What’s better than standing beneath the Milky Way on a cool, crisp, late summer evening? For star gazer’s today, this is an awesome, yet unfortunately far too infrequent, experience. What if you were able to see such a sky on every clear night? That would indeed be inspiring! 

Long ago, the first Americans saw the sky as a canvas. For native story tellers, the sky was the stage for explaining all manner of celestial phenomena: why there is day and night, shooting stars, the waxing and waning of the moon, seasons, and the permanence of the pole star. In much the same fashion as the classical constellations, indigenous asterisms represented their mythical figures, though ones very different from our own. No doubt great legends and myths have been lost in the intervening centuries.

Native Americans recorded their own worldview on the sky. Cosmology explains why they are here, mythology why things happen, often with conflict, dancing, feasting, even the humor of the mischievous coyote. Stars are celestial beings and reflect a male–female duality. Four is a sacred number, and the natural colors of red, black, yellow, and white (and sometimes blue) represent the cardinal directions. Celestial influences even extend to architecture, for example, Navajo hogan doors face east (ours face the street). The Sun’s path defines the year, in turn, agricultural cycles and social activities.

In today’s electronic / wired / web “age”—changes happens too quickly to merit a fixed label—it is hard to experience such a world. It is easier to download an image far grander than in any eyepiece. We settle for an "on demand," realistically simulated sky, unconcerned with weather, geography or calendar. Nowadays wikis explain phenomena in scientific and technical detail. Our mythology is fossilized in static constellations by the International Astronomical Union. The most recent additions are not heroes, villains and tricksters, but instruments and artifacts of European cultures. What celebrities today deserve to be immortalized in the sky—even if we could find room for them?

To step beyond your own time and place, take a daytrip to the "Our Universes" exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (left) on the Mall (near the Capitol) in Washington, DC. Closer to home, enjoy living native culture at the 29th Nanticoke Powwow (right) in Millsboro, Delaware on the weekend of 9-10 September 2006. And hopefully, I’ll meet you under the Milky Way at the No Frills Star Party a fortnight later, 22-26 September at Tuckahoe’s Equestrian Center.

Moondark is written by Doug Miller, published at the Moondark web site, and printed in the Delmarva Star Gazers' Star Gazer News. This document was last revised on 27 August  2006. Text and images copyright © 2006 by Douglas C. Miller, All Rights Reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without prior permission.