THE PLEIADES

 

According to the Hurons, the Plaiades were a group of seven heavenly sisters, the Seven Maidens, who went on earth to dance in certain seasons. For the agriculturists of the North-Eastern region, the rising of the Pleiades above the horizon, after their disappearance during the summer, indicated that the time of planting was come.
Most of the mythical narratives having this constellation as their focus take place in winter, because this is the period in which the seven stars are seen at the centre of the night sky.

 

Decorated tipi of the Blackfoot chief Brings Down the Sun. On the upper part a group of seven circles is shown, representing the constellation of the Pleiades, dominating the winter sky (Photo Walter McClintock, around 1900)

 

An Onondaga tale (one of the nations composing the Iroquois confederacy) narrates that a group of children decided to dance every day, after the end of the planting season. A strange character, an old man with white hair and the costume adorned with white feathers, advised them to give up, but the children did not want to know and continued to dance. Then they demanded their families for food, with which to feast, but their parents refused. Although frustrated and hungry, they continued to assemble and dance, and began gradually to arise in the sky. Despite the shouts and calls of their parents, they raised more and more, until they remained in the sky in the shape of a group of stars, which the Iroquois called the “Dancing Stars”.
This tale was to remember that, since their first appearance above the horizon, the Pleiades announced the beginning of the winter season and that the agriculturists need to know that they had to rely on the supplies gathered during the preceding months, which would be sufficient until the arrival of next spring. Every night, the Pleiades rise more and more in the sky vault, signalling in this way the progress of winter, and seem to dance in the sky, above and above. It was the most difficult season of the year, in which the food could be scarce, and  the supplied put aside had to be consumed with parsimoniousness  (Krupp 1991: p. 252-253).