Circle the Wagons
While the Lakota and others tribes found a correspondence between structures on Earth and those in the sky, still other tribes built their own structures to reflect and honor the structure in the heavens. Some of their constructions were small and transitory, like the cone-shaped tipis of many Plains tribes, whose supporting poles represented sacred directions and objects in the sky.
Many other structures were larger and more permanent. Scattered across the Great Plains and into southern Canada, for example, are large circles of stones known as medicine wheels. Built many centuries ago, probably by the ancestors of today’s Plains tribes, they consist of several piles of stones, some connected by lines of small stones that look the spokes of a wagon wheel. Radiocarbon dating of at least one wheel places its construction around 2500 B.C. If this is correct, then Native Americans were building these astronomical observatories at about the same time the first pyramids were built in ancient Egypt.
The most famous wheel is Bighorn Medicine Wheel atop a 10,000-foot mountain in Wyoming. The wheel spans about 80 feet, and 28 spokes connect its hub to the rim. Six large piles of stones sit just outside the rim.
Tribal skywatchers probably used the wheel to predict and record the summer solstice, when the Sun appears farthest north for the year and the days are longest. Lines connecting the central pile of stones to those on the rim point to the sunrise before, on, and after the solstice.
Additional alignments may point at bright stars that first appeared in the morning twilight shortly before the solstice. These stars served as predictors; when they first appeared, the solstice was only a few days or weeks away.
Other American Indian tribes may have built their own “computers” for predicting or marking the solstices or equinoxes. Across the southeast and Midwest, archaeologists have studied dozens of sites that incorporate large mounds of dirt. The largest is Cahokia Mounds in East Saint Louis, Illinois.
Around 1200 A.D., Cahokia was one of the largest population centers in North America, with thousands of inhabitants. The layout of the site suggests that it was built with the help of the stars. The major mounds follow precise north-south lines, and one mound aims at the points where the Sun rose on the winter solstice and set on the summer solstice.
Even more compelling are large rings of holes in the ground that once contained cedar posts. Called “the American Woodhenge,” these rings apparently served as solar calendars. An observer at the center of the rings could watch the Sun move along the horizon from day to day and know precisely when it would reach a solstice or equinox — days that marked either the start or the mid-points of the seasons. Detailed observations of the Sun’s annual motion across the sky would have been particularly important to an agricultural society like that at Cahokia.
If current theories about Cahokia are correct, then its people built order and structure into their society by building special sacred places for watching a star: the Sun.
Navajo First Woman had a job to do: place all the stars in the sky. It was slow, painstaking work, because she wanted to create beautiful patterns in the sky. Coyote, the trickster, offered to help. First Woman didn’t trust him, so she made him promise to be patient and careful. But Coyote quickly tired of the job, and found a shortcut. He gathered the blanket holding all the remaining stars and shook it vigorously, scattering stars across the sky at random. So today, when we look at the night sky, we see a few beautiful patterns of bright stars, known as constellations, and a background of thousands of stars, seemingly placed in the sky at random.
For the tribes that planted crops, lived in villages, and built elaborate trade networks, no star was more important than the Sun. Yet many paid close attention to the stars that fill the night sky, too. Nomadic tribes, which moved from year to year or even season to season, used the stars for navigation. Some tribes even used the stars as patterns for their own lives. The Cheyenne, for example, arranged their camps after Camp Circle, the modern constellation Corona Borealis, the northern crown, a semicircle of stars that’s visible during summer and autumn evenings.
Sedentary or nomadic, all the tribes devised elaborate stories to explain the patterns they saw in the stars.
Like the Europeans, many native American tribes saw the stars of the Big Dipper as a great bear, and those of Gemini as a pair of twins. The north star, Polaris, was a guide star or the eye of the Great Spirit.
Constellations generally mirrored the objects and animals that each tribe saw in its natural environment — a bear, antelope, scorpion, wildcat, bison — or in tribal life — dancers, men carrying a stretcher, a great chief or circle of chiefs.
One of the most important constellations was the Pleiades, a cluster of bright stars that forms a tiny dipper on the shoulder of Taurus, the bull. In Greek mythology, the stars represented the seven daughters of Atlas. Many American Indian tribes also saw the Pleiades as a group of sisters or brothers.
To the Luiseno of California, the Pleiades were known as Chehaiyam — seven women. In their story, the stars fled into the sky to escape death. They let down a rope for the seven sisters to follow them. Coyote, the trickster, told them he would go along to protect them. But when they reached the stars, they cut the rope and Coyote fell behind them. Coyote continues to trail Chehaiyam as the bright orange star Aldebaran, which represents the eye of Taurus.
