1. Lakota ethnoastronomy
Introduction
Although there has been much written about Plains Indian ethnoastronomy, a large amount of that literature has focused on the Caddoan ethnic/linguistic group - in particular, tribes such as the Pawnee, Arikara, and Arapaho. In this paper, I will focus on the "Sioux" Indian tribes (a misnomer), looking in particular at the astronomical practices and beliefs of the Oglala, Hunkpapu, and other Lakota bands. It can be shown that despite what some anthropologists have proclaimed about living 'timelessly', the Lakota did pay attention to the heavens, and they did have means of preserving what they observed.
Sun Dance
Contrary to common belief, the Plains Indian Sun Dance was neither a form of solar worship nor a ritual ordeal or sacrifice. For the Lakota, the Sun was indeed a representative of the Great Mystery (wakan tanka), and was known as a wakan akanta (superior divinity) whose name was Wi. However, the Sun Dance is not for the purposes of offering blood or anything else to the sun; and even though many people have focused on the use of hooks being driven into the flesh of the dancers or their way of dancing until exhaustion, this was not an 'ordeal' in the commonly understood sense. Instead, the "probationer" or dancer volunteered to partake in the ritual in order to help put himself and his band in harmony with the cosmos. (Lincoln, 1994.)
The Lakota hold their Sun Dance very year in late July or August. It is thought that the timing of the Sun Dance had more to do with the height of the buffalo herd population at that time of the year (that was when all the nomadic hunting bands could gather in one place) than with any specific astronomical or calendrical event. A vertical connection (axis mundi) to the sun and the cosmos is necessary for the ceremony to continue, and this is symbolized by erecting a large cottonwood tree at the center of the dance ground. The tree is adorned with flags and artefacts of six colors, representing the six cardinal directions (east, west, north, south, above, below.) The dancing ground is surrounded by an arbor covered with boughs with an opening to the east, where the dancers and the Sun enter each day. (Crummett, 1993.)
One of the more sensational aspects of the dance is, of course, the piercing of dancers with pegs through the chest; these pegs are connected to a rope which is tied around the central tree. The dancer runs from the periphery of the circle to the center and back three times, building up speed. After the third flight, the dancer runs with such force that the pegs are torn out of his chest, ripping free from his flesh. Many Lakota point out that this part of the ritual simply emphasizes that at birth, people are "torn" this way from the Great Mystery and from their connection to the veridical dimension of the cosmos. It reinforces the idea that everything is ultimately dependent on the gifts of the Sun, and can't ever truly be free of the heat and light that it gives. (Farrer, 1992.)
According to the Lakota, the Sun Dance is one of the six great ceremonies, including the smoking of the holy Pipe, that was given to them by their culture-bringer, White Buffalo Calf Woman. Although it became something of a powwow-style tourist attraction around the middle of the century (after the U.S. government outlawed the more sensational aspects of it in the name of "decency"), since the 1970s, AIM members and other Lakota traditionalists have tried to recapture some of the solemnness of the original ritual, and have subsequently banned tourists, alcohol, and other distractions, while restoring the piercing and rigor of the ritual. Non-Indians have been allowed to participate, but only if they are well known and agree to obey by all the rules and taboos of the ceremonies.
From an astronomical standpoint, the Sun Dance is interesting because its elements display many of the features of the Lakota cosmos. The Lakota believe that the circle is a divine shape, primarily because so many things in the cosmos (the Sun, the Moon, etc.) are round. Although the Sun Dance is not held on the vernal equinox, the eastern opening of its arbor clearly is supposed to be oriented toward the rising of the summer sun. The Lakota have not been an agricultural people, at least within historical times, although they may have been before. Like many nomadic societies, they did not attach much importance to fixed points within the year.
Winter Counts
The Lakota did not have a system of writing prior to European contact, and thus did not have a calendrical notation system as we would understand it, or any "true" written history. However, they did utilize a means of counting winters and noting significant events that passed each winter season by recording them ideographically. This was used to supplement their primarily oral tradition. They would begin their year with the first snowfall, and end it with the thawing of spring. The tribal winter count keeper would symbolize each passing winter with a pictograph and a phrase notched into a tanned animal hide, and these were mnemonic devices to record the most significant events of that year.
The tribal count keeper's job was to remember each year and the things that happened. "That was the winter when we saw the purple spotted buffalo," or something like that. Von Del Chamberlain discovered that these winter counts often contained significant astronomical data. Among a sample of some 200 winter counts from many different bands, he claimed to have found pictographic records of 17 astronomical events, including solar eclipses, lunar eclipses, "fireballs" or spectacular meteors, comets, and the Leonid meteor shower -- in particular the famous 1833 meteor "blizzard." (Del Chamberlain, 1984.) The Lakota clearly only recorded very stunning and unique phenomena - unique enough to identify a particular year.
They did seem to realize that eclipses were recurrent events, but they did not seem to believe that there was any type of regularity or periodicity to the most spectacular total eclipses of the sun or moon. Del Chamberlain concludes that the reason why only one comet appears in the winter counts is because the Indians did seem to believe that the recurrence of comet appearances was a recurrent, predictable phenomenon. Why this insistent interest in transient events? Most likely, it was connected to the Lakota belief that such things were connected to the wakan or incomprehensible nature of the cosmos.
For the Lakota, anything which did not behave the same way as other things did was wakan. A heyoka, or sacred-backwards-clown, was wakan because he did things in an ironic, reversed way that was different from everyone else. The planets were wakan because of the way they wandered among the other stars. The pole star was wakan because all the other stars whirled around it while it kept its place in the sky. The spectacular cosmic events recorded in their winter counts are similarly wakan, because they were unexpected and dramatic.
Ultimately, as was suggested earlier, the Lakota were not very interested in recording recurrent astronomical phenomena, because as nomadic hunters, they didn't need an agricultural calendar. They did reckon the months (literally, by the passing of new Moons) and the seasons but the primary annual event for them was when the population of the buffalo herd reached its peak. For them, the most interesting and important aspects of the cosmos were the ones that were idiosyncratic and non-replicated, although they did watch the movements of the Sun and the stars for other purposes or in earlier times, which will be discussed below.
Medicine Wheels
While there has been some argument over the antiquity of North American medicine wheels, and their purpose, most scholars are agreed that they may have had some astronomical function. The medicine wheels were large spoked wheels built from rocks with a central cairn in the middle. The most famous totally intact medicine wheel is the one found in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, which appears to have been used to watch the summer solstice sunrise and the summer dawn stars (Aldeberan and Rigel), and was probably built around 1760. (Krupp, 1983.) There are numerous other medicine wheels in Canada, where they seem to be most common, but they also were utilized on the northern Plains, including in Lakota territory.
John M. Eddy found numerous remains of medicine wheels on the Plains, which were often as large as a hundred meters in diameter. Eddy claims the date of many of these wheels has never been established firmly (some could be as much as 10,000 years old), and that many modern ethnographic informants, when asked about them, seem to have forgotten about their original function, and know only that they are sacred and have to do with powerful "medicine." (Eddy, 1977.) The wheels clearly show similarities to sun dance medicine lodges and tipi rings, and for the Lakota both these structures were thought to be "mirrors" of the cosmos. Many of them have 28 'spokes,' which is a significant astronomical number.
His Plains medicine wheels, like the Bighorn wheel, often use the central cairn as a foresight to view the summer solstice sunrise. A wheel in Montana reinforced this solar connection when he found that opposite the solstice spoke line on the other side of the cairn was a small solar symbol made of sunken lichen-covered stones. This symbol looks like the "parent" wheel, and suggests strongly that the wheels themselves could be solar imagery, with the spokes representing the radiating energy of the sun. The smaller symbol has turned up in several of the wheels found in Canada, so it does seem to be more than just an idiosyncratic marker.
The Canadian wheels are important because they often contain certain correlations or nearby archaeological materials which make them more dateable than their cousins on the Plains. The Moose Mountain wheel in Saskatchewan, for example, is extremely similar to the Bighorn Wheel, and its construction appears to date to somewhere around 100 to 300 CE. (Nikiforuk, 1992.) Eddy feels that these wheels are strong evidence for a "medicine wheel" tradition on the Plains which could stretch back thousands of years. They may not have all been built by the same people, he cautions, but they do seem to represent a certain diffusion of ideas.
If this is true, why the apparent lack of such sun-watching among most modern Lakota? Eddy thinks that with the introduction of the horse by the Europeans and their shift to a nomadic lifestyle, the Lakota lost much of their traditional astronomy - the kind of star-charting that could be found among the horticultural Caddoans, for example. He heralds it as a classic example of a loss of traditional knowledge through cultural contact. As it turns out, he wasn't completely correct.
Celestial Imagery
The fact that astronomy was important for the Lakota can clearly be found inscribed on their artefacts. Eppridge and others have collected a lot of the artefacts associated with the Ghost Dance religion or "ethnic revitalization movement" founded by the prophet Wovoka. In the Ghost Dance ritual, the morning star was identified with the Messiah: it was the "yellow star" who those in Ghost Dance trance were supposed to watch. It appears in the form of a Maltese cross on many ghost shirts worn by the dancers. Other shirts often contain images depicting stars, moons, suns, and comets. (Eppridge, 1980.)
The Lakota often made a special war shield following a Vision Quest. The design on the shield was supposed to offer them special protection and guidance. Many of the shields found by ethnographers contain celestial designs, usually depicting the sun, the Pleiades, the Little Dipper, Castor and Pollux, the Pole Star, and the morning star. Vision questers were often directed to make the focus of their visions the central element of their shields. The fact that they frequently chose astronomic elements shows what their attention was often directed toward. (Carlson, 1990.)
The heyokas or sacred clowns of the Lakota often covered their bodies with special painted designs. Sometimes these designs reflected sheer chaos. Sometimes they contained things that were supposed to be deliberate insults against enemies of the tribe. Often they contained the particular "step" or zigzag design that was supposed to reflect the lightning or thunder which was the hallmark of Wakinyan, the Thunder Bird. (One was supposed to become a heyoka if they were frightened by thunder.) But particularly interesting to ethnoastronomers was their frequent use of the sun and the moon, or the morning and evening star, to reflect on their bodies their unique "oppositional" or reversing nature.
The Pole Star appears infrequently on Lakota artefacts, but always prominently. Like the Sun, it is thought to be part of the Superior Mysteries. They call Polaris Wichapi Owanjila, "the Star that always stands in one place." The other stars are said to be moving in a "dance circle" around it, paying homage to it. The Lakota claimed that Polaris was emblematic of the way that all of creation moved around Wakan Tanka, "that-which-moves-moving-things." (Hollabaugh, 1996.) On objects, it often appears on top of the axis mundi (world-tree): much like the Christmas Star does on the trees people use today...
Other everyday objects of the Lakota have been found to have astronomical images, ranging from moccasins to tipis. There are even examples of the aurora borealis and shooting stars appearing on certain objects. One problem complicating this research is the sheer variety of pictographs used for depicting stars. The Lakota used crosses, lozenges, circles, and interlocking triangles , as well as the kind of five-pointed and six-pointed images Western people would readily identify as stars... only ethnographic information has helped people understand the nature of these depictions.
Lakota Cosmology
Two books, by Hassrick and Powers, give a general indication of what religion was like among the Lakota Sioux. In their complex pantheons, some Lakota ideas about the cosmos can be discerned. The counterpart of Wi, the Sun, was Hanwi, the Moon, whose name literally means "Night Sun." The stars were regarded simultaneously as parts of Skan, the Sky, and were also thought to be supernatural people in their own right. Because Sun had abandoned his wife at a feast of the gods, Skan passed judgement on him. From then on, Sun was forced to rule over the day and Moon over the night. Wohpe, their daughter, was the White Buffalo Calf Woman. (Powers, 1972.)
In Lakota cosmology, there were quadripartite divisions of everything: four colors (red, green, blue, yellow), four superior mysteries (sun, sky, earth, rock), four classes of gods (superior, associate, subordinate, spirits), four elements in the sky (sun, moon, sky, stars), four parts of time (day, night, month, year), and four winds corresponding to the four cardinal directions. All of these are symbolized by the Lakota cross-within-a-circle, a symbol which appears throughout the Americas. For the Lakota, it is the "sacred hoop" and represents the totality of their people. (Steinmetz, 1990.)
The user of the Sacred Calf Pipe faces east toward the rising sun at dawn, west toward the setting sun at dusk. The Sun was recognized as one of the greatest of the Lakota's divine Controllers. Inktomi, the trickster-spider, mediates between gods and men. According to this text, Wohpe is Falling Star, and *she* marries the South Wind as her husband. (Hassrick, 1964.) The Morning Star is said to represent the light of knowledge as a counter to the darkness of ignorance.
The eastern part of the tipi symbolizes the source of light. The south, death and the spirit path. The west, darkness and thunderbirds. The north, the path of forefathers. The Buffalo People are said to reside in the north. The Lakota claim to see a woman, rather than a man's face, in the moon, and she is said to be stirring a kettle by the fire. The moon is explicitly linked to women's menses and to pregnancy and fertility. For the Lakota, two of the six directions are marked by the solar zenith and nadir. (Williamson, 1984.)
The stars are said by some Lakota to be very remote from human affairs. People are not to concern themselves with their business because the stars are wakan. (Walker, 1980.) However, this is contradicted by stories which suggest that the star people come to earth to look for brides, and the fact that heroes and other important ancestor figures go to join the stars. (Monroe, 1987.) Lakota society was very individualistic, and so were the visions that were granted to people. So we can expect some degree of variance among religious ideas. The person who made this statement to Walker (Ringing Shield) might not have been familiar with all of the specialzied star lore of the tribe.
Milky Way and Fallen Star
Among the Lakota, there are many interesting myths and legends which are used to explicate their ideas about the cosmos, as is the case among many cultures. According to mythographer James LaPointe, "the ancient Lakota wise men said that all heavenly bodies exert influences upon life on Earth, and the destinies of individual life are at all times under the spell of the sun, moon, and stars." LaPointe also suggests, "... they imparted their knowledge to posterity through oral narratives and object lessons. One star cluster was called Pa yamini pa, 'a monster with three heads.' "
The Lakota have one fascinating myth which tells a great deal about their astronomical beliefs. According to this legend, Fallen Star, a supernatural hero, was the son of the North Star and a Lakota woman. (Interestingly, in Western mythography, the morning star or "Lucifer" is known as the "fallen star" or "the bright star cast out of heaven.") Fallen Star was said to be a member of the Maghpia Oyate or Cloud People and to be a special protector of the Lakota. His mother had lived with North Star in the clouds, but fell to Earth when she made the mistake of trying to dig up a plant growing in the cloud world - something she had been warned against. The North Star now broods in immobile solitude over the loss of his beloved Lakota maiden.
Tupun Shawin (the red-cheeked maid) was found by a group of boy hunters while she was lying unconscious after she had fallen from the cloud world. Her child was nursing from her "vigorously." The boys did not know if she was a cloud or spirit woman and so left her alone. But they did not want to abandon the helpless infant, so they brought it back to the village. The mysterious baby was named Fallen Star and given to a lonely, barren woman in the village. He matured very quickly, and became aware of a special destiny. He told others in the village that he was the child of a bright star in the heavens, and then told his adopted mother that he had to return to his father's place in the sky. He is said to be there now, watching over the Lakotas, his adoptive people.
Lakota people call the Milky Way Wanaghi Tachanku or "trail of the spirits." It was "the trail all Lakota people must take when fate overtakes them." (This is another interesting cross-cultural 'coincidence,' because among the Indians of South America, the Milky Way was also thought to be a "road of the dead" or "way of souls.") They claimed that at the point where the Milky Way splits, a divine Arbiter stood ... people who lived an immoral life were forced to head down the part of the Milky Way that ends in a nebula, tumbling through space forever. Those who lived a proper life took the other road to Wanaghiyata, the promised home of departed souls.
What is fascinating about this myth is that it ends this way, at least according to the translator: "Today, somewhere near the Trail of Spirits, known to others as the Milky Way, Fallen Star sends rays of hope for his earth people." (LaPointe, 1976.) This suggests Fallen Star might be one of the stars found near the Milky Way. Which one can't be determined from the story, but it could be the one of the ones in the Big Dipper. Based on the legend, it would have some special relationship to the Pole Star. This would be an interesting topic for further investigations.
Lakota Constellations and the Black Hills
Sinte Gleiska University scholar Ronald Goodman spent ten years studying the astronomical folklore of Lakota people, and the result of this work was Lakota Star Knowledge: Studies in Lakota Stellar Theology, a book which detailed the literally "cosmic" importance of the Black Hills for Lakota people. It discusses the spring constellations which the Lakota people observed while moving in a cyclical round from site to site in the Black Hills. The Black Hills were thought to be a terrestrial mirror of the cosmos, so the Lakota were simply "mirroring" the motions of the heavens. As the sun moved counterclockwise through the ecliptic, the Lakota were moving clockwise through the terrestrial analogues of their constellations. (Goodman, 1990.)
These constellations were: Canshasha Ipusye (Dried Willow), which was watched from the winter camps during the spring equinox; Wincinchala Sakowin (the Seven Little Girls = the Pleiades), which were watched from Harney Peak during "thunder's welcoming"; Tayamni (the Buffalo), which were watched from a central cairn during "life's welcoming in peace"; Ki Inyanka Ocanku (the center of the "Race Track"), which were watched from Pe Sla (a bare hill); and Mato Tipila (the Bear's Lodge), which were watched from Devil's Tower, during the summer solstice, prior to the Sun Dance. The 'race track' was subdivided into Cangleshka Wakan (sacred hoop) and Tayamni Cankahu (the Animal's Backbone.) The idea of the Black Hills as a 'terrestrial zodiac' is interesting; such an idea was proposed by Katharine Maltwood for some of the formations around Glastonbury.
The key sacred sites within the Black Hills, which are themselves thought to be enclosed by a terrestrial 'race track,' are Bear Lodge Butte, Old Baldy, Ghost Butte, and Thunder Butte. Devil's Tower is actually outside the Black Hills, but it forms the symbolic "Buffalo's Head" of the Lakota with two other hills inside the area -- Bear Butte as the "Buffalo's Nose," and Inyan Kaga as the "Black Buffalo Horn." Goodman notes that the tipi's shape also mirrors the heavens: 3 poles for the North Star, 7 poles for the cardinal directions, 2 poles for "ears", equaling the 12 months and the 12 stars (morning, evening, 7 in the dipper, 3 in Orion's belt.)
Goodman also discusses Fallen Star and the afterlife beliefs of the Lakota. This ties into the Lakota constellation known as nape, "the Hand," which consists of Orion's belt and sword, and the stars of Rigel and Eridanus Beta. He suggests "the Hand" can be correlated with the "Chief who Lost his Arm." In this legend, the chief has his arm torn from his shoulder by Thunderbirds as a result of his selfishness. His daughter offers to marry Fallen Star if he can recover the hand for her. Fallen Star succeeds in this quest, defeats the Thunderbirds and Inktomi, and marries her. As Goodman points out, Fallen Star represents the new chief and the new year, and their son the renewed earth of spring.
In the legend, it is said that while searching for the arm, "Fallen Star... seems to be in the Black Hills area, but at the same time he also appears to be moving through the star world. He travels through three villages or 'star peoples,' and it is said his son will have to visit the other four." Something of astronomical significance is being described here... but I am not sure what. What's most fascinating is how similar this is to the "wounded king" myth of European Grail legends - the wound leads to a loss of fertility, and only healing this wound restores the land. The Grail legends are said to have a zodiacal basis too...
Winter Solstice Stars
Besides the "Race Track," the Lakota watch another important group of stars around the winter solstice. Although they didn't observe the winter solstice itself (it was usually way too cold on the Plains to be out at night star-watching all the time), these stars were noted around this time. Parts of this group of winter stars are parts of the earlier "race track," shifted in the sky; others are not.
Some of these stars/asterisms include Wichapi Owanjila (Polaris), Wakinyan (the Thunderbird = gamma Draconis + 2 stars from "Ursa's bowl"), Wichakihuyapa (the Big Dipper), Mato Tipila (the Bear's Lodge, which includes Castor and Pollux), Tayamni (the Buffalo, which includes Sirius, Rigel, and Aldeberan), Capella, the "Fireplace" (which includes parts of Leo and Gemini), Canshasha Inpusye (the Dried Willow = Triangulum plus Aries), Hehaka (the Elk, which has part of Pisces plus other stars), Keya (the Turtle), Zuzuecha (the Snake = stars in Canis Major + Columba), and Wanagi Ta Chanku (the Spirit's Road = the Milky Way.)
Paula Giese, a Lakota student at Sinte Gleiska, discusses these constellations because she feels that Lakota Star Knowledge only deals with the spring stars. She mentions a few others of importance: Arcturus is said to be variously either Iktobu (going toward), or Wichapi Sunkaku (Morning Star's younger brother), or Oglechkutepi (Arrow game), or Ihuku Kigle (it went under). It has a special relationship to Anpao Wichahapi (dawn star, Venus.) The Agleshka, or Salamander, corresponds to no known Western constellations. The Crab Nebula, which has no Lakota name, apparently occupies a special position among these stars. (Giese, 1995.)
Giese also mentions some interesting things about the Big Dipper. Its seven stars are said to correspond to the seven stages of a woman's maturation and to the seven Lakota council fires. Towin, the Blue Woman Spirit who assists midwives with births, lives in the center of the dipper -- the place where one can find the hole from which Fallen Star's mother fell. The Dipper is said to carry the water for celestial sweat lodge ceremonies, and to ferry the spiritual essence of deceased people to the Milky Way.
Basically, she suggests that there may have been some limited star-watching "from some sheltered location" around the end of the year, close to the winter solstice. Young people were taught about these constellations because the "life-paths" for girls and boys were marked out by the Dipper and so it was important for them to know about it. They were taught that the Sun would eventually return from its southerly drift, and that these stars were a reassurance of that fact. All in all, these are interesting additions to the insights in Goodman's book.
Conclusion
Why, until the publication of Lakota Star Knowledge, did many anthropologists think that the Lakota had no ethnoastronomy? Mostly, this is due to misinterpretations of the stories from Walker's informants, who claimed that the Lakota had no interest in the stars. It was partly due to a misunderstanding of the term wakan. Although they regarded the stars as mysterious and incomprehensible, they still observed them - as part of their religion. Astronomers studying Lakota culture after they had lost control of the Black Hills would not have known how vital star-watching was to their religious ceremonies.
Most ethnographers assumed that only the Caddoan (such as the Skidi Pawnee) groups on the Plains had any meaningful astronomy because only settled horticulturalists would have the time to make observations and only they would have the need to use the heavens as timing mechanisms for agriculture. (Ruggles and Saunders, 1993.) It was assumed by people like Del Chamberlain that, although star knowledge might have been used by the Lakota in the past, the introduction of the horse and the transition to a nomadic buffalo-hunting lifestyle caused this knowledge to disappear. (Chamberlain, 1982.) The Lakota also had an extensively oral tradition, and did not make the complicated sky maps and star charts of the Pawnee, or make other kinds of astronomical notation.
The problem was that Western astronomers simply didn't look closely enough at the Lakota religion. Other societies use star-watching as a form of utilitarian time-keeping ... a purely "secular" (literally) pursuit. The problem was that ceremonies like the Sun Dance, Sweat Lodge, and Sacred Pipe contained cosmological knowledge; but ethnoastronomers left study of those rituals to scholars of religion. They didn't realize that the Lakota were the descendants of the "vanished" cultures that created the Plains Medicine Wheels. They spent too much time hunting for alignments and not enough time collecting legends. They didn't understand that some of the adornments on Lakota costumes and artefacts were astronomical, because they didn't look "like stars," and they never really asked anyone about their museum collections.
Unlike some of the other cultures of Mesoamerica and South America, the Lakota did not have an astronomical calendar. They didn't build large, fixed, monumental structures with celestial alignments. They were not interested in fixing the length of the year, or of establishing precise planting and harvesting times, or calculating the beginning of climactic seasons. All that mattered to them was the size of their precious buffalo herd, and they could always determine its peaking point through simple observation. The only part of the year they counted were winters, because on the Plains surviving winters was something worth remembering, and it was the time that hunting ceased.
But research with the Lakota should teach us that nomadic hunting societies do not ignore the heavens, either. Like many other societies on the move, the Lakota used the stars as a guidepost for when to move on from place to place in the Black Hills. Ethnoastronomers seem to have a biased belief that only people who stay in one place bother to stretch their heads out and look up at the sky. But for wandering peoples, the heavens literally may have laid out a "map" of their migrations. Other forms of religious pilgrimage should be studied in this light. The Lakota were probably not the only race who chose to mimic the movements of the stars above by their migrations below.
2. Thunderbird and Trickster
Introduction
The Thunderbird is one of the few cross-cultural elements of Native North American mythology. He is found not just among Plains Indians, but also among Pacific Northwest and Northeastern tribes. He has also become quite a bit of an icon for non-Indians, since he has also had the honor of having automobiles, liquors, and even a United States Air Force squadron named after him. Totems bearing his representation can be found all over the continent. There have been a number of curious theories about the origins of the Thunderbird myth - ones which I will show are probably wrongheaded.
In this paper, moreover, I want to examine how the myths and legends of the Thunderbird tie into the sacred clowning/trickster ritual complex of Plains tribes such as the Lakota. I will show how the Thunderbird is intimately connected to this complex, and attempt to explain why. It is the intimate association between these two traditions that may help explain some features of Plains culture and folklore. Aspects of the Thunderbird myth only make sense in light of these associations.
Plains Indians myth and folklore
In order to understand Plains Indians folklore, we have to realize that their myths were not just "just-so" stories to entertain, divert, or make inadequate efforts at naturalistic explanation. Rather, Indian myth functioned in religious, pedagogical, and initiatory ways, to help socialize young people and illuminate the various religious and other roles in society. Indian myth was always fluid, and grounded in the present, which is what might be expected of societies which largely lacked static, written traditions. Storytelling was an art which was maintained by the medicine people with great fidelity, because it was used to explain the development of certain rituals and elements of society. (Hines 1992)
Some have looked at the Thunderbird myths through the same lens of understanding applied to European mythology. The Thunderbird is like the Indo-European dragon or ogre or Leviathan, a huge monster who kidnaps virginal maidens, and who must be slain by the brave hero. Or the Thunderbird is simply treated as some kind of fantastic oddity, like the mythical unicorn or mermaid - an impossible construction borne from the extremes of the imagination. Both these attempts at explaining myth lose the important point of seeing Thunderbird as a personification of energies in nature - those found in violent thunderstorms and such - and his crucial dual nature.
Still, the Indians were not merely "mythmaking" in the pejorative sense. They no more literally believed in a giant bird generating storms through the beating of its wings, then Christians today literally believe in their divine being as an old man with a beard sitting on a marble throne. Thunderbird is an allegory; his conflicts with other forces in nature are then an attempt to allegorize relationships observed in the natural order, such as the changing of the weather. Like other Thunder Beings, he is essentially an attempt to represent the patterns of activity of a powerful, mysterious force in a way that can be understood simply and easily - sort of the way in which a weather map functions today. (Edmonds and Clark 1989)
The Plains Indians believed that everything that was found in nature had a human representative in microcosm. Everything in nature often contained its own opposite polarity, hence the expected existence of beings such as contraries, women warriors, and berdaches. Because the Thunderbird in particular represented this mysterious dual aspect of nature, manifest through the primordial power of thunderstorms, it is not surprising that his representatives were the heyoka or sacred clowns, who displayed wisdom through seemingly foolhardy action. Western thinking has prevented us from seeing the reasons why Indians perceived this connection. Few anthropologists have sought to locate how Thunderbird may have been mythologically linked to Trickster.
The Nature of Thunderbird
In Plains tribes, the Thunderbird is sometimes known as Wakinyan, from the Dakota word kinyan meaning "winged." Others suggest the word links the Thunderbird to wakan, or sacred power. In many stories, the Thunderbird is thought of as a great Eagle, who produces thunder from the beating of his wings and flashes lightning from his eyes. (Descriptions are vague because it is thought Thunderbird is always surrounded by thick, rolling clouds which prevent him from being seen.) Further, there were a variety of beliefs about Thunderbird, which suggest a somewhat complicated picture. Usually, his role is to challenge some other great power and protect the Indians - such as White Owl Woman, the bringer of winter storms; the malevolent Unktehi, or water oxen who plague mankind; the horned serpents; Wochowsen, the enemy bird; or Waziya, the killing North Wind. But in some other legends (not so much in the Plains), Thunderbird is himself malevolent, carrying off people (or reindeer or whales) to their doom, or slaying people who seek to cross his sacred mountain. (Erdoes and Ortiz 1984)
Many Plains Indians claim there are in fact four colors (varieties) of Thunderbirds (the blue ones are said, strangely, to have no ears or eyes), sometimes associated with the four cardinal directions, but also sometimes only with the west and the western wind. (According to the medicine man Lame Deer, there were four, one at each compass point, but the western one was the Greatest and most senior.) (Fire and Erdoes 1972) The fact that they are sometimes known as "grandfathers" suggest they are held in considerable reverence and awe. It is supposed to be very dangerous to approach a Thunderbird nest, and many are supposed to have died in the attempt, swept away by ferocious storms. The symbol of Thunderbird is the red zig-zag, lightning-bolt design, which some people mistakenly think represents a stairway. Most tribes feel he and the other Thunder beings were the first to appear in the Creation, and that they have an especially close connection to wakan tanka, the Great Mysterious. (Gill and Sullivan 1992)
The fact that Thunderbird sometimes appears as something that terrorizes and plagues Indians, and sometimes as their protector and liberator (in some myths, he was once an Indian himself) is said to reflect the way thunderstorms and violent weather are seen by Plains people. On the one hand, they bring life-giving rain (Thunderbird is said to be the creator of 'wild rice' and other Plains Indians crops); on the other hand, they bring hail, flood, and lightning and fire. It is not clear where with them worship and awe end, and fear and terror begin. Some Indians claim that there are good and bad Thunderbirds, and that these beings are at war with each other. Others claim that the large predatory birds which are said to kidnap hunters and livestock are not Thunderbirds at all. Largely, I suspect that this dual nature of the Thunderbird ties it to the Trickster figure in Indian belief: like the Trickster, the harm the Thunderbird causes is mostly because it is so large and powerful and primeval.
Origins of the Thunderbird Myth
Cryptozoologists like Mark A. Hall, having studied the Thunderbird myths of numerous tribes, and compared them to (mostly folkloric) accounts of unusually large birds in modern times, as well as large birds (like the Roc) in other mythic traditions, suggest that there may well be a surviving species of large avians in America - big enough, apparently, to fly off carrying small animals or children, as has been claimed in some accounts. (Hall suggests the wingspan of such a species would be several feet longer than any known birds - certainly bigger than that of the turkey vulture or other identifiable North American species.) (Hall 1988) Such researchers feel the Thunderbird myth may have originated from sightings of a real-life flesh-and-blood avian which might be an atavism from earlier epochs (a quasi-pterodactyl or teratorn, perhaps.)
However, the big problem with this theory is that most ornithologists consider it to be quite farfetched. If such a species existed (a situation akin to the folkloric Sasquatch), it would be amazing that to this point it has remained unidentified and uncatalogued. A species of birds that big, unless it consisted of an extremely small number of members, would find it hard to avoid detection for long. Hall does suggest the possibility that maybe, like the mastodon, these large birds were hunted to extinction prior to the arrival of Europeans on the North American continent. Still, the other problem with his theory is that it ignores what Indians themselves have to say about the Thunderbird.
They describe the Thunderbird as a spiritual, not just physical, being. It is not seen as just a large, fearsome predatory bird that people tell stories about. Rather, it's an integral part of Plains Indians religion and ritual. Only by ignoring this fact could we put our Western ethnocentric biases into effect, and reduce it to a zoological curiosity. The Thunderbird is much more than that; the Indian attitude toward it comes from more than just the mere fact that it is supposed to be really big. To understand the origins of Thunderbird myths, it's necessary to see how they connect with other elements of Indian belief and ceremony - especially the Trickster complex - and see how they fit into the structure of Plains Indian myth as a whole.
Clowning around in Plains Indian culture
Clowning, like the icon of the Thunderbird, could be found in almost every North American Indian society. In every case, it involved ridiculous behavior, but on the Plains it especially exhibited inversion and reversal as elements of satire. There were four types of clown societies on the Plains - age-graded societies, military societies, the northern plains type, and the heyoka shamanistic societies. The behaviors of all sorts of clowns revolved around a few basic themes or attributes: burlesque, mocking the sacred, playing pranks or practical jokes, making obscene jokes or gestures, caricature of others, exhibiting gross gluttony or extreme appetite, strange acts of self-mortification or self-deprecation, and taunting of enemies or strangers. (Steward 1991)
The age-graded clown societies primarily consisted of older people who had been inducted into their ranks - groups such as the Gros Ventre Crazy Lodge or the Hidatsa Dog Society. These clowns were assumed to simply be playing a role appropriate to their sodality, rather than receiving some sort of supernatural inspiration. They carried out certain expected ritual performances on proscribed days, such as the Crazy Dance or the imitation of animals. In contrast, the military clown societies such as the Cheyenne Inverted Bow String Warriors, often carried comical or ridiculous weapons, but were also expected to show absurd bravery in battle, provoking the enemy into giving up its discipline and cohesion with taunts and insults. Not surprisingly, they sometimes rode their horses backwards into battle.
The northern plains clowns, found among tribes such as the Ojibway, wore masks which made them appear to be two-faced, and costumes of rags which made them appear comical. All of these three types of clown societies practiced a sort of conventionalized or patterned sort of anti-natural behavior. That is, they might do something which seemed strange or contrary, but under somewhat regular conditions. You knew when they might do something weird - and there were times when they were forbidden to perform their antics. Further, they might often "give up" the clowning way of life, and return to a non-contrary state by marrying and engaging in a more normal mode of existence.
The heyoka were different in three primary ways from the other sorts of clowns. They were truly unpredictable, and could do the unexpected or tasteless even during the most solemn of occasions. Moreso than other clowns, they really seemed to be insane. Also, they were thought to be more inspired by trans-human supernatural forces (as individuals driven by spirits rather than group conventions), and to have a closer link to wakan or power than other clowns. And lastly, they kept their role for life - it was a sacred calling which could not be given up without performing an agonizing ritual of expiation. Not surprisingly, these unique differences were seen as the result of their having visions of Thunderbird, a unique and transforming experience.
Testimony of Black Elk: the heyoka and lightning
The Oglala Indian Black Elk had some interesting things to say about the heyoka ceremony, which he himself participated in. Black Elk describes the "dog in boiling water" ceremony in some detail. He also describes the bizarre items he had to carry as a heyoka, and the crazy antics he had to perform with his companions. He also attempts to explain the link between the contrary trickster nature of heyokas with that of Thunderbird.
"When a vision comes from the thunder beings of the West, it comes with terror like a thunder storm; but when the storm of vision has passed, the world is greener and happier; for wherever the truth of vision comes upon the world, it is like a rain. The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm... you have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better. And so I think this is what the heyoka ceremony is for ... the dog had to be killed quickly and without making any scar, as lightning kills, for it is the power of lightning that heyokas have." (quoted in Neihardt 1959: 160)
Today, of course, Western physicists describe the dual nature of electricity. An object can carry a positive or negative electric charge. The electron is simultaneously a wave and a particle. Electricity and magnetism are thought to be aspects of the same force, and as is well know with magnetism, it comes in polarities, with opposite poles (north and south) attracting. Though the Indians did not have access to our modern scientific instruments, they are likely to have observed some of the same properties in lightning. Thus it would have been intuitive to link the dual spiritual nature of the heyoka (tragicomedy - solemn joking - joy united with pain) with the dual nature of electricity.
Thunderbird and Heyoka, the Sacred Clown
It was believed among the Lakota and other tribes that if you had a dream or vision of birds, you were destined to be a medicine man; but if you had a vision of Thunderbird, it was your destiny to become something else; heyoka, or sacred clown. Like Thunderbird, the heyoka were at once feared and held in reverence. They were supposed to startle easily at the first sound of thunder or first sight of lightning. Thunderbird supposedly inspired the "contrariness" of the heyoka through his own contrary nature. He alternates strong winds with calm ones. While all things in nature move clockwise, Thunderbird is said to move counterclockwise. Thunderbird is said to have sharp teeth, but no mouth; sharp claws, but no limbs; huge wings, but no body. All of these things suggest Thunderbird (and the heyoka) have a curious, paradoxical, contrary nature. You could become heyoka through a vision of the Thunderbird, or just of lightning or a formidable winged being of power. (Steiger 1974)
While clown societies were found throughout the Plains, the heyoka, or sacred clowns, were usually few in number, but were found in almost every clan. Heyoka were contraries, often speaking and walking backwards. They acted in ridiculous, obscene, and comical ways, especially during sacred ceremonies. They were thought to be fearless and painless, able to seize a piece of meat out of a pot of boiling water. They often dressed in a bizarre and ludicrous manner, wearing conical hats, red paint, a bladder over the head (to simulate baldness), and bark earrings. The heyoka was thought to usually carry various sacred items - a deer hoof rattle, a colored bow, a flute, or drum. His "anti-natural" nature was thought to be shamanistic in origin -- and as a contrary, he was expected to act silly and foolhardy during battle (although this was found more among warrior clown societies such as the Cheyenne Inverted Warriors.)
However insulting or sacrilegious heyoka actions might be, they were tolerated, since it was assumed they were acting on the higher and more inscrutable imperatives of the Great Mystery. Heyoka were freed from all the ordinary constraints of life, and thus were usually not expected to marry, have children, or participate in the work of the tribe. Despite their bizarre acts (such as dressing in warm clothes during summer or wearing things inside out), they were trusted as healers, interpreters of dreams, and people of great medicine. Whenever they interrupted the solemnity of a ceremony, people took it as an admonition to see beyond the literalness of the ritual and into the deeper mysteries of the sacred. Like the flash of lightning, the heyoka's sudden outbursts and disturbances were thought to be the keys to enlightenment - much like the absurd acts of Zen masters in Japan. (Hultkrantz 1987)
Thunderbird and Trickster
Part of the link between heyoka and Thunderbird comes from Iktomi, the Trickster figure. Iktomi is said to be heyoka because he has seen and talked with Thunderbird. Iktomi is the first-born son of Inyan (rock), and is said to speak with rocks and stones. Like Coyote and other Trickster figures, Iktomi likes to pull pranks on people, but is just as often the victim of tricks and misfortunes. This makes him at once a culture hero, and a figure to be feared and avoided. Iktomi was thought to be a hypersexual predator, one who frequently pursued winchinchalas (young virgins) who bathed in streams, through various methods of deceit. Yet his pursuits and antics often wound up with him inadvertently getting hurt or winding up in trouble.
Paul Radin suggests that Iktomi and other Trickster figures are akin to the Great Fool or Wild Man of European folklore, who often shows up in the Feast of Fools and other ceremonies where the social order is turned topsy-turvy. (Radin 1956) Jung, following his lead, claims the Trickster as an archetypal part of the collective unconscious; and his "crazy wisdom" as emblematic of humankind's earlier, undivided, unindividuated consciousness. Iktomi and other tricksters seem to be at the constant mercy of their desires; yet their blind luck always seems to protect them from the consequences of their missteps. He is dangerous primarily because he is so powerful, yet so rarely has the forethought or good judgment to use his power wisely. Radin and others proclaim him the representative of untamed, unpredictably wild nature, within the confines of culture.
In other cultural traditions, thunder and lightning are connected with the unexpected. We talk about a "bolt out of the blue." In American folk culture, there are a host of legendary stories of mysterious cures or transformations wrought by someone being struck by lightning. It's at once dangerous, and a symbol of sudden, shocking revelation and inspiration. It's also the primary weapon in most pantheons of the chief sky god (such as Zeus in Greek mythology.) For the Plains Indians, thunder and lightning symbolized the vast, uncontrollable energy of nature. It's not surprising, then, that the Thunderbird is connected with the strange, uncontrollable force of the Trickster figure, and his avatar, the heyoka.
Significance of the Trickster Figure and "Contrariness" in Plains Society
Psychological anthropologists, especially those oriented toward psychoanalytic theory and depth psychology, point to the Trickster figure as a sort of important cultural "release valve." He represents the "return of the repressed," the Dionysian aspects of life only temporarily held in abeyance by the Apollonian forces of civilization. The carnivals and feasts held in honor of fools in Europe, suggest some anthropologists, are "outlets," allowing people to invert the social order temporarily as a way of promoting its continuity in the long run (avoiding its ultimate collapse.) The ruler is dressed in peasants' clothes, and some ignorant serf is crowned king. Symbols of authority normally held in extreme reverence are mocked and desecrated.
Clowns and contraries in Plains societies do not just come out once a year, however. They are permanent parts of the society, and are seen as continual reminders of the contingency and arbitrariness of the social order. Long before French theorists came on the scene, the heyoka was reminding his own people about the social construction of reality. By doing everything backwards, the heyoka in a way is carrying out a constant experiment in ethnomethodology, showing people how their own expectations limit their behavior. Like a good performance artist, the shocking behavior of the heyoka is supposed to confront people and make them reconsider what they may have arbitrarily accepted as normal. It's to "jolt" them out of their ordinary frames of mind. (Steward 1991)
More importantly, as a representative of Thunderbird and Trickster, the heyoka reminds his people that the primordial energy of nature is beyond good and evil. It doesn't correspond to human categories of right and wrong. It doesn't always follow our preconceptions of what is expected and proper. It doesn't really care about our human woes and concerns. Like electricity, it can be deadly dangerous, or harnessed for great uses. If we're too narrow or parochial in trying to understand it, it will zap us in the middle of the night. Like any good trickster, the heyoka plays pranks on others in his culture not to make them feel embarrassed and stupid, but to show them ways they could start being more smart.
The Account of John (Fire) Lame Deer: Heyoka and ASC
Lame Deer calls the heyoka the "upside-down, forward-backward, icy-hot contrary."
He describes in detail one particular heyoka trick which may give some clues to the nature of their antics. Apparently, they would grab pieces of dog meat out of a pot of boiling water, and fling them at a crowd of people, without being burned or harmed in any way. (Why dog meat? Lame Deer gives a clue when he says, "For the heyoka, he says god when he means dog, and dog when he means god.") Lame Deer suggests before doing this they chewed a grayish moss called tapejuta. I suspect that heyoka were able to perform this feat through going into trance, an altered state of consciousness, by utilizing this and other psychotropic plants on occasion.
More importantly, I think they induced trance in others through their contrary behavior. Psychologists have noted that trance does not always occur through rhythmic repetition. Another way in which it occurs (the "paradoxical state") is through a sudden shock to the nervous system. Ethnomethodologists have often noted the blank, glassy stares and strange states produced by violating peoples' expectations - by, for example, getting into an elevator and facing the other people in it. It's in such "paradoxical states" that people often may assimilate new information quickly, without filtering. They also may be able to "abreact" psychological trauma. For these reasons, the heyoka may have been seen as a source of wisdom and healing.
Lame Deer seems to suggest the power of trance is connected to the power of Thunderbird. As a paradoxical state of consciousness, it ties into the paradoxical energy of thunder and lightning. The crash of thunder can startle us and wake us up out of dreaming sleep. The trance of the heyoka comes from sacred power. He ties it all together in a way that's fairly succinct:
" These Thunderbirds are part of the Great Spirit. Theirs is about the greatest power in the whole universe. It is the power of the hot and the cold clashing above the clouds. It is blue lightning from the sun. It is like atomic power. The thunder power protects and destroys. It is good and bad; the great winged power. We draw the lightning as a forked zigzag, because lightning branches out into a good and bad part... In our Indian belief, the clown has a power which comes from the thunder beings, not from the animals or the Earth. He has more power than the atom bomb, he could blow off the dome of the Capitol. Being a clown gives you honor, but also shame. It brings you power, but you have to pay for it." (quoted in Erdoes 1972: 251)
Conclusion
The Thunderbird's association with heyoka clowns is not simply serendipitous. The fact that the Thunderbird displays many paradoxical and contradictory attributes links it to Trickster figures and to the contraries of Plains Indians culture. This culture complex probably resulted from Indian beliefs about nature and the ways in which thunder and lightning exemplified the manners in which it could be at once capricious, beneficent, and destructive. The Thunderbird's own link to the original Great Mystery suggests that the role of the sacred clown was seen as one of the highest in Plains society - like wandering fools in Europe, they were thought to be touched by the Divine power itself. Like Thunderbird himself, the heyoka was thought to be a conduit to forces that defied comprehension, and by his absurd, backwards behavior he was merely showing the ironic, mysterious dualities that existed within the universe itself.
3. The Mayan Sacbe System Analyzed as an Information Web
Introduction
Allan Burns argues in his 1994 article, Nine Mayan Prophecies, that anthropologists should make the effort to try and organize their presentation of ideas around the indigenous conceptions of the people with whom they are working. In this article, Burns uses the structure of a trinity of trinities, an important Mayan number. In this paper, I use the organizing principle of a quaternity or cross, since the cross is an important Mayan symbol and further appears cross-culturally in many other cases. Since Burns also argues that the Maya are an open community, I suppose I will not offend many Mayans by putting a Greek god at the center of this cross
In this paper, I seek to analyze the sacbeob or "white roads" of Yucatan. Burns further argues (in "The Road Underground") that roads have always been an important part of Mayan life, since much of Mayan everyday discourse has to do with roads; and this is supposed to reflect the fact that due to their familiarity with roads, the Maya people have for a long time led a dual rural-urban existence. While this article primarily tries to argue that the Mayans were not strangers to the sort of cosmopolitan, urban civilization "brought over" by the Spaniards to the Yucatan, I found more interesting the fact that it shows that for the Mayan people, roads were important in a metaphorical, even metaphysical, sense. They felt anguish when the Spaniards destroyed these roads, as "blood came forth" when they were severed. This insight gave me the key to realizing that the sacbe road-system might have functioned in a conceptual, as well as literal, way.
In other words, while the remnants of the terraced causeways found by archaeologists may have been physical roads for the transport of people and goods, I do not feel that the physical road in itself is the sacbe. Rather, the sacbe is the conceptual alignment or connecting link between two (or more) sites and other points, perhaps other sacred spots or horizon points of astronomical significance - and this path was a "white road" not because it was built from white stone, but instead because the color white may have signified one of the centres of the sacbe network (perhaps T'Ho/Merida) and also tied in with ethnoastronomical beliefs about the Milky Way as a cosmological road. The function of the sacbe system was to carry a type of information that, for reasons I will discuss later, I shall call "Kulkulcan." This information at once constituted knowledge of the integrity of the system as a whole and the power of the ruler to vivify the network and keep it fertile both in the natural and cultural sense. Since I believe that the points of intersection (nodes) for the sacbe system - crossroads - were of key importance, the metaphoric structure that shapes this paper is the cross.
Further, I put Hermes at the center of this cross for numerous reasons. One is that many people consider Hermes to be mythologically equivalent to the Mayan god Itzamna (for whom the city of Izamal is named) who, like Hermes, is also the patron of medicine, writing, and learning. Another is that Hermes is the basis both of the words hermetic (occult, secret, or sealed knowledge) and hermeneutic (the discovery of patterns in texts.) Further, Hermes was the Greek god who at once was the patron of commerce (trade) and travel, and for that reason was a god of crossroads which were often marked by phallic stones known as herms (in this way he parallels the Haitian lord of the crossroads Legba, who, like Hermes, was a psychopomp who led souls between this world and the next.) Most importantly, perhaps, Hermes was the messenger god of communication, and thus to this day his symbol of the caduceus (two intertwined serpents with wings at the tip) signifies both travel and healing.
The arms of the cross -- Kulkulcan (Quetzelcoatl, the feathered serpent), the Sacbe (white road), World Wide Webs (both ancient and modern), and Santiago -- may seem to have nothing to do with this multifaceted Greek deity, but in fact their presence will be explained too in good time. The point to be emphasized here is that the Mayan system of long straight paths interconnecting sites of pilgrimage and rulership is not unique; it is paralleled by other systems found in other countries. Such 'symbolic information networks' covering the landscape can also be found in the geomantic systems of widely disparate cultures and lands.
Why the cross is an important symbol to the Maya is also a matter of some dispute. Most seem to think that, as described in the Popul Vuh, it marks the cardinal points as delineated by the equinoxes and solstices (and perhaps the zenith and nadir of the sun as well.) Each of the cardinal points is then often associated with a particular color, saint, Chaac, or wind (austral, poniente, septentronial, or oriente.) At the center of the cross is then the Ceiba or world-tree which is the vertical (veridical) axis connecting heaven, the earth, and the underworld. However, Dr. Milbrath argues in her paper that the cross may also represent either the constellation of the Southern Cross (which appears at an auspicious point in the Mayan calendar), or, more importantly, the intersection of the Milky Way and the ecliptic.
The feathered serpent
There have been a lot of arguments over the historical identity of the man-god Kulkulcan. Many legends seem to suggest that he may have been a Toltec priest who tried to abolish the rites of human sacrifice among his people in the 11th century, and was driven out of Tula as a result. Many Maya believe he then came to Yucatan and founded several cities, as well as the art of drinking cacao and other forms of knowledge before leaving for the east in a raft of snakes. However, most scholars think that the man Kulkulcan may have been in reality a priest of an earlier deity known by the same name. It may be that the deity Kulkulcan can be better thought to represent the force of nature (as Huracan, governing the wind and water) and also the civilizing knowledge carried by the sacbes. As the feathered serpent, Kulkulcan at once represents the Earth (as a snake, regenerating and shedding his skin) and Heaven (by his wings, which shows he carries the elan vital of heaven to earth.)
There are two primary sites in Yucatan thought to have been founded by Kulkulcan - Mayapan and Chichen-Itza. It turns out that although no physical road has been found between the two sites, they may have been aligned along a sort of ideological/terrestrial axis that might be called the 'Kulkulcan route.' Although I'd need to look at a highly accurate geodetic site-survey map to prove it, it appears to me that this Kulkulcan Route also passes through the significant site of Oxkintok as well as X-Can in the east and through the ruins of Quihuitzlan on the coast of Veracruz (Olmec territory.) I would argue that perhaps this Kulkulcan Route may have been one of the central axes for the network which carried the sacerdotal information (the rains are coming!) represented by Kulkulcan, who is often identified with the planet Venus, central to Mayan cosmology.
What I am trying to suggest here are that the sacbes are not just merely the physical roads found covering the landscape. Since Kulkulcan has feathers, he does not need to walk; but the paths for him between the many sites must be straight. Archaeologists often puzzle over why the sec been a Toltetions of road that comprise the entire sacbe cannot be found - thus leading them to doubt if they ever existed. What I am suggesting is that the sacbe or white road is not the physical road. Rather, it's the path which exists on occasion physically, but often only really ideologically between the critical nodes of the Mayan landscape. The sacbe or white road is the earthly reduplication of a celestial circuit, if you will, carrying the heaven-to-earth information/force of Kulkulcan to and fro.
The various legends of underground tunnels or heavenly umbilical cords connecting different sites in Yucatan are obviously not to be taken literally. Rather, they imply a metaphorical and mythical connection, and further that very likely some type of physical alignment exists between the sites (likely terminating in the rising or setting point of some planet or star on the horizon) which at some points may actually be physically covered by a dirt or stone terraced road. The key is not just the sacbes themselves, but the places where and how they interconnect. For that symbolic interconnection of the landscape is what maintains its vitality and integration, with itself and also with the cosmos. And the carrier of the message of integration might be called Kulkulcan.
A cross-cultural system?
The point I hope some anthropologists would be able to see is that the geomantic system I am describing as possibly existing in Yucatan is really not unique. In Britain, many archaeologists have also found long straight alignments known as 'leys' which, just as in the Yucatan, 1) are said to be the roads that are walked by spirits and faery-beings (aluxes) 2) are thought to interconnect sources of water (esp. holy wells and underground springs) 3) are called dragon paths (such as the famous Ley of St. Michael, which passes through many churches honoring the dragon-slayer) and are thought to carry a sort of 'serpent current', so named because of its property to regenerate the land and the way it undulates between polarities 4) often are the alignments on which Christian churches were placed, because inevitably those churches are placed on top of the older ritual (pre-Celtic/pre-Spanish) sites and 5) usually have their node or intersection points marked by crosses.
Perhaps the closest parallel might be found between the two Mesoamerican cases - Peru and Yucatan. Like the sacbes, the ceques of Peru often interconnect huacas or holy sites which pilgrims still visit and make offerings to today. Further, like the sacbes, the ceques were seen as extensions of the ruler and his power to vivify the land. Just as in the Yucatan, the ceques are seen as paths through which the 'rain-serpent' passes, bringing winds and rain and causing the weather to move. They also serve to delineate the boundaries and water rights of extended kin, just as in the Yucatan, and at the same time are paths to the ancestors and the world of the dead (who walk the paths at certain times of the year, such as the Dia de Los Muertes.) And both Peru and the Yucatan seem to attach a special significance to the Milky Way, which is known in both areas as the Road of Santiago.
I've already mentioned the Hermetic system of Greece, but we can see yet more parallels to Yucatan in the Chinese form of geomancy called feng-shui, literally, 'wind and water.' Likewise in ancient China, the emperor was thought to transmit the 'good news' of heaven throughout the land, and if he was impious or impure, disasters and famine would result. Chinese geomancers would use a special astrological compass to make sure that buildings were sited and aligned properly, so as to exist in harmonious connection and interrelation with civilization and with nature. The Chinese meridians or channels were thought to carry five kinds of ch'i, each thought to correspond to different planets and constellations, colors and cardinal directions, and natural features of the landscape. They also visualized the force that brought rain and replenished the waters and travelled along these paths as a dragon, or winged serpent.
The Haitian people see the cross-roads (kafou) as a place of great spiritual power and danger, much like the Maya. Where important rues cross and meet are places where the barrier between this world and the next one is very thin. Further, the crossroads are places were the ancestors and the dead who live in the Abyss (the waters under the earth) can be called forth. Earth from the crossroads is placed on the graves of the dead to keep them from becoming zombi. Like the Maya, the Haitians often walk the rues between the kafous on certain saints' days, with the saints often corresponding to an earlier pre-Christian (and likely celestial or astronomical) loa or deity.
In many of these cases, the microcosm (routes of pilgrimage and processsion) deliberately duplicated the macrocosm (the wanderings of the planets and constellations.) The circling of the labyrinth by pilgrims in Christian churches mirrors the whirling of the lesser stars around Polaris. Many Chinese temples are laid out in ways that emulate different constellations. The ritual walking of landscape figures (such as those found on the Nazca plain) is thought to be important in invoking the 'astral' powers to which they correspond. Indeed, many archaeoastronomers have followed the lead of Santillana and Von Dechend in suggesting that within many key myths in ancient cultures are recorded important celestial transitions. Therefore, with the Mayan sacbes and these other road-systems, ethnoastronomy is often an important key.
The white city: of trees, colors and saints
Dr. Milbrath notes in her paper that the Maya people of Chan Kom refer to the Milky Way as the "ZAC BE", or white road, using the same word as is used to refer to the artificial roads covering the landscape. In other Maya areas, the Milky Way is also called the XIBALBA BE, 'underground road', or road to the underworld. This suggests a strong parallel to Peru, where the Milky Way is called the Road of Souls, and is the world-tree used by shamans in their ascent and descent. Some ceques in Peru meet the Milky Way at the horizon, suggesting that they are its terrestrial continuation. Most interestingly, in both Peru and the Yucatan, the Milky Way is also known as the Road of Santiago, which seems to be a derivation of the pilgrim route of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the role of which was inevitably integral to the Spanish Reconquista. Santiago or St. James seems to be at once a Christianized thunder and rain god (he is called Boanerges, son of thunder), and also a conqueror of paganism (he is called Moor-Slayer, and many Spanish churches in the New World show him trampling Indians underfoot on his horse.)
Why is Merida known as the White City? Many people think this honorific arises from its cleanliness or its architecture. But I suspect the ultimate origin of the name may have been pre-Hispanic. It is possible that Merida (T'Ho) might have been one of the key hubs of this 'galaxy' of white roads. There are other towns in the area associated with colors -- Izamal is known as the yellow city, Valladolid the green city, and Ekbalam is of course the city of the black (or maybe shining) jaguar. Since the Maya associated the different colors with the cardinal directions, it's possible that each of these sites were cardinal centres of the sacbe system. I can't prove it; but Merida is said to have a number of legendary tunnels leading to nearby towns like Mani and Oxkintok leading from under its cathedral (where the pre-Hispanic temple stood). And Izamal is said to have four sacbes leading out from its centre toward the four cardinal points -- one of which, the road to Ake, has definitely been found on the ground. Curiously, modern Izamal is also laid out architecturally with a series of quaternities oriented around its central convent, and the seal of the city is a rain cloud floating over five aligned pyramids.
Why does the Mayan legend exist that when the Spaniards cut the sacbe in two, "blood came out?" Well, it turns out that there was another Mayan legend of the CUXAM SUUM -- a sort of cosmic umbilical cord that linked Tulum, Coba, Chichen, and Uxmal, and circulated blood between them. I suspect we are seeing hints and pieces of an earlier, more integrated belief system, organized around the following conception. The divine energy descends down the Milky Way (symbolized by the so-called diving gods), the spine or navel of the world; from there it enters the branches of the Ceiba (World Tree) into one of the hubs (T'Ho, Izamal, or wherever) or nodes; and from there it is dispersed along the arteries of the sacbe network. We can call this energy information because it represents the news that all parts of the system are linked in harmonious order, i.e. the 'circuit' has not been broken. In the Yucatan peninsula, Santiago is also Chaac, the god who brings the rain and the storms.
This does not rule out the use of the sacbe paths for more literal forms of information-transmission. For example, the pyramid at Acanceh is said to have had a 'whisper dish' at the top at one point, which could carry acoustic messages to nearby pyramids miles away. But I suspect they had a more important allegorical or metaphorical importance. Some of the north-south sacbe routes in Yucatan also intersect, at their more distant apices, with earlier Classic sites like Tikal and Palenque. This may symbolize the unbroken connection with the Mayan past. I suspect that while the function of the sacbe system is partially forgotten, there are survivals of it in the curious processions between villages made by Maya people in honor of the days of saints which seem curiously similar to older, planetary deities which may have formerly governed the roads. The sacbe system is not just a question of archaeology and antiquity: aspects of it (like the Mayan calendar) may still be functioning today.
Conclusions
Today, in our era of new information technology, we are busy erecting our global communication networks and World Wide Webs. But in the Yucatan peninsula the Mayan people succeeded in dealing with the same problem that computer network managers face today: how to keep their 'network' of culture and civilization from 'crashing.' Their solution was to create their own sort of world-wide web -- one that symbolically linked the Mayan world in a web of interconected ritual centres, through which passed people, trade, knowledge of the arts and sciences, and another type of sacerdotal information I have called "Kukulcan." The problem then, as today, was to maintain an information network where the number of nodes and links would lead to the most secure and efficient reciprocal exchange of information. In thinking of information today, we inevitably think only in terms of secular 0's and 1's, and not in the older sense of the word which corresponds to the 'good news,' say, of apostolic Christianity -- prophetic and apocalyptic information, too.
With the sacbe system, the Maya people came up with the right 'kludge' to keep their post-Classic civilization integrated and functioning. The apocalyptic imagery surrounding the destruction of the sacbes should not be taken literallly; blood came out not because some physical roads were pulverized but instead what the Maya saw as the metaphorical arteries of their living world were blocked and cut off. People no longer walked the sacred routes, or honored the spirits and deities to which they belonged, and so they became ghastly haunts of aluxes and half-forgotten things. But this didn't mean the end of the system. In half-remembered ways, the Maya still speak of the paths between their cities, now driven underground by the Spanish conquest, waiting for Kulkulcan to return and revive them. But as indigenous people work at creating their own networks of communication using the new technologies of radio, Internet, and multimedia, one cannot help in thinking that trickster Hermes may yet come back in another guise, and the blood of the stars will once again flow.