The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

Note. The Pleiades in Primitive Calendars. 365The Blackfeet Indians of North America “know and observe Attention paid tothe Pleiades bythe Pleiades, and regulate their most important feast by thosethe North Americanstars. About the first and the last days of the occultation of the Indians.Pleiades there is a sacred feast among the Blackfeet. The modeof observance is national, the whole of the tribe turning out forthe celebration of its rites, which include two sacred vigils, thesolemn blessing and planting of the seed. It is the opening of theagricultural season.... In all highly religious feasts the calumet, orpipe, is always presented towards the Pleiades, with invocationfor life-giving goods. The women swear by the Pleiades as themen do by the sun or the morning star.” At the general meetingof the nation there is a dance of warriors, which is supposed torepresent the dance of the seven young men who are identifiedwith the Pleiades. For the Indians say that the seven stars of theconstellation were seven brothers, who guarded by night the fieldof sacred seed and danced round it to keep themselves awakeduring the long hours of darkness. 1015 According to anotherlegend told by the Blackfeet, the Pleiades are six children, whowere so ashamed because they had no little yellow hides ofbuffalo calves that they wandered away on the plains and wereat last taken up into the sky. “They are not seen during the moon,when the buffalo calves are yellow (spring, the time of theirshame), but, every year, when the calves turn brown (autumn),the lost children can be seen in the sky every night.” 1016 Thisversion of the myth, it will be observed, recognises only six stars [312]in the constellation, and many savages apparently see no more,which speaks ill for the keenness of their vision; since amongby C. Cullen (London, 1807), i. 315 sq.; J. G. Müller, Geschichte deramerikanischen Urreligionen (Bâle, 1867), pp. 519 sq.; H. H. Bancroft, TheNative Races of the Pacific States of North America (London, 1875-1876), iii.393-395.1015 Jean l'Heureux, “Ethnological Notes on the Astronomical Customs andReligious Ideas of the Chokitapia or Blackfeet Indians,” Journal of theAnthropological Institute, xv. (1886) pp. 301-303.1016 Walter McClintock, The Old North Trail (London, 1910), p. 490.