Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch — John Shaqi
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical SketchDenig, Edwin Thompson
History
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch
Denig, Edwin Thompson
Assiniboine Indians; Indians of North America -- Missouri River Valley
The Indians can not rationally account for an eclipse, supposing it
to be a cloud, hand, or some other thing shadowing the moon, caused
by Wakoñda to intimate some great pending calamity. Many are the
prophecies on these occasions of war, pestilence, or famine, and
their predictions are often verified. Predicting an eclipse does not
appear to excite their wonder as much as would be supposed. The writer
predicted the eclipse of the moon on December 25, 1852, months before,
but received no further credit than that of having knowledge enough
from books to find out it was to take place.
Their year is composed of four man-ko´-cha or seasons, viz., wai-too
(spring), min-do-ka´-too (summer), pe-ti-e-too (autumn), wah-nee-e-too
(winter). These are only seasons and do not each contain a certain
number of days, but times—a growing time, a hot time, a leaf-falling
time, and a snow time. These four seasons make a year which again
becomes man-ko´-cha or the same as a season. This is difficult to
explain. They count by the moon itself and its different phases, not
computing so many days to make a moon, nor so many moons to a year.
They give each moon its name, beginning, say, with the March
moon whenever it appears either in February or March, when it
would be wee-che´-ish-ta-aza, sore eye moon; next would follow
Ta-pa´-ghe-na-ho-to, frog moon; next pe-tai-chin-cha´-ton, buffalo
calf moon; next wee-mush-tu, hot moon; next wah-pa´-ze-ze,
yellow-leaf moon; next wah-pa-ich-pa´-ah, leaf-falling moon; next
yo-ka´-wah-how-wee, first snow moon; next we-cho-kun, middle moon;
next om-hos-ka-sun-ka-koo, lengthening days moon’s brother; and next
om-has-ka, lengthening of days moon. Their year has no beginning nor
end. They count and name the moons as they come, and these names are
also varied. Any annual remarkably known fact respecting the season can
be applied to the name of the same moon. Thus the sore-eyed moon can
be called the snow-melting moon, and the falling-leaf moon be termed
the moon when the buffaloes become fat. These moons suffer no divisions
of time except their phases, viz., new moon, increasing moon (first
quarter), round moon (full moon), eaten moon (second quarter), half
moon, dead moon (invisible). Among themselves they have no division of
time equal to a week, although they are aware that we count by weeks,
or divining days (Sundays), and will often ask how many divining days
(or Sundays) there are to a given period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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