Star art by Isabella Madrigal after discussing star stories in the July 8, 2023, creative workshop at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, a series co-sponsored by Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, Pre-Texts, and the Center. The free Workshops continue Saturday, July 15.
A night sky full of wonder and meaning
By Pat Murkland
We’ve learned that Indigenous stories about stars aren’t “just” stories. They are useful in some way. Stars are a calendar. They give us direction and help us find our way. A star story may lead us in a moral direction. Stars also give us general important information, such as when to find different foods. The late Cahuilla Elder Katherine Siva Saubel remembered how her mother watched the ways certain stars were shining, to learn how harsh the winter weather would be.1
“They studied the north star, how it turns about, and the seven stars and the morning star —” the late Cahuilla leader Francisco Patencio said in 1939, “All this helped them know when to go and gather their food. The month that the road runner flies means certain things, and the habits of many animals all meant something to these older people who studied the signs of the sun and the moon and the stars and the animals.”2
Today we’re talking about three specific stars.
Let’s first consider the number three.
Not just any number
Sacred ceremonies, songs, food preparation, and more in Indigenous Southern California often invoke the number three. Actions and phrases often repeat three times. For example, we learned from the late Elder Barbara Drake (Tongva) to leach the bitterness from yucca blossoms by bringing water to a boil and draining three times.
In earlier times, special events happened on the third day of both the Serrano and Cahuilla mourning ceremonies. We read about a shaman in another ancient ritual, blowing smoke heavenward three times. The late Serrano Elder Dorothy Ramon also described how certain ritual dances repeated three times.
And she remembered how, when people were burning images of those who had died and saying their goodbyes in ceremony, “Ami' wêhakaym paahif hunukch, But they would circle around it [the burning image] three times,” all before the sun came up.3
Again and again … and again … we see threes, whether in ceremony or everyday life. Dorothy Ramon Learning Center leaders Ernest and June Siva loved their dog named Ocho, Spanish for “Eight,” and when they got a second dog they named her Pahi', which is Serrano for “Three.” She spoke Serrano, as do all the Sivas’ dogs. When she barked at night, she always had something important to tell us.
At night, the number Three — Pahi' in Serrano and páh in Cahuilla — does send us to the stars. Here’s how.
Counting stars
We shared this image of Che he yom (Image Credit & Copyright: Blake Estes (iTelescope Siding Spring Obs.) & Christian Sasse via NASA) in May when sharing some star stories and a song about the stars.
The Pleiades star cluster is known widely as the “Seven Sisters.” In the 1800s, for example, poet William Cullen Bryant wrote, “The group of sister stars, which mothers love/ to show their wandering babes, the gentle Seven.”
In 1899, scholar Richard Hinckley Allen wrote, “The Pleiades have everywhere been among the most noted objects in the history, poetry, and mythology of the heavens.”4 He only glimpsed a tiny part of the big picture, though, because he lacked knowledge of many, if not most, Indigenous stories. Ancient Chinese, Arabic, Greek and Roman people join Native Americans and others around the globe in telling varied and sometimes similar stories about this star cluster.
The Cherokee, for example, tell of seven children who danced up to the sky — but one died when looking back to the ground.5
The Cahuilla say there are only three sisters.
Francisco Patencio explained in 1939: “These were not seven sisters, only three. The other four stars are the jewels which they wore on their arms, about their necks, and on the caps on their heads. Among the Indians these stars are called Che he yom.6 These sisters only appear in June.”7
Patencio listed different stories about how people became stars, and he summed up the Seven (Three) Sisters story. He said that when these three girls didn’t want to live with their parents anymore, they climbed into the sky from a specific place in Moreno Valley. And they became stars.
Here, Elder Kim Marcus (Serrano-Cahuilla), who also is a Dorothy Ramon Learning Center Dragonfly Award honoree, shares more:
In the version of the story that Katherine Saubel remembered, after the three young women swam and heard the flute music, the youngest girl fell in love with the youngest man. The older brother “didn’t want that,” Katherine Saubel said, and said the men should leave. But the younger brother “didn’t want that.”
“Pénga' pé' pé' ay pé' hemchá'aqiwe' pé'em pé'em taxhéqiskatem, taxwáxallkatem 'íka' 'áwsunika'. Then those sisters rose up into the heavens.”8
Enjoy your Creativity
Our free creative workshops co-sponsored by the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, and Pre-Texts continue this Saturday, July 15, 2023, at noon at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, 127 N. San Gorgonio Ave., Banning, CA. Discuss Indigenous stories and then make art or write creatively. All are welcome. Ages 16 and up.
Dragonfly Gala
We’re getting reservations for our big celebration on Aug. 12, 2023. It’s the 501c3 nonprofit Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s 20th anniversary of saving and sharing Southern California cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. Help us honor Dorothy Ramon Learning Center leaders Ernest and June Siva!
SECURE YOUR SPOT. TABLES: $1,000, $2,000, $3,000; SPONSORSHIPS ALSO AVAILABLE. Individual tickets, $60. PLEASE RSVP HERE.
Your RSVP helps us make sure we can serve everyone! SEATING IS LIMITED.
We’re looking forward to our delicious meal with BBQ and traditional foods prepared by Willie Pink; displays and cultural exhibits with Mother Earth Clan, Morongo Cultural Department, San Manuel Education Department, and more; traditional bird-singing and dancing; and our epic silent auction. Please join us!
Thank you
News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center is always FREE. We love to hear from you. PLEASE EMAIL. Thanks as always for reading along with us, from Center leaders Ernest and June Siva and Editor Pat Murkland. July 13, 2023.
Katherine Siva Sauvel (also spelled Saubel) and Eric Elliott, Isíll Héqwas Wáxish, A Dried Coyote’s Tail, 2004, Malki Museum Press, v. 1 pp. 610-611
Francisco Patencio, Stories and Legends of the Palm Springs Indians, as told to Margaret Boynton, © 1943 by Caroline Snyder, Palm Springs, Times-Mirror Co., Los Angeles, p. 113.
Dorothy Ramon and Eric Elliott, “Ceremonial Resuscitation,” in Wayta’ Yawa’: Always Believe, 2000, Malki Museum Press, p. 372.
Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, 1963, Dover Publications Inc., reprints Star-Names and Their Meanings published by G.E. Stechert in 1899. p. 392. (Note: this work contains colonizing terms dominant in that era about Indigenous people.)
Ray A. Williamson in Earth & Sky: Visions of the Cosmos in Native American Folklore, edited by Ray A. Williamson and Claire R. Farrer, © 1992 University of New Mexico Press, p. 57.
The late Cahuilla Elder Katherine Siva Saubel (also spelled Sauvel) with linguist Eric Elliott in her cultural memoir, Isíll Héqwas Wáxish, A Dried Coyote’s Tail, used the orthography Chéxiyam. v. 1, p. 334. She noted that Francisco Patencio didn’t tell the complete story of the Chéxiyam in his cultural memoir, in the way she had been told the story as a child.
Francisco Patencio, “The Story of the New Stars,” in Stories and Legends of the Palm Springs Indians, pp. 50-52.
See footnote 6, Katherine Siva Saubel and Eric Elliott, v. 1, p. 334.