While Southern California Native Americans have a close relationship with the plants, animals, and everything else in their homelands, they also have a relationship with the sky. The sky and its Sun, Moon, bright stars, and visible planets all appear in songs, stories, and art, in ceremonies and in everyday life, from prehistoric times onward. Wherever you live, you can go out and look at the night stars, just as the ancestors did thousands of years ago. You can connect. You can be inspired.
Horsehead Nebula … or Bighorn Sheep
Astrophotographer Brian Valente recently spent about 40 hours photographing a closer look at the Horsehead Nebula from a telescope in Chile. Part of the Orion Molecular Cloud complex, it’s what you’re looking at when you see Orion’s Belt, he explains. Serrano people don’t see Orion’s belt. Instead, they see bighorn sheep. What do you see? © copyright 2021 Brian Valente (brianvalentephotography.com)
Stories and Songs
We know many constellations by their names from ancient Greek legends. Andromeda. Sagittarius. Hercules. Here in Southern California, the stars shine with their own ancient Native American names, and stories. More than 75 years ago, Francisco Patencio shared a few traditional stories about the Cahuilla stars:
Che he yom, called the Seven Sisters, appear in June. They are not seven, but three; the other four stars are the jewels they wore on their arms, about their necks, and atop the basket caps on their heads.
Is sel e con nup and his younger brother, Hul le nuh are winter stars. The older brother is a red star seen when it’s cold and snowy in the mountains in January, and the younger brother, who followed him into the sky later, is seen as a white star in February.
“Now the three sisters (Seven Sisters), before they went into the sky, used to tease an Indian maiden because some of her teeth were missing in the front of her mouth,” Francisco Patencio said in Stories and Legends of the Palm Springs Indians. “This caused her to be very much ashamed and sorry all the time, so that she would never laugh, but kept her mouth closed. She became more unhappy all the time, so she left her father and mother and became a star also.
“She became the most important star of all: The star that is known as the North Star. Her necklace of jewels still hangs below the light, and she guides all the world at night, the people on the land, as well as the ships on the sea. But she always keeps her face turned away from the three sisters. The Indians call her To quoush hem ish.”1
Milky Way, as seen from the Mojave Desert, shows the “dust” kicked up by a race in the sky, according to Native American cultural stories. © Brian Valente.
Ernest Siva: Stories About Stars
Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, shares some Native American Serrano stories about the stars, including the Morning Star. He also shares a family memory recorded by Sarah Martin. The family story tells about an ancestor who escaped as a young woman from a forced marriage, arranged during the closing of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel (near modern-day Los Angeles). She travels at night, following the stars, to find her way and her family.
Star Maps, Clocks, and Calendars
People since the beginning of time have used the Sun, the Moon, and the stars as their guide. Southern California’s First Nations are no exception. Just as they intimately know the cycles of the natural world, the people carefully track sky events. The word for “time,” and “clock,” for example, is also the word for “Sun:” tam:mi|at in Serrano, támit, támyat in Cahuilla, támit in Cupeño, támit in Gabrielino, and timét in Luiseño, according to linguist Kenneth Hill. 2
“M42, Great Orion Nebula in HOO,” astrophotography © Brian Valente.
When certain stars appeared in certain places in the dawn or evening sky, that meant it was time to harvest certain plants, hunt deer, or prepare for other seasonal events. The arrival of the Bighorn Sheep (Orion’s belt) directly overhead, for example, signaled that it was time for the Serrano annual traditional mourning ceremony. (Learn more about the pinyon pine harvest and the appearance of the Bighorn Sheep Constellation HERE.)
The First People of modern-day Los Angeles used both solar and lunar calendars, according to William McCawley.3 “Gabrielino shamans belonging to the Chumash 'antap society may have also used the Chumash solar calendar. This calendar consisted of twelve months of 30 days each, and was calculated by observing the changing positions of the constellations near the horizon before sunrise. Star charts made of stone tablets inlaid with tiny shell beads may have aided the shamans in this task.”
Special Places
In 1999, the late Alvino Siva pointed out a special place in his Cahuilla ancestral home high up in a remote wilderness in the Santa Rosa Mountains. During the summer solstice, and only during the solstice, he explained, a beam of sunlight arrived to shine through a “window,” or, hole between boulders, and then onto another rock that was specially placed there a very long time ago. 4
In other places, such as modern-day Orange County, landscapes served as observatories for the solstices so important to traditional ceremonies.
Pictographs at Burro Flats Painted Cave in Chumash homelands of Ventura County (Courtesy of Wikimedia)
Southern California Sky Maps
What stars are shining above your back yard? Use this interactive star chart.
Which planets can you see tonight? Explore this guide.
What’s happening in the night sky this week? See “Sky at a Glance.”
NASA Astronomy Photo of the Day.
Thank you!
Thanks for reading News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. Comments, ideas, contributions? Please EMAIL. Dorothy Ramon Learning Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that saves and shares Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. Join us at dorothyramon.org and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center on Facebook. Pat Murkland, Editor. March 17, 2021.
Patencio, Francisco. 1943. Stories and Legends of the Palm Springs Indians. As told to Margaret Boynton. © Palm Springs Desert Museum, pp. 50-52
Hill, Kenneth C., University of Arizona, Serrano Dictionary, 1989 (unpublished) p 119
McCawley, William, © 1996 by William McCawley, The First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles, Malki Museum Press/Ballena Press, pp 100-101
personal communication with Pat Murkland, 1999.