THE SUN AND THE MOON

 

The lunar cycle was the base for time recording, dividing the year into about twelve periods, the “moons”, from a new moon to the next. The sun was the base for marking the time periods during the daytime. Furthermore, the sun’s movements signalled the changes of the seasons, passing from a sun high in the sky and longer days during summer to a sun low on the horizon and shorter and cold days in winter. The solstices marked the turning points in the oscillation and were often the occasion of ritual celebrations, especially the winter solstice, which announced the return of warmer weather and of the spring rebirth. 
The Sun is present in the mythology all through Native America, is personified as the source of the fertilizing vital force, as a beneficent and creating father. However, the withering power of the sun was also regarded as a potential threat and was sometimes represented, in various groups, as a cannibalistic Sun and a powerful warrior.

 

Anthropomorphic image of the Sun, "who the Americans worship, offering him tobacco smoke as incense", illustration from Codex Canadensis, parchment manuscript realized between 1664 and 1675 by the French Jesuit Louis Nicolas (Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma)

 

Oftentimes, the Sun and the Moon are represented in mythology as broche and sister. A widespread myth all through Native America narrates how a brother came secretly to meet his sister, as a secret lover, concealing his identity. One day the sister decided to mark the body or face of her lover with soot, in order to discover him in the daytime, and so discovered that he was her own brother. Caught by shame, the girl shall try to keep herself as far as possible from the incestuous brother, thus establishing the different time cycles signalled respectively by the moon and the sun, which rarely find themselves together in the sky and always on the opposite side  (Gill-Sullivan 1992: p. 291).

 

Buffalo skin painted around 1740 by the Quapaw, a population residing in actual Arkansas, showing the Sun and the Moon. The human figure on the moon alludes probably to a mythical narrative belonging to the cycle of astronomical myths widely diffused all through the American continent (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris)

According to Lakota cosmology, at the beginning of time, when mankind still lived in the underground world, a beautiful woman lived, whose name was ite. She had married tate, the God  of Wind, from whom she had four children. The trickster, inktomi, a character always searching to make some stratagem to create confusion and ridicule in the world, convinced ite’s old parents and the woman herself to take advantage of her own beauty to become wi’s (the Sun’s) companion. Impressed by the woman’s beauty, the Sun invited her to the divinities’ feast.  Inktomi instructed her to sit on the vacant seat, just near wi. This was the place destined to hanwi, the Moon, Sun’s partner, who was late because she was adorning and dressing herself, always on inktomi’s advise. When at last Moon came to the feast, she saw, sitting on her place near the Sun, the beautiful human woman: then she sat behind the Sun, covering her head with her robe in shame, while all were laughing at her. At this point, škan, or takuškanškan, “What moves” (the spirit who directed the creation process and produced every forms of movement), intervened. He decreed that from then on the Sun and the Moon should be separated, going each on a different path: they governed the alternation of day and night. Furthermore, the Moon would rule a third period, “the interval between the time she went from him until she returned to him (Walker 1917: 166). This rather enigmatic description seems to refer to the lunar cycle, because the Moon, after the episode which caused her shame, covers her face when she is “near the Sun” and uncovers it only when she is far from him.

 

Buffalo skin decorated with a solar wheel, a motif widely utilized in the Plains area. The artefact was realized by the Lakota presumably in the early 1900s (Southwest Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles, California)