This constellation, too, as the Pleiades, was regarded as a group of seven individuals. According to the Blackfoot of the Plains, they were the seven sons of the Sun and the Moon, while in another version they were seven hunters, running away in the sky pursued by a bear.
A similar tale is found among the Iroquois, accord to which a huge bear devoured all the game during winter, but when the hunters came on its tracks, the animal disappeared. Three hunters one day went to its research, accompanied by their dog, and went until the margin of the world, in the North, where the earth touched the sky vault. In the icy fog, they saw the bear moving among the clouds, as they were snow-covered mountains. At last the bear came to a cave and entered it, followed by the hunters, who remained imprisoned in the bear’s invisible net. The hunters remained in the sky and formed the three stars of the “handle” of the Dipper (Gill-Sullivan 1992: p. 105).
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Blackfoot camp. In the foreground a painted tipi, whose upper part shows the constellation of the Great Bear, which differs from the Pleiades (tipi in the background) by a different distribution of the seven stars constituting it (Photo Walter McClintock, around 1900) |
Another widespread tradition narrates of a girl who transformed herself into a bear and menaced her brothers. The latter ran away, to escape the fury of the enraged animal and went into the sky, where they turned into the constellation. A similar myth is found in Ancient Greece, in the tale of the nymph Callisto, turned into a bear by the goddess Hera, enraged because the girl had been seduced by the goddess’ husband, Zeus, and gave birth to a child from him. When the son, who became a successful hunter, was going to kill his own mother, in the shape of a she-bear, who he had not recognized, Zeus transferred both in the sky, transforming them into the constellations of the Great Bear and of the Little Bear.
The stars of the Great Bear (Ursa Major), in the boreal regions, are circumpolar stars, revolving around the Polar Star, the pivot of the sky, never going below the horizon. But if one observes the constellation at the same hour during the night, in the course of the year, one can see how it describes a whole circle around the celestial pole. This means that these stars could be considered as a time marker, signalling not only the passing of time during the hours of the night, but also the seasonal cycle during the year (Krupp 1991: p. 237).
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Drawing showing the movements of the Big Dipper during the year, if observed at the same hour, in this case at 9 P.M. (Illustration from Krupp 1991) |
Animals