Lightning Bolt Chichakos

The Legend of Bear Lodge (Devils Tower)

This is how I heard it, and I pass it to you...

One day, an Indian Tribe was camped beside the river and seven small girls were playing at a distance. The region had a large bear population and one of these bears began to chase after the seven girls. So the girls started to run back to their village, but the bear was closing in on them and about to catch them. The girls jumped upon a rock about three feet high and started praying to the rock, “Rock take pity on us; Rock save us!” The rock heard the pleas of the young girls and started to thrust itself upwards, pushing them higher and higher out of the reach of the bear. The bear clawed and jumped at the sides of the rock, and broke its claws and fell down. The bear continued to jump and jump at the rock until the girls were pushed up into the sky, where they are to this day in a group of seven little stars (the Pleiades). The mark of the bear claws are still there.

The Pleiades is where we come from ...
... And when we die that is where we go.
-Chief Frank Fools Crow-

The View from the Far North

To Eskimos the stars weren’t just put up there to give light or guide the wanderer. They are living beings, sent by some cosmic purpose, placed up there forever, always constant.

One of these creatures who left Mother Earth to live in the sky realm was the bear which they called Nanuk. One day Nanuk was attacked by fierce Eskimo dogs. Nanuk knew that the Eskimo dogs weren’t to be messed with and he tried to evade them. He ran faster and faster but they were in hot pursuit. The chase went on for hours, but he couldn’t outrun them. In their fury and mindlessness they came to the edge of the world, but none of them noticed. They fell over the edge of the world and turned into stars. To the Europeans they are the Pleadies, in the constellation of Taurus the bull, but the Eskimos see it as Nanuk with the dogs still chasing him.

Up in the sky’s zenith the Eskimos see a giant caribou. We call it the Great Bear or Big Dipper. Over on the other side of the sky they see an oil lamp we call Cassiopeia. Far to the south below the lamp and caribou the Eskimos see three stars like stairs that are carved from snow. They call it the stairs from the earth to the sky. We call it the belt of Orion the Hunter.

Once in a while the Eskimos’ deceased ancestors come out to dance. The stars are the lights around the dance floor, and Gulla glows across the sky, which we call the Northern Lights. The Norse called it Bifrost, the bridge from our world up to Asgard, the realm of the gods.

To the Eskimos the most beautiful star of all is the sun. They see her as a young maiden of great beauty.

In their short arctic summer she’s there day and night, for that is the season of the midnight sun when her brother Anigan the moon chases her round the north pole so she can’t get away over the horizon.