Eagle Tail Feather		Mintaka as the Head of a Snake

In the stellar code, the single eagle feather that each Cingulum star has attached to its head is easily enough found in the Gladius stars, whose downward angle reflects a style long worn in America. This style of presentation is associated with the number three. Among the Hocągara, the hanging eagle feather was an emblem worn by the warrior who counted the third coup which consisted of being the third man to touch an enemy who had been killed in action.

"snake skin" — the headband's material symbolizes, in the directionality code, the up/down axis. The snake is an animal that lives low on the ground, even burrowing under it, and in some cases, locomotes through water. Yet the skin of this lower world animal is placed upon the highest part of the body, thus unifying the high and the low. The unity of the high and the low constitutes in some sense, the axis of up and down. The snake also exemplifies one of the most obvious features of Naked One, his nudity, since the snake has no hair or fur. This is to say that nothing grows on it. In the other two dimensions, vegetation grows mainly upwards and downwards, but most of the up/down axis is free of vegetation, extending into the air above and the rocky earth below.

In the stellar code, it is easy to see the Cingulum-Gladius asterism as a snake whose head is Mintaka. Mintaka is the head since it is the first star to come up out of the ground when the asterism rises, and the first to descend back into the earth when it sets.

"their bows and arrows were different" — while the orientation of the whole set of axes, the frame of reference, is arbitrary, within that frame of reference, each dimension can be distinguished from the other, since they point 90° relative to one another. This difference of relative pointing is expressed in the image of the arrow, which has a distinguishable back and a front with a point which allows an arrow to be used as a pointer. What launches the pointer arrow is different in each case: the east/west axis is "launched" from sunrise to sunset (roughly), and the north/south axis is at a right angle to it; the up/down axis is associated with the center formed by the intersection of the previous two axes. The definition of each axis by its relative angle of separation from the others (arrows), and the fixing of the frame of reference by the "launch point" (bow) of one or more axes, makes each axis different from the others on this account. So the bows and arrows are different since they distinguish the axes from one another, but the axes themselves are indistinguishable in absolute terms with respect to their potential orientation, and so their personifications "look alike."

As we have already seen, the bow of Young Man, seen above, is completely different from the serrated bow of Naked One (above).

"you were there before I was" — this statement reiterates that the Gladius stars are rising rather than setting, since the age order only occurs when the stars are ascending from the horizon, since in setting, they enter the ground in reverse age order.

"the chief's lodge" — the question is, Who is the chief? In an astronomy code, we would expect that the Sun is the chief as the largest and strongest (in luminosity) of the celestial bodies. The Sun could also be considered the father of time, the three daughters being homologues to the past, present, and future respectively. The chief's lodge is the day sky, which after sunrise is the dome above the earth, but when the night sky is above, the lodge of the Sun is in the world below the surface of the earth. When the Sun rises, the Gladius stars disappear into the blue light before the Cingulum stars; and when the whole asterism sets, the Gladius stars disappear below the horizon before the Cingulum stars.

"Mud Turtle" — in the translation paraphrased here, a character is introduced called "Mud Turtle." There is really no doubt that this is the familiar Turtle (Kecųgega), and I have so rendered his name in this version. His astronomical role associates him with the day sky. This is because Turtle is associated with the world of Waterspirits, and these beings are not only identified with water, but with the blue sky. This is because Waterspirits are the mortal enemies of the Thunderbirds, the Spirits who inhabit the dark clouds. The Thunders marry exclusively into the Nightspirits since both are associated with darkness. Nevertheless, the Thunders are also associated with fire on account of the hidden propensities of dark clouds to engage in pyrotechnics. Fire is the opposite of water, just as the blue sky is the opposite of the gray sky and the night sky. Waterspirits and turtles are also associated with the Below World of wet caverns and underground springs, not to mention the watery depths, all in contradistinction to the exclusive Above World demesne of the Thunderbirds and Nightspirits. Turtle himself rules over an underworld paradise where those killed in action may go to live.

It should also be mentioned that Turtle has an identity as an unnamed star, one that is encircled by a set of other stars. This configuration brings to mind the constellation of Corona Borealis, except that there is really no prominent star in its center. Another candidate is more promising. The Lakota have a constellation called the "Sacred Hoop," or the "Race Track."⁴ This is virtually the same as the Western asterism known as the "Winter Circle," or "Winter Hexagon," except the Sacred Hoop uses the Pleiades in place of Aldebaran (see the Commentary to "Turtle and the Witches"). Its central star is the bright Betelgeuse, the tenth brightest star in the sky (mag. 0.43) which is situated very near the Cingulum, being itself one of the stars of Orion (as α Orionis). The Sacred Hoop is a winter constellation seen during the season of war, and Betelgeuse is a red star recalling the color of the blood spilled in war, whose guiding Spirit is Turtle. The obvious problem, of course, is that we have very little reported information on Hocąk astronomy, so we have no idea whether they had a version of this constellation found in a kindred and neighboring tribe.

"those women" — it seems a bit odd that the chief refers to the wampum shells and beads as "women," but they may be so called on account of their beauty and desirability.

"wife" — the genealogy of Turtle's wife is given above. She is the sister of the Forked Man, a member of the clan who married into the Héroka. The Heroka is a tribe of Spirits who governed hunting, and who could shrink themselves down to sizes so small that they could hide under leaves. They had invisible arrows that could be launched from their bows with inerrant accuracy by their merely pulling their bowstrings back and forth. The Chief of the Heroka was Redhorn, also called Wears Heads on His Ears, also the same, therefore, as Young Man in our present story. The oldest brother of Redhorn was Kųnų, who was said to have four arms. The same is true of the Forked Men, who had not just four arms, but two heads. This represents the bowman, whose own head is reflected in the head of the arrow in the drawn bow, pulled back by use not only of his own two arms, but two arms of string that pull back the tips of the bow to give it its arch of power. That the Spirits of the hunt should find affinity to the Spirits of the bowman requires no explanation. That Turtle, the Spirit of war, should find the women of this clan desirable is also obvious.

"beaver meat with sweet corn" — beavers, in an astronomical code, are probably the stars visible against the fluid-like background of the Milky Way. Corn kernels, especially those of Indian corn, resemble stars. The Indian corn is polychrome, especially heavy in red, blue, and yellow kernels, recalling the spectrum of color variation found in the stellar population of the night sky.

		Alan D. Wilson		NPS
Indian Corn		A Wood Bison		An Elk Calf

"Curly Hair" — the animal with curly hair most familiar to the Hocągara will have been the buffalo (bison). The hair atop their heads appears to be the curliest. Buffalo are often homologized to stars, since stars form a vast herd that traverses the Upper World plain formed by the nocturnal sky.

"elk hide" — elk hide lodges should refer to the night sky, since elk calves have hides that are covered with bright circular white spots, recalling the sidereal landscape of the nocturnal vault.

"Long Hair" — probably a reference to the buffalo as well, although the related musk ox of the Arctic has the longest hair of any mammal other than human beings. It may be that they knew of the musk ox from travels, or word of mouth, or possibly trade in hides. Nevertheless, at least in winter, the buffalo has much longer hair than the typical game animals, the various cervids.

N. Y. State Education Dept.

A Fisher Climbing a Tree at Night

"red leggings, a white blanket, and a fisher-skin pouch" — these represent the three dimensions of space, which are dressed alike because they are interchangeable save for relative and interchangeable definitions. The red leggings represent the east/west axis, which is defined by the locomotion of the Sun, which rises in the east and sets in the west. They are leggings because the Sun "walks" across the sky, beginning and ending its walk by standing on the horizon "dressed" in red. The white blanket is the blanket of snow that covers the north, and therefore represents the north/south axis. The fisher is an animal that hunts squirrels, and therefore runs vertically through the trees in the Above World. The fisher therefore represents the up/down axis.

"his usual place by the door" — since in stories about the denizens of the night sky, day and night are switched, old woman wakes up, allegorically, when night falls. When Alnitak is alone in the sky as the Cingulum sets, Mintaka is first to disappear below the horizon, then Alnilam follows thereafter, leaving Alnitak briefly alone on the horizon. The place where they cross from the sky to the earth is a transit from one world lodge to another (or to the "outside"). It is the metaphorical door way. Therefore, when Alnitak is seen by itself, it is always parked right by this "door." When Alnitak joins its companion stars, it moves through this door from the old woman's lodge, the night sky, to what lies outside it. He therefore goes "outdoors" and is no longer visible in the lodge of the night sky.

"the three of them were standing there dressed in the same kind of costume" — in the stellar code Young Man is one of the stars in the belt of Orion. In the story "Įcorúšika," Redhorn, the title character, is the center star, and his two brothers are the flanking stars of Orion's belt. These three stars look alike, although there are subtle differences. When the three are said to be lying down together, this describes the time when the three belt stars of Orion set and define due west. They form a straight line almost perfectly parallel with the surface of the earth on which they appear to lie at sunset (May 20, at ca. 1925 hours). In the directionality code, they are dressed the same in order to express the idea that the three dimensions are interchangeable, their orientation as a frame of reference is purely arbitrary.

"middle" — this is actually counterfactual: Grandson is not the middle star (Alnilam), because it is said that they placed him in the middle, not that he was in the middle. What is being illustrated is that if Alnilam (Young Man) and Alnitak (Grandson) were to change places, they could not be told apart. This is for two reasons: they are both bluish stars, and their apparent magnitude is 1.68 and 1.71 respectively.

In the directional code, time can be used to define the directions. In the middle, between sunrise and sunset, is solar noon. Also, midway between the Sun's ascension in the sky, and its descent, we also find solar noon. A straight line from the position of the Sun at solar noon to the horizon defines the meridian. The meridian intersects the horizon at due south (180° azimuth) and due north (0° azimuth). In this sense, the north-south axis is the midpoint of both the up/down axis and the east/west axis. So the axis identified with Alnitak (Grandson), the north/south axis, is the temporal midpoint in both the up/down (Naked One) and the east/west (Young Man) axes.

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The Marriage of the Cingulum and Gladius Stars of Orion

"married" — since the three sisters are presented under their birth-order names, it is easy to see how they map onto the Cingulum in the stellar code. When Orion heliacally rises, the order of the Cingulum stars when they rise is: 1) Mintaka, 2) Alnilam, 3) Alnitak; the birth order of the Gladius stars when they rise is: 1) 42 Orionis, 2) M42 (the Great Nebula of Orion), 3) Na’ir al Saif. Since rising is a kind of birth and temporal ordering, there is therefore an easy correlation of the women with the rising Cingulum stars. By marriage, it is:

The depiction of Orion shows how these stars arrange themselves. Young Man, as we have noted, is the same as Redhorn, also known as "Wears Faces on His Ears."

"go hunting" — Young Man is said to be the father of Redhorn, but he is himself Redhorn as well, since there is an inter-generational identity of these figures. In other stories, it is made clear that Redhorn is Chief of the Heroka, a race of diminutive hunting spirits. Normally, the chief is known by the name Héroka, showing that Heroka and Redhorn are one and the same. Therefore, Redhorn will have the highest prowess in hunting, as the subsequent events demonstrate.

"arrows" — the chief, as has been indicated, is the Sun. The obvious "arrows" in the Sun's possession are rays of light. The objects of the hunt in the stellar code are celestial objects. The star Alnilam, whose actions are represented by Young Man, being a fixed star, cannot kill the stellar game by occulting them, as would be possible for a celestial object moving against the background stars. So Alnilam can only "drive" those stars that are in front of him. The Light-and-Life (Hąp) of these stars is extinguished in either of two ways: they set and disappear below the horizon, or the Sun rays extinguish their Light-and-Life by the force of its brightness. Thus, we can see how the natural arrows of the Sun's rays can be used by Young Man as a stellar being to "kill" the game of the night sky that he drives before him.

In the directional code, Young Man's axis is the east/west dimension defined by the Sun. The direction of east to west is the direction that the stars travel as well, so the rays of the Sun are always shooting in the direction in which they are fleeing. Young Man is in command of this direction and therefore of the lives of the stars that travel within it.

"a whole herd of elk" — as already mentioned, the elk, on account of the spotted coats of its calves, stands for stars.

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The Milky Way as a Hill, 2012 hrs., 24 January 1687		The Kicking of the Hill with a Bear Inside

"Naked One kicked a hill" — it may be seen above that the Cingulum forms an "L" shaped with the Gladius so that it can readily been seen as a moccasin and lower part of the leg. The hill referred to is the Milky Way. When this "hill" is kicked, the moccasin ends up pointing up, the direction belonging to Naked One.

"bears" — the Bear Moons of January and February rise into the Milky Way when it is arched like a hill and lie there within for a couple of days in each month. However, moons generally are represented by bears.

"the grandson shot into an old burnt out stump, and a bear stumbled out and fell over dead" — around March and April, the Milky Way begins to stand more upright, so it is often homologized to a tree. On 5 November 1694 (and 1 September 1695, 15 January 1696, etc.) when Alnitak transited, the Moon also transited, causing the two to align on the meridian, which passes through the right edge of the Milky Way, giving the Grandson (Alnitak) a shot into the stump that results in hitting a bear (moon). Grandson represents the north/south dimension, which is defined by the meridian on which, at this time, his star Alnitak stands.

"they killed six more" — since every two and a half years there are 13 moons, it sometimes happens that between January 1 and February 28, what would be the two Bear Moons, there are in fact three such moons, and the (nearly) full moons which occur then inside the Milky Way just after they rise, will total not four, but six. Such was the case in 1703, when there were two such moons on 1 and 2 January, two more on 28 and 29 January, then two more on 25 and 26 February.

"that evening" — since day and night are switched in the allegory, this refers to the morning hours.

"near the village he killed them all" — since the Sun has two villages, one in the west and one in the east, and since this occurs during the morning, Young Man and his star must be in the east and rising when the Sun's light "kills" all the "elk" (stars) that rise in front of the Cingulum. These events transpire in late summer.

"tongues" — this organ helps make the sound of the elk. Given that sound = light, the tongue stands for the light of the stars. This light was put in a pack where it is not visible, yet the stars are present there none the less. Alnilam shepherds them across the sky, while himself invisible. They move with him east to west packed in the luminous celestial vault. It is this east-west axis that Young Man owns, and the elk-stars that he has killed with the Sun's arrow-rays are under his control as he drives them east to west.

"she could not even carry the pack of tongues on her back" — as we have noted above, the old woman with whom the Grandson lives is the night sky. Since the Sun has risen and its rays under the command of Young Man have killed all the elk-stars and concealed their light in the blue sky pack, it is now daytime. This episode may reference the time when the Cingulum stars have set with the Sun and traverse the sky only during the daylight hours. This period is shown for the year 1700:

Date Alnilam Sets Sun Sets Date Alnilam Rises Sun Rises May 20 2021:14 hrs. 2019:04 hrs. July 5 0527:19 0523:27 May 21 2017:47 hrs. 2020:03 hrs. July 6 0523:23 0524:05 May 20 2013:51 hrs. 2021:02 hrs. July 7 0519:27 0524:26

The Egyptian Sky Goddess Nut Arched over the Air God Shu

Since all the tongues are packed in the day sky, the night sky has no access to them and cannot carry the pack that she ordinarily does every night once the Sun sets. The arch of the night sky's vault readily suggests an arched back carrying the stellar burden of the night sky, as we see in the ancient Egyptian illustration of the arched goddess Nut, the personification of the sky, held up by her consort Shu, the god of the Air.

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The Elk Herd on the Other Side of the Hill, 0210 hrs., 15 August 1696

"the elks are just over the hill, and they can get them in the morning" — with the switch of day and night, this means that the elk-stars would be visible after dark on the other side of the hill, that is, the Milky Way. This is the situation seen in the reconstruction above, still in the late summer.

"before nightfall, Young Man came back driving a herd of deer, everyone of which he dispatched" — in front of Alnilam is the Pleiades asterism which in Hocąk is called the "Deer Rump." It seems reasonable to conclude that this is the herd of deer that Alnilam is driving before him. In late summer, after sunrise (the opposite of before nightfall), they disappear, which is to say, they are killed. The brightest of them, Alcyone, has an apparent magnitude of 2.86, compared to Alnilam's 1.68.

"moss and threw it against the river bank and it changed into beavers" — the turning of moss into beavers by throwing it in water is also found in "Old Man and Wears White Feather." The beavers are probably stars that stand out from the Milky Way background, the river here being a symbol of the Milky Way. For the Milky Way as a body of water, see "The Origin of the Milky Way," and the links and sources there. Moss is the beaver among plants. It is moisture loving as well as living and feeding on trees, which beavers use to eat and construct their own living quarters in an even wetter environment.

"then Young Man went to live in the chief's lodge with his new wife" — this refers to a time in early May when the Cingulum-Gladius asterism sets with the Sun. When this happens, Alnilam is no longer seen in the sky, nor is his consort among the Gladius stars, since they are both with the Sun, which is to say, living in the chief's lodge. Since he is no longer seen in the sky at this time, his hunting is over.

In the spatio-temporal code, Young Man's wife, Wihą́, who symbolizes the present, more than anyone finds her home in the Chief's lodge. The Chief is the Sun, the source of light, hąp. Hąp also means, "Day," and metaphorically, "Light-and-Life." Hąp no longer exists in the past, and is yet to exist in the future. So Hąp only truly exists in the present. The Chief's lodge, whether conceived as being in the east or the west, defines the east-west axis with which Young Man is identified. So he too finds his most natural home in the residence of Hąp.

"Giants" — the term for Giants is Wą́gᵋrúcge, from wą́k, "man"; rúc, "to eat"; and -ge, "species, genus, type, kind, sort" – "the kind who eats men." Therefore, the identifying feature of Giants is not their size, but the fact that they are man-eaters. Nevertheless, they are said to be four times the height of a typical human. They live on the other side of the Ocean Sea in the frozen far north. In an astronomy code found elsewhere (Ocean Duck), they are identified with moons. Since stars function in allegories as people, and the Moon in comparison to stars is a gigantic being, when it occults stars, it is naturally thought of as "eating" them. Thus, the Moon is a Giant who eats people, a Wą́gᵋrúcge.

"prairie" — in the allegory the prairie is the celestial vault, whose curvature is not detectable, creating the impression that it is an inverted plane.

"wood ashes" — given that the Giants are, ex hypothesi, moons, what in the nature of moons would associate them with wood ash? The Giants are associated with ice, and are sometimes called "Ice Giants," and the fact that they lived in the extreme far north, which the Hocągara understood to be a land of cold and ice, reinforces this linkage. The bright Moon with the white color of its illuminated sector makes it especially analogous to snow and ice. The dark portion, naturally, will inspire the opposite analogies. The dark substance most in contrast to the illuminated part of the Moon would be wood ash.

As can be seen, there are both similarities and contrasts between the light part of the Moon and ashes. Ashes clearly align with the dark side of the Moon. Given the symbolic convention of representing light as sound, the quiet part of the Moon is right next to its loud part. In the medium of sight, the closest thing to the bright source of lunar light is the ash-like dark side of the Moon. So when the medium is earth, then the solid medium most in touch with the lunar Giants is the dark ashes of wood. This is reinforced to some degree by the fact that raxoc means, "ashes." Xoc by itself can mean "ashes," so the ra- looks like a prefix, but the standard meaning of the prefix ra- is, "by lips, tongue, speaking, singing, etc." (Marino). It is as if raxoc meant, "ashes by means of speaking," thereby connecting in the mind the notions of ashes and speech.

As will be seen below, the ear is also a homologue to the Sun. All that is left of the Moon when it is in conjunction with the Sun its its blackened part, which is likened to ashes, since its darkness is the by-product of its being consumed by the celestial Fire. This Fire becomes conjoined with the ashen remains of the Moon. This unity is symbolically reproduced by the ear being pressed against the wood ash. All are united with the earth, as the Sun and Moon when in conjunction are found together under the earth. This, then, is a typical case of sympathetic magic.

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The Red "Hair" of the New Moon at Sunset		The Red Moon of the Lunar Eclipse		The Red Top of the Moon as It Passes Through the Umbra

"Pretty Woman with Red Hair" — who are the Giants? In one myth (Ocean Duck) they are homologized to Moons, the Moon being a giant compared to any other celestial object in the night sky. Ordinarily, "hair" represents the background color, for instance, Bluehorn, the Evening Star, has blue hair because he appears out of the blue sky before sunset. So we might expect a red haired Giantess to be associated with the dawn or sunset. The two Moons that have this red "hair" are the New Moon and the final crescent Moon which is about to heliacally set in the morning sky. So Pretty Woman with Red Hair is born with hair of that color. When she is thus outside the lodge of the Earth, she accumulates "ice" (white light) until she is full. That ice is the bright white of the Moon, which takes 14 days to disappear from the full Moon. After she vomits up all this ice-light, she returns to the lodge of the Earth cured.

There is another way in which the Giantess has red hair. As can be seen from the reconstruction above, the full Moon is the only phase of the Moon susceptible to eclipse. When the shadow of the Earth falls upon the Moon, some light from the Earth's atmosphere is refracted and cast on the Moon. This light is red, giving the Moon a red cast. As it slips out of the umbra, the inner shadow, only the top of the Moon is red, which may have reinforced the characterization of her head in this fashion. Since most eclipses are only partial, she would most often been seen with just a red top or bottom.

"hunt mice" — in the episode where Curly Hair condemns Red Fox to hunt mice, he says to the Giants that their son-in-law is out hunting mice. This is meant as a humorous insult, especially against the fox, since (as we have seen) the son-in-law is expected to show his hunting prowess and to keep his in-laws well supplied during his tenure in their company. Mice will hardly fill the bill for the Giants.

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The Red Tailed Hawk		The Rough-Legged Hawk

"Red Tailed Hawk" — this is Buteo jamaicensis. North of a latitude line drawn at Red Banks, this bird migrates during the winter to the north of Canada, but south of this line, the red tailed hawk is common in the winter.⁹ So in the Wazija (Hocąk territory), this hawk is not seen primarily as an exemplar of a migratory bird, unlike the rough legged hawk. Obviously, during the winter, snakes are not hunted by this raptor, since they have retreated below the earth to hibernate. Because of this proclivity and because serpents have no legs and slither along the ground, they are particularly associated with the lower world of the earth, and the Snake Clan, in reflection of this fact, is assigned the role of policing the grounds of villages. As soaring birds, hawks are denizens of the Above World, and in predating snakes, they unite the high with the low. Thus, they represent the up/down axis, and we see this fact expressed in the lacrosse game with the pairing of Red Tailed Hawk and Naked One, the exemplar of that axis among the three friends.

"Rough Legged Hawk" — this is Buteo lagopus, a raptor found in the Wazija (Hocąk territory) during the winter. During the spring and summer, it migrates to the far north of Canada, where it breeds.¹⁰ That it migrates north and south makes it a perfect exemplar of that dimension, and explains why this hawk is paired up with Grandson, the exemplar of the north-south axis.

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The Fisher's Resemblance to a Bear		Wazųgᵋra (Dipper) Climbing the Milky Way Tree 0100 hrs., 3 Jan. 1700

"part bear and part fish" — in Hocąk, the fisher (Pekania pennanti) is capoǧík or wazųk. Wazųgᵋra are either fishers or martens (perhaps from their being confused with one another). Whites have called this animal a "fisher cat," partly on account of its long tail, but in fact, otherwise, it resembles more than anything a kind of diminutive bear. As we see a couple of sentences on, the fisher was also thought to love honey, the appetite for which is a particularly notable trait among bears.

The name "fisher," needless to say, immediately suggests some connection to fish. However, the fisher rarely eats fish unless they wash up on shore dead. The name "fisher" is a corruption of colonial Dutch fisse, akin to English "fitch," both names for the polecat. The confusion with "fish" may have been accelerated by the catalyst of the French word fische, which denotes the pelt of the polecat.¹¹ The name wazųk, variant wazǫk, bring to mind the zok, the walleyed pike. Nevertheless, assuming that the connection to fish isn't from such linguistic influences, the fisher is an able swimmer and has at least this in common with a fish, even though it does not really intrude into the realm of the otter when it comes to aquatic adeptness.

"chased him up a tree" — the wazųk also has a stellar identity. This is the name given to the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), a circumpolar constellation which circles tightly around the North Star, Polaris. The "tree" that it appears to ascend is the Milky Way, which stands upright for most of the night, but once the Wazųgᵋra constellation transits, the tree is already falling over, and the fisher falls from its height all the way to the ground. Trickster is paired up with the fisher because like most members of the weasel family, the fisher is "weaselly," or deviously tricky.

"Red Hair" — since Pretty Woman with Red Hair is a Giantess, she is homologous to the Moon in the astronomical allegory. So, why is she paired up with Young Man? Young Man's prosopic earlobes, as we have seen, mark him as the exemplar of the axis defined by the rising and setting Sun. The east/west axis is therefore defined by the path of the Sun across the sky. This path is the ecliptic. It happens that the Moon's path also progresses in close proximity to the ecliptic as well. So the diurnal path of the Sun is shared by the monthly path of the Moon as it parts and returns to conjunction with the Sun. Given this correspondence, Pretty Woman with Red Hair and Young Man both represent the east/west axis in the directional code.

Both the lunar Pretty Woman and Young Man as Alnilam have red hair for the same reason: when they rise or set near the sun, their background (which serves as their "hair") is bathed in red. As we see in "Įco-horúšika and His Brothers," Įcorúšika (who is identified as Young Man) has two wives, the first of which was also lunar. She is described as "fat" (šį), and elsewhere as having a white beaver skin wrap.

"two living faces, one on each earlobe" — given that in the stellar code the star Alnilam is to be identified with Redhorn (Wears Man Heads on His Ears), the two faces that flank the side of his head would obviously be the two stars that flank Alnilam in the Cingulum.

Since Young Man as Alnilam represents the east/west axis in the directional code, the obvious valence for the two faces on each of his ears is the Sun in its twofold aspect. The rising Sun is the Sun of the east, which, once the Cingulum has rotated into a more horizontal position, is located to the left of Alnilam. The second Sun, the setting Sun, is located to Alnilam's right. During its course across the sky, the Cingulum does lie "flat" (parallel to the horizon) when Alnilam is at an azimuth of 231°.

There is a way in which Alnilam is exactly between the two extreme positions of the Sun. A line from Alnilam through the three Gladius stars is a straight line. When this line is exactly up and down, it points down to the horizon at due south. Since the north-south line that passes through the zenith is the meridian, it follows that when the Gladius-Alnilam line is at a right angle to the horizon, it is congruent with the meridian. Therefore, by taking a straight stick and turning it into a sighting line, when it is congruent with the upright Gladius-Alnilam line, it will point directly due south. The most common, if not the only, stick that is straight is the arrow. Wears Man Heads on His Ears, who as Redhorn is Heroka, perhaps not by accident is also the God of Arrows. The arrow in Naked One's bow defines both straight up and down while simultaneously defining the direction south. South is directly between east and west. Having found south, one only needs to make a right angle to a south-pointer to find the east and west points on the horizon. As it happens, these points are where the Sun rises at the equinoctes. Therefore, by finding the exact position on the horizon of the south, one at the same time has established the equinoctial points, and thereby has discovered the place and time of the equinoctes. Consequently, the Spirit of Alnilam (Young Man) establishes the important rising and setting points of the Sun, making the faces beneath his earbob disks the embodiments of the rising and setting Sun.

In world mythology, in terms of organs, the sun is most usually associated with the eye, not just because it normally enables sight, but because the sun itself is thought to be all-seeing. This is seen particularly in the Indian god Sūrya (the Sun), who is the great eye of the sky. Macdonell sums up what the Vedas say on the matter:¹²

The affinity of the eye and the sun is indicated in a passage where the eye of the dead man is conceived as going to Sūrya.¹³ In the AV [Atharva Veda] he is called the "lord of eyes,"¹⁴ and is said to be the one eye of created being and to see beyond the sky, the earth, and the waters.¹⁵ He is far-seeing,¹⁶ all-seeing,¹⁷ is the spy (spash) of the whole world,¹⁸ beholds all beings and the good and bad deeds of mortals.¹⁹

Among the Hocągara, sound is widely used in astronomy codes to represent light. This holds for obvious reasons. Light and sound, both being waves (with certain highly sophisticated provisos), are extensively isomorphic. The fact that both light and sound are waves makes them radiate from a center outward in every direction. They vary in amplitude and wave length, so a loud noise is like a bright light, and the pitch of a sound is its color. Wears White Feather, for instance, who is the star Sirius, has a living loon for his headdress, a bird that makes a loud call that expresses the brightness of the star. Therefore, the eye and the ear are highly analogous counterparts. Do we have any mythological exemplars of the equivalence of eye and ear?

Karṇa

The eye and sun both have a strange connection to the ear as well. In the great epic of India, the Mahābhārata, the good spirits (the Danava) have become incarnate to pursue on a human plane a cosmic struggle with the evil spirits (the Asura). In this fight, the god Sūrya as one of the Asura, has become incarnate in the form of the champion Karṇa. Karṇa reveals his divine origin in his birth. He comes into this world wearing a breast plate of gold, and upon his ears hang golden earrings. His very name कणॅ (karṇa), means "Ear."²⁰ So the eye of the world is born as "Ear," adorned from the beginning in gold, including the orb-shaped earrings. The celestial Eye can be reborn on earth as Ear because light is strongly analogous to sound. This well appreciated isomorphism allows the ear to stand as a symbol not only for the reception of sound, but of light. Thus, the offspring of the solar Eye of the World is Ear (Karṇa). Young Man had earbobs over his aural faces. Earbobs sufficient to this purpose happen to be the standard kind: the disk shaped orbs akin to those worn by Karṇa. These, therefore, also function as masks that at once both conceal and reveal the solar nature of the heads beneath them. That embodiments of the Sun should be situated at the ear is, therefore, not at all puzzling.

The people most closely related to the Hocągara are the Ioway. Just as the Hocągara have Wears Human Heads on His Ears (Wągíšca-horúšika),²¹ so the Ioway have a cognate personage, "Human Head Earrings" (Waⁿkístowi). Of him it is said,

Human-head-earrings was only a man like the rest of us, but he said that when he died his little heads should live always. So now when we die the little person invisible to us that dwells in us (the soul) goes to the other world.²²

So the head worn on the ear is, or is at least symbolic of, the soul. That heads should be identified with souls is almost universal in scope and is widely found in both the Old and New Worlds.²³ The ear-heads, that have a stellar identity in Hocąk, are representative of the soul in Ioway. The dead usually go west where the Sun sets. It would make sense that the right ear face represented (among other things) the departed soul; but what of the other ear? The Ioway commentator has nothing to say on that subject. However, there is an interesting echo of this in another Hocąk myth. In this story, Bluehorn, who is the Evening Star, is captured by the Thunderbirds. His nephews sneak up from under the earth to where he is bound. "Where their uncle was sitting, there they came up from the earth and in each of his ears they entered." These two nephews were the Twins, Ghost and Flesh. So if, ex hypothesi, the face in the right ear is a ghost, then it seems reasonable in light of this parallel, that the one in the left ear represents the flesh. We have seen that the western Sun of the right ear is already associated with ghosts since it is the portal to the land of the dead. The left ear Sun is the Sun of birth and of life in this world. Its natural associations are with life in the flesh. This is why Young Man, as Alnilam, expressing the axis of east/west, has two living faces on his ears, one symbolizing the Sun of flesh and life, the other the Sun of ghosts and death. This recalls the many Hocąk Spirits whose bodies are bifurcated such that one side dispenses Life, and the other Death.

"Human Heads for Earrings" — in Hocąk this would be Wągíšjahorúšika, from wąk, "male, man, human, humanoid"; hišja, "face, eyes"; horušik, "to wear on the ears"; and -ka, a definite article used in personal names. This version of his name is found in a number of stories.²⁴ He is also known by the contracted name, Įco-horúšika" (further contracted to Įcorúšika by sandhi), from įco, "face," and horušik, "to wear on the ears."²⁵ This name uniquely belongs to Redhorn.

"the red stone" — in Mesoamerica, the ball is often conceived as a symbolic Sun employed in a struggle between night and day. In our context, which is obviously an astronomy allegory, a powerful red stone must surely represent the Sun. The Giants, who represent moons, naturally think of the Sun as their ball, since they travel along the ecliptic, the path on which the Sun also moves.

"killing many of them" — the spectators, as well as the players in this astronomy allegory, are stars. Throwing the red stone ball, the Sun, among the sidereal spectators is to throw the Sun into the night sky, which happens when it rises. The result is that the stars disappear in its light, which is to say, metaphorically, that they "die."

"felled many of them" — the Sun coming into conjunction with a moon will also "kill" it (cause its Light-and-Life to disappear).

"threw it with all their might right at Turtle" — this action can be accommodated to the general interpretation if we suppose that Turtle here represents the land, that is, "Turtle Island."

"it bounced back" — the Sun does crash down on the edge of the land, but rebounds the next day back into the sky. This idea of the Sun "rebounding" is seen in another astronomical story that traces the origins of the Sun's travels in this same kind of ball game:

In the great duel, the Monster [Herešgúnina] struck off the head of Bladder, and it flew up and up into the Divine Presence, where it asked, 'Shall I kill him?' (with reference to his opponent). Receiving no response, it fell upon the neck where it belonged, and was reunited. Bladder then, in his turn, struck off the head of the Monster, and exactly the same thing occurred as to the head of Bladder. These blows were repeated in turn, for the conflict grew out of an Indian ball game. Since Bladder suffered first, he was first to ask permission to kill his adversary for the fourth time, at which he received permission, and while the head of the Monster was in the air, he pushed aside the body. Not falling upon its wonted place, the head of the Monster rebounded and continues to rebound to this day in the form of the sun! Except the conclusion, this story may be told to any man, woman, or child; but only old men or wise men are initiated into the secret that the sun is the head of the monster ...²⁶

Here we see that the ball in this sport is both the head of an enemy and the Sun itself. Just as in our story, it is said to bounce or bound off the earth and to continue to do so perpetually. That the Giants' ball, the Sun, rebounds into the night gallery of the moons spells certain death to the lunar Giants as it must to any light that shines brightly only by virtue of its tenebrous background. We should note in this context that the Sun is, as the directional code suggests, a detached head. Thus, the solar nature of the heads on the earlobes of Young Man (Redhorn) are consistent with the established esoteric concept of the Sun as the head of Herešgúnina.

"they burned them completely to ash" — as the Moon gradually approaches the Sun, its light diminishes constantly so that its disc is taken up more and more by its ash-black shadow. When the Moon finally reaches the fire of the Sun, its light is completely extinguished, leaving nothing but the black or "dead" Moon, the consequence of being consumed by the fire of the Sun. In this way the Giants-as-Moons are reduced to the by-product of fire, ash.

"drummer" — hąp, or light, is also metaphorically "Light-and-Life," and is used that way most especially in the Medicine Rite. As the sliver of a moon waxes, it builds up this light, becoming in a fortnight a full adult Giant. This full moon has the greatest power of Hąp. When we use the standard symbolism of sound for light, the full moon Giant produces the greatest sound. Therefore, a Giant who is a drummer must be a full moon. The full moon is, obviously, the first to die, that is, to loose its Hąp (Light-and-Life). So as the forces of Young Man begin their destruction of the moon-Giants, they naturally begin with the first full moon in the sky, the "drummer."

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The Progress of the Moon from the Pleiades to the Hyades and Back

"a fork" — there are not that many celestial phenomena in the night sky that qualify as "forks." There are forks in the Milky Way, the most prominent of which is located near the star Deneb. However, it is not a place where moons "run away." That leaves various star formations as viable candidates for being "forks." The most notable star cluster shaped in a forked V formation is the Hyades, who the Hocągara called Tejąwįǧega, "Ocean Duck." Given that (ex hypothesi) the Giants are moons, it is essential to note that this stellar fork plays an important role in tracking the Moon's rise and fall in altitude over long periods of time. The pitch of the plane of the Moon's orbit expresses itself as a very gradual change in the altitude of the Moon as well as where it rises and sets on the horizon.

"they followed one branch" — both the Moon and the aggregate of stars rise in the east and set in the west. The Giants are fast runners, and moons race ahead of the stars over the course of the month. Therefore, metaphorically speaking, the stars "chase" the Moon. The Moon takes one of two paths. The first is to move from the lowest path just beneath the Hyades upwards eventually, after about 9 or 10 years, to the course above the Pleiades (as shown above). Then the moons take the downward fork, moving in the same interval of time from above the Pleiades to where they began just below the Hyades.

"killing every last one of them" — all of these moons, following these two ascending and descending paths, ultimately end up "dying" at the end of their journey when they meet with the conflagration of the Sun at the edge of the world. There, Turtle-as-land (the horizon) kills them, and they slip below the earth and are seen no more. There is another way to see this process of hunting moons. When moons (Giants) are chased to the edge of the Milky Way near the star Elnath, they line up with the arrow of Young Man's bow, and are shot there at the edge of the world (with the Milky Way being thought of as the Ocean Sea). This alignment can be seen in the reconstruction of the sky shown below.

"led to the Ocean Sea" — the downward fork of the Hyades-Pleiades course, which follows the Lunar Standstills, terminates typically with a standstill near one of the equinoxes. That was the case, as we can see, in several instances:

Below, we see the situation at the Major Standstill of 8 September 1708, a fortnight before the Autumnal Equinox of 22 September 1708.

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The Moon at 0140 Hours on the Major Standstill of 8 September 1708

As can be seen in this case, the Moon goes right by the Gemini-Taurus Milky Way, which is analogous to the Ocean Sea. As it happens, an equinoctial moon (March or September) which is at the half phase, usually passes by this celestial spot. It took the upper route that passed through the Pleiades. The same can also be seen in the Minor Standstill of 27 September 1717, occurring four days after the Autumnal Equinox, when the Moon passed through the lower stars of the Hyades, occulting Aldebaran.

"a girl and a boy" — when the Moon sets near the Gemini-Taurus Milky Way, it tends to be in its half moon phase. On 9 March 1699, for instance, it was about 54% illuminated; on 8 September 1708, 43%. This means that the Moon was about half white and half black. Since it is waxing, it is white on the right and dark on the left. The right, as well as light, is associated with the male, and the left and dark portion is the distaff side. This Moon is only about a week old, so its male and female halves can be view allegorically as a young male and a young female, a boy and a girl.

"club" — this is the elk-horn club which represents the stars of the Cingulum-Gladius asterism as discussed above.

"two bowls of bear meat" — the full Moon comes opposite the Orion club in the months of December and January, which are the Moon When the Deer Shed Their Antlers and the First Bear Moon. Eating bear meat means that the lunar figure takes within her the ursine nature. This would occur when she becomes either the First or Second Bear Moon. It will become more apparent that the two bowls of bear meat refer not to the First and Second Bear Moons, but to the two standstills of the First Bear Moon on opposite sides of the celestial sphere. We can see this happening in the table above in the years 1680, 1707-1708, and 1717.

"she was a swift runner" — in an astronomy code a fast runner could only be a celestial object that moves with respect to the background stars (which themselves all run at the same speed like a herd of buffalo). Therefore the Giantess could only be a planet or a moon. In any case, all of these lie along the ecliptic, with the Moon straying somewhat above and below at different times. The Moon is the fastest runner, passing by planets whose motion in a single night is barely detectable. However, the Moon also moves night by night along the horizon with each successive moonrise moving farther north or south along the horizon. This can be a degree or more a day.

"she found herself still in front of the lodge" — in a 24 hour period, the Moon at moonrise will move across the sky, partly in daylight and partly in darkness, but will end up the next day at moonrise not too far from where it started. This means that despite its speed, the Moon gets practically nowhere after running all day and all night. While this is true, it is probably not the phenomenon to which the myth means to draw attention. The shifting moonrise and moonset along the horizon reflect the motion of the Moon in that dimension each day. When a standstill is reached, the Moon reverses course and heads back in the opposite direction along the horizon at moonrise or moonset. This can be seen in the 1680 Minor Standstill which occurs on two occasions in the First Bear Moon of that year.

On 12-14 January 1680 and on 27-29 January 1680, the Moon almost literally goes nowhere at all in its journey around the horizon. So, having taken the bear's nature into herself, the Giantess-Moon, despite rushing pass the fixed stars, ends up right back where she was.

"vomiting" — how does the Moon "vomit"? It would, bit by bit, have to loose something fluid-like from within its body. In the case of the Moon, this is not hard to solve. It must be the only fluctuating quantity that is contained within it: light. As the full Moon progresses, it gradually loses light, until at last, it comes into conjunction with the Sun.

"for a long time" — it takes about 14 days for a full Moon to "vomit" up all its light, so by human standards, it takes quite a long time.

"a piece of ice" — the light of the Moon is easily homologized to ice, which can be both white and bright.

"had caused her to eat people" — very largely because they eat people, the Giants function as a kind of generic enemy. When the Moon is not in solar conjunction, when it is in the sky and containing some measure of light, its motion across the background stars is fast enough that it can be perceived after a couple of hours. When it passes over a background star occulting it, it appears to swallow it. So the people who live in the night village, that is, the stars, are thus "eaten" by the Moon. This makes the Moon a "Man-Eater," conventionally translated as "Giant," but also a Giant on account of her large size when compared to her victims. So only a Moon with some measure of light in it can be found in the sky "eating" its inhabitants. So the light causes this to occur.

The reason that ice is picked as the symbol of light is its role as a preservative. The connection between eating and preservatives is found in the Fast Eating Contest. When a Warparty is about to go out, an important ritual is the Fast Eating Contest, in which the object is for each member of the party to eat the food put before him as fast as he can. The winner in this speed eating contest can expect to win War Honors. Any food that is missed and not eaten in time represents an enemy combatant who has escaped. Had the food representing him been eaten and swallowed, he would not have escaped. Therefore, capturing an enemy is ritually homologized to swallowing or eating him. An enemy who is killed outright also has his soul captured, since in otherworld contexts his soul is made into a servant to the man who killed him. The captive soul is required at the behest of his killer to be a guide to a deceased member of the tribe to whom his killer has pledged him. A man taken captive in the flesh may end up dead by ritual torture concluding in burning. Afterwards he may literally be eaten. Otherwise, a living captive is adopted into the Thunderbird Clan. There he assumes a new identity as a member of the tribe, and his life is preserved. He is thus "swallowed" by the tribe, and admitted into the center of its body. His flesh has not been cooked, but becomes like meat in the winter, which is put on racks where it remains preserved by the cold. It is because ice is a preservative that those who are "eaten" by other tribes are internalized into their insides or "stomach" and preserved there as if packed in ice. So Man-Eaters have this power because they can preserve in their stomachs those whom they eat. Many Warparties (and the Osage are particularly noted for this) are assembled in order to bring back prisoners who may function as new members of their tribe in order to replace their losses through war or disease. So it is this preservative element in their nature that allows them to "eat" people. Without this necessary element, they would not be able to assimilate people, and therefore would not be able to "eat" them (introduce them into the bowels of their society).

"she was perfectly normal" — when the Moon is in solar conjunction, it loses all its light. Allegorically, it therefore loses all its stomach's ice. Then it is no longer in the sky, and therefore does not eat anyone.

"his second son" — Redhorn, as is well known, has two sons, so this helps make the case that Young Man is indeed one and the same as Redhorn. Redhorn's second wife, who is the mother of the second son, goes unmentioned in this tale, since it would take the myth off into a tangent apart from its central meaning.

"the sky" — this shows that Young Man, Redhorn, is a celestial Spirit, rather than an earth or water Spirit. This too gives some small added weight to the contention that Redhorn is to be identified as a stellar Spirit.

The Code of Directionality. The three young men seem to be identified with the three dimensions (up/down, north/south, east/west), just as are Redhorn and his two sons. The costume itself reflects the three dimensions. The up/down continuum is represented by the fisher-skin pouch. It contains plants, tobacco and tree products (kinnikinnick) that are low to the ground, but which move upward in their growth. The fisher is a mammal which hunts by ascending and descending through the trees. The fisher-skin tobacco pouch with its contents unites the upper and lower, the downward tending and the upward tending, to represent the up/down axis. What do the red leggings represent? Young Man is Redhorn, the horn in question probably being the sun. The sun defines the east/west dimension by its travel through the sky. Human beings travel by their legs, which in this case are clothed in the symbolic color of the sun (red). So the leggings correlate nicely with the direction defined by the "walk" of the sun. His sojourn inscribes an arc across the sky. So we find that Young Man (Redhorn) can turn himself into an arrow and travel in an arc very like that of the sun. Young Man's arrows have feathers whereas Naked One's have none at all. The feathers stabilize the arcing flight of the arrow against the effects of gravity, but to shoot an arrow straight up or straight down requires no feathers as stabilizers because gravity is parallel with the shaft, not at right angles to it. So Young Man is more essentially east/west than Naked One, and Naked One is more essentially up/down than Young Man. They both wear eagle tail feathers in their hair, a situation where the head = the tail. In an eagle, head and tail define forward/backward, whereas in humans, head and tail define up and down. Naked One is unique in having a snake headband which is identical with the high (head) and simultaneously with the low (serpent). Thus the high/low (up/down) axis is reiterated uniquely in Naked One. Naked One also has a unique bow, one with serrations on one side. What are these serrations, and how can they be understood under the theory that these three men are the three axes mundi? The arrow of Young Man is the axis defined by the path of the sun. The arrow is always launched at the same place on the bow, and it is the bow from which it is launched. Therefore, if the arrow inscribes the path of the sun, then the bow must play the role of the earth. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that it is Old Woman — here identified with the earth — that sends Young Man on his way, defining the direction in which he is to go (towards the rising sun). The earth is not "serrated" from east to west, or north to south; the "serrations" of the earth are its hills and valleys, and they are only defined by the up/down axis. The sun not only goes east/west, but up/down. Naked One is his up/down arrow, and Young Man is his east/west arrow, and both these directions ("arrows") are defined by Earth and Sun. This also explains why Naked One is naked. He is nude except for his moccasins and his bow and arrow. His arrow is naked, having no feathers. His headband is of a naked animal, the snake, which has no hair. These represent the nudity on which nothing grows. On the east-west axis and the north-south axis, the things of the earth grow, and so these directions are "clothed." The up/down axis having nothing growing on it, except where it penetrates the base (the earth), and this is symbolized by Naked One's moccasins.

Where do these two dimensions meet? They meet when the sun is at its zenith. The sun at noon has the least "echo" (shadow, the inverse "echo" of light), which defines both east/west and whether the sun is as straight up as it is going to get. In fact, in Redhorn's Father, the representatives of east/west and up/down, should reach the hill (= the high point) simultaneously: the perfect upward orientation of the sun occurs exactly when its east/west travel is also at its height. Thus both orientations reach the only hill at the same time and both are therefore entitled to say koroc. It is there that Naked One breaks a moccasin string. His upward definition is broken as the sun walks towards its setting. This is symbolized by Young Man turning into his arrow and disappearing. However, the nadir of the sun is just like its zenith, only the down/up axis meets the west/east axis at the low point of the sun's journey. It is here that Naked One eventually makes his home, as that nadir is a point through which the up/down axis runs. The myth interprets well under the assumption that Naked One is the up/down axis and Young Man is the east/west axis. Naked One marries the eldest daughter because creation began along the up/down axis, and only after that was the sun created. Under this general interpretation, who then is the third young man, the grandson? He can only be the missing north/south axis. The symbolism of the north, covered as it is in ice and snow, is the color white. So the color symbolizes the snowbound north, but the blanket itself, being a source of warmth, symbolizes the south, the realm of heat. The white blanket symbolizes this north-south axis, an axis that unites the cold and the warm.

The Hocągara have appreciated the interchangeability and relativity of axes generally. They knew that directionality in space was arbitrarily fixed — only the dimensions themselves are absolute. Thus each axis is a twin of any other. They cannot be told apart when naked — that is, stripped of the defining role of the sun and earth. They cannot be told apart when fully dressed, since the garments that they wear symbolize every direction and axis. This is because axes can be rotated so that they become clothed in the defining garb once belonging to another axis. It is only when partly clothed that we can discriminate between them. Young Man is naturally well clothed, since that axis traverses the width of the earth. Indeed, it is Earth (Old Woman) who clothes him. Naked One, on the other hand, is largely above or below the earth, and is clothed mainly by air.

The Stellar Code. These triplets are also expressed in the three Belt Stars of Orion, the central one of which (Alnilam), I have argued elsewhere is to be identified with Redhorn. When these stars rise in the east, they point straight up as with the arrow of Naked One. The highest one (Mintaka) is in the blue, the lowest one (Alnitak) is in the red. The first born has the color of the first born, the color of age (blue); and the youngest one has the color of youth (red). Alnilam, who is Redhorn, is in between (yellow/white). The stars rise almost due east, and set almost due west, but when they set, they lie almost parallel with the horizon. So when facing them, one is looking due west, and the line of Belt Stars is pointing south (Alnitak) and north (Mintaka). So in rising, these stars define the up/down axis, and their path from rising to setting defines an almost perfect east-west axis. Alnilam and the Sword Stars can also serve as a compass in another way. When the Cingulum transits, a line from Alnilam through the Sword Stars will point due south (azimuth 180°). How does one know when the Alnilam transits? By a happy coincidence, when the Gladius stars, which form a straight line, are oriented in a line perpendicular to the horizon, Alnilam is in transit. The following table is for the star Alnilam.

Date	Transit Time	Transit Altitude	Azimuth
December 21, 1750	2311	44° 50.7'	175° 39'
January 21, 1750	2104	44° 50.6'	175° 38'
February 21, 1750	1902	44° 50.6'	175° 38'
March 21, 1750	1712	Before sunset
April 21, 1750	1510	Before sunset
May 21, 1750	1312	Daylight
June 21, 1750	1111	Not in night sky
July 21, 1750	0913	Daylight
August 21, 1750	0707	After sunrise
September 21, 1750	0509	44° 50.7'	175° 39'
October 21, 1750	0311	44° 50.7'	175° 39'
November 21, 1750	0109	44° 50.7'	175° 39'

So when the Cingulum is at its highest point, about half way to the zenith, the Gladius points almost due south. Therefore, Orion can be used at various times to establish due east, west, and south. Consequently, in mythology, Orion is likely to be bound up with the mythology of direction.

Comparative Material: The tying up of Old Woman, who cannot resist the pull of temptation, is very similar to the episode in which Odysseus was lashed to the mast as they passed the isle of the sirens in the Odyssey of the ancient Greeks.²⁷

The episode in which the grandmother cannot tell the three young men apart, is very similar to the Sanskrit story from the Mahābhārata about Cyavana's courtship of Sukanyā. The Aśvins (the Divine Twins) transform Cyavana so that he looks exactly like one of them and require Sukanyā to choose among them which she shall have as her husband. She makes the correct choice only because Cyavana covertly reveals his identity by signaling her.²⁸

Skaði Judging the Fairness of the Æsir's Feet

Something of the same theme is seen in the Norse myth of Skáldskaparmál 3. "Now Skaði, the daughter of the giant Þjazi, took helm and birnie and all weapons of war and proceeded to Ásgarð, to avenge her father. The Æsir, however, offered her reconciliation and atonement: the first article was that she should choose for herself a husband from among the Æsir and choose by the feet only, seeing no more of him. Then she saw the feet of one man, passing fair, and said: 'I choose this one: in Baldr little can be loathly.' But that was Njörðr of Nóatún."²⁹

Links: Redhorn, The Redhorn Panel of Picture Cave. An American Star Map, Sons of Redhorn, Giants, The Sons of Earthmaker, Pretty Woman, Buffalo Spirits, Turtle, Earth, Fishers, Foxes, Black Bear.

Stories: mentioning Redhorn: The Redhorn Cycle, Redhorn's Sons, Įcorúšika and His Brothers, The Mission of the Five Sons of Earthmaker, Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, The Twins Join Redhorn's Warparty, The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, Morning Star and His Friend, The Spirit of Gambling, The Green Man, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, cp. The Cosmic Ages of the Hocągara, Heroka, Redman; featuring the sons of Redhorn as characters: The Redhorn Cycle, Redhorn's Sons, The Adventures of Redhorn's Sons, The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father, The Seduction of Redhorn's Son; 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 Sons, Turtle and the Witches, The Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, Trickster Soils the Princess, Morning Star and His Friend, Grandfather's Two Families, 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; featuring Turtle's Wife as a character: Turtle and the Merchant, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married, Trickster Soils the Princess, The Nannyberry Picker; 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, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, The Roaster, Grandfather's Two Families, 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; featuring Pretty Woman (or a Giant princess with red or yellow hair): Redhorn's Sons (red hair), Redhorn Contests the Giants (red hair), The Hocągara Contest the Giants (red-yellowish hair), The Roaster (yellow hair), Morning Star and His Friend; mentioning foxes: Trickster Takes Little Fox for a Ride, Little Fox and the Ghost, Įcorúšika and His Brothers, Trickster's Anus Guards the Ducks, The Scenting Contest, Trickster Gets Pregnant, Hare Recruits Game Animals for Humans (v. 3), Little Fox Goes on the Warpath, Holy One and His Brother; about buffaloes and Buffalo Spirits: Buffalo Clan Origin Myth, Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle, The Blessings of the Buffalo Spirits, White Fisher, Brass and Red Bear Boy, Bluehorn Rescues His Sister, Bluehorn's Nephews, The Woman who became an Ant, Buffalo Dance Origin Myth, The Buffalo's Walk, Trickster's Buffalo Hunt, The Blessing of Šokeboka, The Creation of the World (v. 3), The Annihilation of the Hocągara I, The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, The Red Feather, Wazųka, The Stench-Earth Medicine Origin Myth, Holy One and His Brother, Old Man and Wears White Feather, The Orphan who was Blessed with a Horse, The Story of the Medicine Rite, Black Otter's Warpath; mentioning fishers: Bladder and His Brothers, The Dipper; featuring sturgeons as characters: River Child and the Waterspirit of Devil's Lake, Wolves and Humans, The Great Fish, The Twin Sisters, see also White Flower; featuring pickerels as characters: Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth; mentioning basswood: The Children of the Sun, Bear Clan Origin Myth (v. 3), The Big Stone, The Fox-Hocąk War, Hare Burns His Buttocks, The King Bird, Hare Kills Wildcat, Turtle's Warparty, The Birth of the Twins, The Messengers of Hare, Ghost Dance Origin Myth II, Trickster Eats the Laxative Bulb, Mijistéga’s Powwow Magic and How He Won the Trader's Store; mentioning kinnikinnick: The Lost Blanket, The Old Man and the Giants, Woruxega, Peace of Mind Regained, Grandmother's Gifts; mentioning lacrosse (kísik): Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, Morning Star and His Friend, Redhorn Contests the Giants, The Roaster, Redhorn's Sons, The Hocągara Contest the Giants, The Blessing of a Bear Clansman, Bluehorn Rescues His Sister, The Shaggy Man, How the Thunders Met the Nights; mentioning drums: The Descent of the Drum, The Friendship Drum Origin Myth, The Blessings of the Buffalo Spirits, The Buffalo's Walk, The Spirit of Maple Bluff, Tobacco Origin Myth (v. 5), Young Man Gambles Often, Trickster and the Dancers, Ghost Dance Origin Myth II, The Elk's Skull, Ghosts, The Four Slumbers Origin Myth, Great Walker's Medicine, Redhorn Contests the Giants, Buffalo Dance Origin Myth, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married, The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth, The Journey to Spiritland (v. 1b), Wolf Clan Origin Myth, Trickster's Anus Guards the Ducks, Trickster and the Geese, Turtle's Warparty, Snowshoe Strings, Ocean Duck, Įcorúšika and His Brothers, A Waterspirit Blesses Mąnį́xete’ų́ga, Hog's Adventures, Pete Dupeé and the Ghosts; mentioning snow: Waruǧábᵉra, The Glory of the Morning, Holy One and His Brother, Wolves and Humans, Grandfather's Two Families, The Four Steps of the Cougar, Brave Man, Bladder and His Brothers, The Stench-Earth Medicine Origin Myth, 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, Shakes the Earth, Thunderbird Clan Origin Myth, Trickster Gets Pregnant, The Raccoon Coat, Silver Mound Cave, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married; 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’ąbᵋra), Bear Clan Origin Myth (vv. 2a, 3), Wolf Clan Origin Myth (v. 2), Redhorn's Sons, Grandfather's Two Families, 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), 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, Grandfather's Two Families, 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, Turtle and the Merchant; when a young man is sent out to get the material for making a bow and arrows, he fails to get the right things the first time: Hare Acquires His Arrows; talking fish: The Greedy Woman, River Child and the Waterspirit of Devil's Lake, Trickster's Adventures in the Ocean; a man asks several fish in succession to direct him to something: Trickster's Adventures in the Ocean; a sturgeon talks to a man who not long afterwards catches a sturgeon: River Child and the Waterspirit of Devil's Lake; a young man who has never shot an arrow before, fixes it in his bow and orders it to go, then later places it in a fork of a tree and issues it the same command: Hare Acquires His Arrows, Morning Star and His Friend; a man forbids his female relative from looking at him when he is engaged in a secret activity, but she cannot resist the temptation and does it anyway to his detriment: The Markings on the Moon, The Man who Defied Disease Giver, Sunset Point; hunters kill so much game that they can only pack the tongues: The Twins Visit Their Father's Village, The Roaster, The Nannyberry Picker, Grandfather's Two Families; hunters kill an entire herd of animals: The Roaster, The Twins Visit Their Father's Village, Old Man and Wears White Feather, The Nannyberry Picker, Snowshoe Strings, Morning Star and His Friend, The Two Boys; someone takes shelter in a hollow log (in order to escape enemies): Brave Man, The Man with Two Heads, The Shaggy Man, The Spirit of Maple Bluff, The Thunder Charm, Trickster Loses Most of His Penis; a man kills a game animal by simply striking the knoll (or stump) in which it is hiding: Bird Clan Origin Myth, Old Man and Wears White Feather, Trickster and the Children, Snowshoe Strings; description of a courtship outfit: The Seduction of Redhorn's Son, Trickster Gets Pregnant, Trickster Soils the Princess, The Dipper, The Nannyberry Picker; red as a symbolic color: The Journey to Spiritland (hill, willows, reeds, smoke, stones, haze), The Gottschall Head (mouth), The Chief of the Heroka (clouds, side of Forked Man), The Red Man (face, sky, body, hill), Spear Shaft and Lacrosse (neck, nose, painted stone), The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father (hair, body paint, arrows), Wears White Feather on His Head (man), The Birth of the Twins (turkey bladder headdresses), The Two Boys (elk bladder headdresses), Trickster and the Mothers (sky), Rich Man, Boy, and Horse (sky), The Blessings of the Buffalo Spirits (Buffalo Spirit), Bluehorn Rescues His Sister (buffalo head), Wazųka (buffalo head headdress), The Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth (horn), The Brown Squirrel (protruding horn), Bear Clan Origin Myth (funerary paint), Hawk Clan Origin Myth (funerary paint), Deer Clan Origin Myth (funerary paint), Thunderbird Clan Origin Myth (stick at grave), Pigeon Clan Origins (Thunderbird lightning), Trickster's Anus Guards the Ducks (eyes), Hare Retrieves a Stolen Scalp (scalp, woman's hair), The Race for the Chief's Daughter (hair), The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy (hair), Redhorn Contests the Giants (hair), Redhorn's Sons (hair), The Woman's Scalp Medicine Bundle (hair), A Wife for Knowledge (hair), Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle (hair), The Hocągara Contest the Giants (hair of Giantess), A Man and His Three Dogs (wolf hair), The Red Feather (plumage), The Man who was Blessed by the Sun (body of Sun), The Man Whose Wife was Captured (v. 2) (body of the Warrior Clan Chief), Red Bear, Eagle Clan Origin Myth (eagle), The Shell Anklets Origin Myth (Waterspirit armpits), The Twins Join Redhorn's Warparty (Waterspirits), The Roaster (body paint), The Man who Defied Disease Giver (red spot on forehead), The Wild Rose (rose), The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth (warclub), Įcorúšika and His Brothers (ax & packing strap), Hare Kills Flint (flint), The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head (edges of flint knives), The Nannyberry Picker (leggings), The Seduction of Redhorn's Son (cloth), Yųgiwi (blanket); two people look (almost) exactly alike: The Twins Retrieve Red Star's Head, The Children of the Sun, The Green Man, How the Thunders Met the Nights, Big Eagle Cave Mystery; a young man becomes angry and runs off into the wilderness without knowing what he will do there: Moiety Origin Myth; one small morsel of food when put in a kettle becomes sufficient to feed everyone present: Ocean Duck (bean), The Chief of the Heroka (deer tail), The Red Man (deer tail), The Raccoon Coat (kernel of corn), cf. The Lost Blanket (food > tobacco, kettle > tobacco pouch); men who wear a single eagle feather in their hair: Moiety Origin Myth, The Lost Blanket; (three or) four young women, one of whom is a princess, encounter a suitor while they are bringing wood to an old woman's lodge: Morning Star and His Friend, Trickster Soils the Princess, The Nannyberry Picker, The Two Boys, The Father of the Twins Attempts to Flee; Turtle interrupts his gambling game to go meet friends he says that he was expecting yesterday: Trickster Soils the Princess, The Nannyberry Picker, Morning Star and His Friend; a being has red hair: Redhorn's Sons, Hare Retrieves a Stolen Scalp (vv. 1 & 2), The Hocągara Contest the Giants, Redhorn Contests the Giants, The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father, The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy, Heną́ga and Star Girl, A Wife for Knowledge, Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle; a being has curly hair: Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle; contests with the Giants: Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, 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, Grandfather's Two Families; certain spirits help the Giants in a (lacrosse) game with human lives at stake because they have married Giant women: Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, Morning Star and His Friend, Redhorn Contests the Giants, Redhorn's Sons.; Turtle overhears ordinary conversations at a remote distance: Turtle's Warparty; a spirit punishes a fox and its kind by condemning them to lead an inferior life: Įcorúšika and His Brothers; 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, Grandfather's Two Families; a spirit has faces on each earlobe: Redhorn Contests the Giants, The Sons of Redhorn Find Their Father, The Dipper (hummingbirds), Įcorúšika and His Brothers, Morning Star and His Friend, The Hocągara Contest the Giants; something is caused to live again on earth by being thrown to the side (or over the shoulder) by a spirit (or ghost): The Journey to Spiritland (v. 1); anthropophagy and cannibalism: A Giant Visits His Daughter, Turtle and the Giant, The Witch Men's Desert, The Were-Grizzly, Grandfather's Two Families, The Roaster, 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; a game of lacrosse is played with a stone ball painted red: Spear Shaft and Lacrosse (red), Morning Star and His Friend (black); during a lacrosse game people are killed when they are struck with the stone that is being used as the ball: Spear Shaft and Lacrosse; a Giant (Wągerucge) princess has her game disturbed by her attraction to a hero: Redhorn Contests the Giants, The Roaster, Morning Star and His Friend, Redhorn's Sons; someone runs away at full speed, but despite running for some time, he finds himself only a short distance from where he started: The Father of the Twins Attempts to Flee, The Two Boys; someone has to guess the identity of a person from among a group of people all of whom look exactly alike: Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle; marriage to a yųgiwi (princess): The Nannyberry Picker, Baldheaded Warclub Origin Myth, The Race for the Chief's Daughter, The Daughter-in-Law's Jealousy, The Big Stone, Partridge's Older Brother, Redhorn's Sons, The Seduction of Redhorn's Son, The Resurrection of the Chief's Daughter, River Child and the Waterspirit of Devil's Lake, The Roaster, Soft Shelled Turtle Gets Married, Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle, White Wolf, The Two Boys, Spear Shaft and Lacrosse, The Shaggy Man, The Thunderbird, The Red Feather, The Orphan who was Blessed with a Horse, The Birth of the Twins (v. 3), Trickster Visits His Family, The Woman who Loved Her Half-Brother, Old Man and Wears White Feather, Morning Star and His Friend, Thunderbird and White Horse, Rich Man, Boy, and Horse, Shakes the Earth, The Nightspirits Bless Ciwoit’éhiga; marriage to a Giant: The Stone Heart, A Giant Visits His Daughter, Young Man Gambles Often, The Reincarnated Grizzly Bear, Redhorn Contests the Giants, The Roaster, Redhorn's Sons, White Wolf; 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): Grandfather's Two Families, Sun and the Big Eater, Įcorúšika and His Brothers, How the Thunders Met the Nights, Bluehorn Rescues His Sister, Morning Star and His Friend, Eats the Stinking Part of the Deer Ankle; Giants have ice in the pit of their stomachs: Young Man Gambles Often, The Stone Heart; Giants cease eating men after they vomit up an ice cube: Young Man Gambles Often; when someone throws moss into the water, it transforms into an abundance of beavers: Old Man and Wears White Feather.

Notes

¹ The pagination is from the more accessible presentation of McKern's text in David Lee Smith, Folklore of the Winnebago Tribe (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) 64-82. The original text is from W. C. McKern, "A Winnebago Myth," Yearbook, Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, 9 (1929): 215-230.

² "Fisher-skin" is hyper-corrected through out to "fishskin" in Smith's rendition of McKern's text.

³ Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region, Thirty-Third Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1911-12 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1919) 108.

⁴ On this same date when the Alnilam-Gladius axis is perpendicular to the horizon (which occurs at transit when it is on the meridian), it marks solar midnight, that is to say, the exact middle of the night twelve hours from solar noon. It is not likely that this fact was known, however.

⁵ Thomas F. Kehoe and Alice B. Kehoe, Solstice-aligned Boulder Configurations in Saskatchewan. Canadian Ethnology Service, Mercury Series, Paper 48 (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1979) 25; David Vogt, "Medicine Wheel Astronomy," in Clive N. Ruggles and Nicholas J. Saunders (edd.), Astronomies and Cultures (Niwot: University of Colorado Press, 1993) 163-201 [174]. For the myth of the Smoking Star (Blood Clot Boy) Clark Wissler and D. C. Duvall, "Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians," Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 2 (1909): 1-164 [53 ff]. It has been argued that the Popul Vuh's Hearth of Creation is one and the same as the Hearth Stones, and that the Orion Nebula is its smoke and fire. Anthony F. Aveni, Skywatchers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001) 37; Barbara Tedlock, The Road of Light: Theory and Practice of Maya Skywatching, in Anthony Aveni (ed), The Sky in Mayan Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) 18-42 [29]. 

⁶ Paul Radin, The Winnebago Tribe (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990 [1923]), 295. Informant: a member of the Bear Clan.

⁷ Paul Radin, The Road of Life and Death: A Ritual Drama of the American Indians. Bollingen Series V (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 [1945]) 340 nt 31; the original text comes from Jasper Blowsnake, Untitled, in Paul Radin, Winnebago Notebooks, Freeman #3876 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Library, n.d.) Winnebago II, #6: 94-96.

⁸ Ronald Goodman, Lakota Star Knowledge: Studies in Lakota Stellar Theology (Rosebud Sioux Reservation: Siñte Gleska University, 1992) cover, 5-7, 9, 12, 23.

⁹ Samuel D. Robbins, Jr., Wisconsin Birdlife: Population and Distribution Past and Present (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991) 217-218.

¹⁰ Robbins, Wisconsin Birdlife, 220-221.

¹¹ Roger A. Powell, "Mammalian Species: Martes pennanti," The American Society of Mammalogists: 156 (1981): 1-6.

¹² A. A. MacDonell, Vedic Mythology (Delhi: Motilal Barnassidas: 1974 [1898]) 30.

¹³ Ṛg Veda 10.16.3; cp. 90.3, 158.3, 4.

¹⁴ Atharva Veda 5.24.9.

¹⁵ Atharva Veda 13.1.45.

¹⁶ Ṛg Veda 7.35.8; 10.37.1.

¹⁷ Ṛg Veda 1.502.

¹⁸ Ṛg Veda 4.13.3. Spáś means, "one who looks or beholds, a watcher, spy, messenger (esp. applied to the messengers of Varuṇa) ... [Cf. Lat. spex in auspex; Gk. σκώψ]." Sir Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1990 [1899]) 1268b, s. v. स्पश्  Spáś 2.

¹⁹ Ṛg Veda 1.50.7; 6.51.2; 7.60.2; 7.61.1; 7.63.4.

²⁰ Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 256b-c, s. v. कणॅ kárṇa. The birth of Karṇa is related in Mahābhārata 1.67 (Ganguli translation, p. 144-145).

²¹ Harrison, The Giant or The Morning Star, 112.

²² "6. Wąkx!istowi, the Man with the Human Head Earrings," in Alanson Skinner, "Traditions of the Iowa Indians," The Journal of American Folklore, 38, #150 (October-December, 1925): 427-506 [457-458].

²³ When a head is taken, its ghost may follow after the warparty and shove stragglers so that they stumble. This shows that the ghost is more drawn to the head than to any other part of his body. Paul Radin, "The Two Friends Who Became Reincarnated: The Origin of the Four Nights Wake," The Culture of the Winnebago as Described by Themselves (Baltimore: Special Publications of the Bollingen Foundation, #1, 1949) 12-46. Informant: John Rave (Bear Clan). The original text is in Paul Radin, Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, n.d.) Notebook 43, 1-62. This story is discussed in Claude Lévi-Strauss, "Four Winnebago Myths," Structural Anthropology, vol. 2, trs. Monique Layton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976) 198-210. Outside Native America, the head is identified with the soul, and the deceased are sometimes called "heads." Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951) 96-97. For a fuller discussion of this topic, see "The Gottschall Head."

²⁴ John Harrison, "The Giant or The Morning Star," translated by Oliver LaMere, in Paul Radin, Notebooks, Winnebago III, #11a, Freeman Number 3892 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society) Story 8, pp. 92–117 [112-114]. Paul Radin, "Intcohorúcika," Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Library) #14, 1–67 [65-67]; Thomas Foster, Foster's Indian Record and Historical Data (Washington, D. C.: 1876-1877) vol. 1, #3: p. 3 col. 1; Kathleen Danker and Felix White, Sr., The Hollow of Echoes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978) 24-25; W. C. McKern, "A Winnebago Myth," Yearbook, Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, 9 (1929): 215-230.

²⁵ Paul Radin, "Intcohorúcika," Winnebago Notebooks (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society) Notebook #14: 1-67.

²⁶ Bladder and His Brothers, Version 7. Louis L. Meeker, “Siouan Mythological Tales,” Journal of American Folklore, 14 (1901): 161-164.

²⁷ Odyssey 12.1-200.

²⁸ Mahābhārata 3.123; Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa 3.123-125; Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa 4.1.5.8-12.

²⁹ En Skaði dóttir Þjaza jötuns, tók hjálm ok brynju ok öll hervápn ok ferr til Ásgarðs at hefna föður síns. En æsir buðu henni sætt ok yfirbætr ok it fyrsta, at hon skal kjósa sér mann af ásum ok kjósa at fótum ok sjá ekki fleira af. Þá sá hon eins manns fætr forkunnarfagra ok mælti: "Þenna kýs ek. Fátt mun ljótt á Baldri." En þat var Njörðr ór Nóatúnum. Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál 3. Guðni Jónsson edition, translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916).