Sky & Telescope, Rambling through the Skies, 7/2000
The symbolism of the Milky Way's glowing band varied among cultures, representing coming of age and the afterlife. Some Native Americans in California saw this ribbon of light set in stone.
THE SUMMER STARS WEAR THE Milky Way like a frayed ribbon. It trims the night with a shopworn satin finish. Strapping constellations to this month's all-sky chart, it's a star-girdling belt that cinches Cassiopeia, threads through the Summer Triangle, snakes along Serpens, braces Ophiuchus, and restrains Scorpius. Pale next to all those stars, the Milky Way prompted the Roman poet Marcus Manilius to wonder whether it was a flawed seam in the celestial sphere.
As an edge-on, inside panorama of the flattened spiral galaxy in which we reside, the Milky Way encircles us. Of course, only half of this gossamer ring can be seen at a time. Because the Milky Way is a complete belt, the Earth's daily rotation lets it cross overhead twice every 24 hours, and the timing of its passages through the zenith depends on the season. Fastened at the northern and southern horizons, summer's span of Milky Way postures like the monumental Gateway Arch of St. Louis around midnight in July.
Although the Milky Way is immense, it is soft around the edges. Its panache is understated. It vaults the darkness like a white and pale wedding veil tossed up by the bride after her garter. The Estonians, in fact, recognized a bridal veil in the Milky Way's wan and streaming light. It belonged to Lindu, the Queen of Birds. Cassiopeia, then, was not the only queen scarfed in such celestially sheer fabric.
Lindu was a goddess of nature's seasonal capacity for renewal, and her fickle fiance, Northern Lights, left her waiting at the altar. Abandoned by love, but still matrimonially gowned, she trails her milky veil through the sky. I detailed the consequences of her melancholy in a previous installment of this monthly ramble through the skies (S&T: October 1993, page 58).
While not everyone made a face net out of the Milky Way, other peoples have sensed something equally tenuous in its ashen pallor. For the San Bushmen of southern Africa's Kalahari Desert, the powdery Milky Way is the white ash of an edible root, pitched into the sky by a girl in mandatory retreat at the onset of puberty.
Others affiliated the Milky Way's ghostly light with spirits and the dead. Chhayapatha, a traditional Hindu name, means "path of the shades of the dead." The Chemehuevi, native people of California's Mojave Desert, saw something similarly spectral in the Milky Way: the trail for the dead to the Spirit Land in the north. In Northern California, the Shasta, the Ajumawi, and the Maidu all regarded the Milky Way as the path by which souls journeyed to the celestial afterlife.
Without sacrificing the spiritual connotations of the Milky Way, Southern California's Luiseno Indians called it Piiwish Ahuutax and likened it to the cord-and-eagle-down headband worn in solemn ritual, including the mourning ceremonies. Piiwish means "whitish" or "ashen" and is also synonymous with "headband." Ahuutax means "raised up" or "exalted" and so elevates the white headband to the celestial and transcendental realm as the Milky Way.
The Luiseno occupied what is now coastal Orange County, between San Juan Capistrano and Oceanside, and the interior to Hemet and Palomar Mountain. Today, Luiseno cultural identity is preserved on several reservations in San Diego and Riverside counties. In Luiseno tradition, the Milky Way is a spirit, and the spirits of the dead are drawn to it. Luiseno mourning songs -- intended to assist the spirit of life liberated at death to reach its celestial destination -- contain numerous references to the Milky Way. With help from the mourners, spirits rise with the star Nukulish, or Antares, and ascend to the sky via the Milky Way.
Most of what we know about Luiseno astronomical tradition was documented by Constance Goddard DuBois, whose ethnographic monograph on Luiseno religion was published in 1908, and by John Peabody Harrington, whose extensive field notes on the Luiseno and many other indigenous North American peoples remain unpublished. Both Harrington and DuBois explained Luiseno use of a milkweed-fiber net in the boys' initiation ceremony as a symbol for the Milky Way, and wanawut, the word for this net, sometimes doubled as an alternate name for the Milky Way. A circular design drawn on the ground for the girls' ritual initiation to adult life also included Milky Way symbolism. The emblem's three concentric rings, each broken on the north, differed in color, and the white outer ring stood for the Milky Way.
DuBois also provided several versions of the Luiseno creation story, which begins with the arrival of Pale White, a mysterious essence that seems to be an abstract, primordial incarnation of the Milky Way. Pale White appeared in a vacant and silent cosmos occupied only by Kivish Atakvish, whose name means "Alone-and-empty." As a mystical version of the Milky Way, Pale White then created two "round things" and, after an indeterminate time, withdrew as enigmatically as it appeared. Within three days, the two round things came to life as a complementary couple, male and female. After mating, they transformed. He became the sky, and she, as Mother Earth, brought all creation to term. Recapitulating the primeval transformation of the universe into an ordered cosmos invested with life, the ritual transformation of youth understandably borrows Milky Way imagery to instruct and integrate the adolescent candidates for adult society.
Because Luiseno sky lore was known to be extensive, yet remained unstudied, I began a systematic survey of the fundamental sources in 1992. Cooperatively curious and reliably supportive of my inquiries, Richard Buchen, reference librarian at the Southwest Museum's Braun Research Library in Highland Park, California, continued to make the library's microfilm copies of Harrington's field notes available to me. By April 1993, I had discovered an intriguing and unexpected entry --Harrington's description of the "Wanawut Rock" in Luiseno territory. While motoring along the old Pala-Temecula Road on July 31, 1932, Harrington's Luiseno consultant Jose Albanos pointed out the rock. According to Albanos, its name derived from a white band on it: "The Wanawut looks like a long streak in the rock."
Notations of mileages in the Harrington notes suggested that the rock's location might be rediscovered, and I shared the information with a few people who sometimes visited the area, hoping someone might undertake a search. Nothing turned up until I contacted Bruce Love, an archaeologist in Riverside. Four days after I gave him a copy of Harrington's account, I received a telephone message: "I found the rock." It was exactly where Harrington said it was, and on July 7, 1993, I visited the site with Love and two Luiseno leaders, Raymond Basquez and Mark Macarro.
About 5 meters (17 feet) high, the Luiseno Milky Way Rock is a tall and massive granite boulder. Seen from the road, it protrudes conspicuously from the surrounding chaparral. A ribbon of white quartz arcs over it like the Milky Way crossing the zenith, and Albanos specifically told Harrington this distinctive white stripe is the wanawut, a symbol for the Milky Way. Completely natural, the milky seam looks as if it were inscribed with industrial precision.
We have no information about any activity that may have been staged at the Wanawut Rock. Nevertheless, as belted by the Milky Way, it was recognized as a station of supernatural celestial power in a sacred landscape. In Luiseno songs, according to Macarro, the Milky Way is said to be "rooted" in the Earth. Conforming to this account, the quartz band emerges from the base of the rock, rises straight up the north face, drops over the top, and continues down to the bottom on the other side.
The Milky Way's culmination on summer nights is implied by mourning-song references to the spirit's ascent to it with Antares, and the boulder's features are all congruent with this spiritual meaning of the Milky Way. The quartz even splits like the summer Milky Way -- into two branches on the south side of the rock. The division mimics the dark Cygnus Rift.
Although the Cygnus Rift looks like a deep tear in the Milky Way, the black cut does not reveal the more distant background of deep space. Rather, it masks part of the Milky Way. Interstellar clouds of light-scattering dust grains in that direction darken the stars behind them. This foreground dust is particularly concentrated toward Cygnus, but in fact, it is generously distributed through the spiral arms in the disk of our galaxy. We are immersed in dust that dims and reddens all of the stars and diminishes our vista of the entire Milky Way. This microscopic dust veils the distant "congeries of innumerable stars" as Galileo described his telescopically resolved view of the Milky Way, and turns our galaxy a more pale shade of white.
PHOTO (COLOR): When the summer Milky Way vaults the zenith for midnorthern latitudes, it puts one tendril down in the northeast (upper left) and the other in southwest. It is also dramatically split by the Cygnus Rift (center) and so lies across the celestial dome like a tattered ribbon. Photograph by Dennis di Cicco.
PHOTO (COLOR): The Luiseno Indians of Southern California likened the white and pale Milky Way to a ritual headband made of cord and eagle down. As a complete loop of soft ethereal light, the Milky Way lifted the spirits to the celestial realm. The Luiseno name for the Milky Way means "exalted headband."
PHOTO (COLOR): Ceremonies initiating Luiseno girls into adult life included symbolic ground drawings. Each of the drawing's three concentric rings is broken on the north. The red ring stands for the "root of existence," or spirit. The black ring symbolizes the night sky. The white ring is the Milky Way. Replica by Paul Apodaca.
PHOTOS (COLOR): The Wanawut, or "Milky Way," Rock in Luiseno territory near Pala, California, is conspicuous but was ignored until a review of John Peabody Harrington's unpublished ethnographic field notes revealed its significance. A white vein of quartz strikes toward the sky on the north side (left). On the south side (right), the band of quartz branches and so echoes the split in the summer Milky Way in Cygnus. Photographs by E. C. Krupp.
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By E. C. Krupp
E. C. KRUPP usually turns pale when the dust settles at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
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