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Cherokee and the Pleiades
The Cherokee -
are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United
States (principally Georgia, the Carolinas, and East Tennessee).
Their language is a Iroquoian language. In the 19th century, historians
and ethnographers recorded their oral tradition that told of the
tribe having migrated south in ancient times from the Great Lakes region,
where other Iroquoian-speaking peoples were located. They began to have
contact with European traders in the 18th century.
Pleiades
Pleiades
In astronomy, the Pleiades, or Seven Sisters (Messier
object 45 or M45), is an open star cluster containing
middle-aged hot B-type stars located in the constellation of Taurus.
It is among the nearest star clusters to Earth and is the cluster
most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. The name Pleiades comes
from Greek mythology; the celestial entity has several meanings in
different cultures and traditions.
The cluster is dominated by hot blue and extremely
luminous stars that have formed within the last 100 million years. Dust
that forms a faint reflection nebulosity around the brightest stars was
thought at first to be left over from the formation of the cluster (hence the
alternate name Maia Nebula after the star Maia), but is now
known to be an unrelated dust cloud in the interstellar medium that
the stars are currently passing through. Computer simulations have shown that
the Pleiades was probably formed from a compact configuration that resembled
the Orion Nebula. Astronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for
about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to
gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.
“The Origin Of The Pleiades” – Cherokee
Long ago, when the world was new, there were seven boys who
used to spend all their time down by the townhouse playing the gatayusti
game, rolling a stone wheel along the ground and sliding a curved stick
after it to strike it. Their mothers scolded, but it did no good, so one
day they collected some gatayusti stones and boiled them in the pot with
the corn for dinner. When the boys came home hungry their mothers dipped
out the stones and said, ”Since you like the gatayusti better than the cornfield,
take the stones now for your dinner.”
The boys were very angry, and went down to the townhouse,
saying, “As our mothers treat us this way, let us go where we shall never
trouble them any more.” They began to dance, some say it was the Feather
Dance and went round and round the townhouse, praying to the spirits to
help them. At last their mothers were afraid something was wrong and went
out to look for them. They saw the boys still dancing around the
townhouse, and as they watched they noticed that their feet were off the
earth, and that with every round they rose higher and higher in the air.
They ran to get their children, but it was to late, for they were already
above the roof of the townhouse, all but one, whose mother managed to pull
him down with the gatayusti pole, but he struck the ground with such a
force that he sank into it and the earth closed over him.
The other six circled higher and higher until they went up
to the sky, Where we see them now as the Pleiades, which the Cherokee
still call Anitsutsa (The Boys). The people grieved long after them, but
the mother whose boy had gone into the ground came every morning and every
evening to cry over the spot until the earth was damp with tears. At last
a little green shoot sprouted up and grew day by day until it became the
tall tree that we call now the pine, and the pine is of the same nature as
the stars and holds in itself the same bright light.
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