Pawnee mythology

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The Pawnee are a tribe of Native Americans originally located in Nebraska, United States. Tirawa (also Atius Tirawa) was the creator god and taught the Pawnee people tattooing, fire-building, hunting, agriculture, speech and clothing, religious rituals (including the use of tobacco) and sacrifices. He was associated with most natural phenomena, including stars and planets, wind, lightning, rain and thunder.

The solar and lunar deities were Shakuru and Pah, respectively.

The Pawnee had a sophisticated understanding of the movement of stars, to the point that the nonconforming movements of both Venus and Mars were duly noted. The pawnee centered all aspects of daily life on this celestial observation. The lodge, which was built to accommodate the sedentary nature of Pawnee culture “was at the same time the universe and also the womb of a woman, and the household activities represented her reproductive powers.”1 However, the lodge also represented the universe in a much more practical way. The physical construction of the house required that there be four posts built that represented the four cardinal directions, “aligned almost exactly with the north-south, east-west axis.2 Along with the presence of these posts, there are considered to be four other requirements which would mark the Pawnee lodge as an observatory.

1. “that a Pawnee observatory lodge would have an unobstructed view of the eastern sky” 2. “ that a lodge’s axis would be oriented east-west so that at the vernal equinox the sun’s first light would strike the altar” 3. “That the size parameters of the lodge’s smoke hole and door (height and width) would be designed to view the sky.” 4. “That an observatory lodge’s smoke hole would be constructed to view certain parts of the heavens-such as the Pleiades.” 3

Through both the historical and archaeological record, it is clear that the Pawnee lifestyle was centered, at its very core, on the observation of the celestial bodies. The positions and construction of their lodges placed their daily life in the center of a scaled down universe, and allowed them to observe the greater universe outside and reminded the Pawnee of their role of watching and, more importantly, perpetuating the universe.

According to one Skidi Pawnee man at the beginning of the twentieth century, “The Skidi were organized by the stars; these powers above made them into families and villages, and taught them how to live and how to perform their ceremonies. The shrines of the four leading villages were given by the four leading stars and represent those stars which guide and rule the people”.4

The Pawnee paid very close attention to the movement of the universe, but they also felt that for the universe to continue functioning, the Pawnee people had to perform regular ceremonies. These ceremonies were performed before events such as semi-annual hunts as well as before many other important times of the year. The most important ceremony of the Pawnee culture, the Spring Awakening ceremony, which was meant to awaken the earth and ready it for planting, can be tied directly to the tracking of celestial bodies. “The position of the stars was an important guide to the time when this ceremony should be held. The earth lodge served as an astronomical observatory and as the priests sat inside at the west, they could observe the stars in certain positions through the smokehole and through the long east-oriented entranceway. They also kept careful watch of the horizon right after sunset and just before dawn to note the order and position of the stars.” 5 The ceremony must be held at exactly the right time of year, when the priest first tracked “two small twinkling stars known as the Swimming Ducks in the northeastern horizon near the Milky Way”6 . The ceremony was a recreation of the events that led to the creation of the world, the forced mating of Morning Star with Evening star. The ceremony was not held in full every year but only when a man of the village actually dreams that the Morning star has come to him and told him to perform the ceremony. He must consult with a priest who has been reading the sky and together they can interpret if the Morning Star is demanding the traditional symbolic ceremony or requires that the ceremony be carried out in full. When the Pawnee priests would identify certain celestial bodies on the horizon, they would know that the Morning Star needed to be appeased and that it required the sacrifice of a young girl. “The sacrifice was performed only in years when Mars was morning star and usually originated in a dream in which the Morning Star appeared to some man and directed him to capture a suitable victim. The dreamer went to the keeper of the Morning Star bundle and received from him the warrior’s costume kept in it. He then set out, accompanied by volunteers, and made a night attack upon an enemy village. As soon as a girl of suitable age was captured the attack ceased and the party returned. The girl was dedicated to the Morningstar at the moment of her capture and was given into the care of the leader of the party who, on its return, turned her over to the chief of the Morning Star “ 7

Returning to the village, the girl was treated respectfully but was also isolated from the rest of the camp. She was ritually cleansed and a five day ceremony was begun around her. The Morning star priest would sing songs and the girl was symbolically transformed from human form to be among the celestial bodies. Here the girl became the ritual representation of the Evening Star; she was not impersonating the god but instead had become an earthly embodiment. On the final day of the ceremony, the girl was moved outside to where a scaffold had been erected and outfitted to represent “Evening Star’s garden in the west, the source of all animal and plant life.”8 The priests removed her clothing and

“The procession was timed so that she would be left alone on the scaffold at the moment the Morning star rose. When the morning star appeared, two men came from the east with flaming brands and touched her lightly in the arm pits and groins. Four other men then touched her with war clubs. The man who had captured her then ran forward with the bow from the Skull bundle and a sacred arrow and shot her through the heart while another man struck her on the head with the war club from the Morning Star bundle. The officiating priest then opened her breast with a flint knife and smeared his face with the blood while her captor caught the falling blood on dried meet. All the male members of the tribe then pressed forward and shot arrows into the body. They then circled the scaffold four times and dispersed.”9

To fulfill the creation of life, the men of the village would take on the role of the Morning star, which is why two men would come from the east with flaming brands, representing the sun. The men then acted out the violence which had allowed the Morning Star to mate with the Evening star (by breaking her vaginal teeth) in their creation story, with a “meteor stone”10. During the Morning Star ceremony, the captive was shot in the heart and a “man struck her on the head with the war club from the Morning Star bundle”11 . By having all the men in the village shoot arrows into her body, the village men, embodiments of Morning Star, were symbolically mating with her. Her blood would drip down from the scaffolding and onto the ground which had been made to represent the Evening Star’s garden of all plant and animal life. Her blood was then fertilizing the ground, while the spirit of the Evening Star was released and with that sacrifice they were ensuring the success of the crops and in turn the perpetuation of the Universe. It is an interesting note that the Pawnee creation myth identifies the first human as a female.

[edit] References

1. Weltfish, The lost universe: Pawnee life and culture pp.64 2. Patricia J. O'brien American Anthropologist. Prehistoric evidence of Pawnee Cosmology, New Series, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Dec., 1986), pp. 939-946 3. Ibid. 942 4. Alice C. Fletcher American Anthropologist, Star Cult among the Pawnee-A Preliminary Report New Series, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Oct., 1902), pp. 730-736 5. Weltfish, The lost universe: Pawnee life and culture pp.79 6. Ibid, pp. 79 7. Ralph Linton The origin of the Pawnee Morning Star Sacrifice. American Anthropologist > New Series, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Jul., 1926), pp. 457-466 8. Ibid. pp. 458 9. Ibid. pp. 459 10. Weltfish, The lost universe: Pawnee life and culture pp.82 11. Ibid. pp82