Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the RockiesSabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
General
Pluck on the Long Trail; Or, Boy Scouts in the Rockies
Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction; Hiking -- Juvenile fiction; Rocky Mountains -- Juvenile fiction
Note 42, page 109: The "Papoose on the old Squaw's Back" is a tiny star,
Alcor, very close to the star Mizar which forms the bend in the handle
of the Big Dipper. To see this tiny star is a test for eyesight. The
Sioux Indians say that the Big Dipper is four warriors carrying a
funeral bier, followed by a train of mourners. The second star in the
train (or the star in the bend) is the widow of the slain brave, with
her little child, or the Little Sister, weeping beside her!
The Blackfeet and other Indians say that the Pole Star (which does not
move) is a hole in the sky, through which streams the light from the
magical country beyond. They call it "the star that stands still."
By the "Lost Children" Jim Bridger meant the Pleiades. These stars,
forming a cluster or nebula, sink below the western horizon in the
spring and do not appear in the sky again until autumn; and the
following is the reason why. They were once six children in a Blackfeet
camp. The Blackfeet hunters had killed many buffalo, and among them some
buffalo calves. The little yellow hides of the buffalo calves were given
to the children of the camp to play with, but six of the children were
poor and did not get any. The other children made much fun of the six,
and plagued them so that they drove them out of the camp. After
wandering ashamed and afraid on the prairie, the six finally were taken
up into the sky. So they are not seen in the spring and summer, when the
buffalo calves are yellow; but in the autumn and winter, when the
buffalo calves are black, they come out.
Nearly everybody can see the six stars of the Pleiades, and good
eyesight can make out seven. By turning the head and gazing sideways the
seven are made plainer. An English girl has eyesight so remarkable that
she has counted twelve.
The Western Indians have had names for many of the stars and the planets
and the constellations, and the night sky has been of much company and
use to them and to the old plainsmen and mountaineers, just as it was to
Jim Bridger at this time.
Mars is "Big-Fire-Star"; Jupiter is "Morning Star," or when evening star
is "The Lance"; Venus is "Day Star," because sometimes it is so bright
that it can be seen in the day. Scouts should know by the almanac what
is the morning star, and then when it rises over the camp or the trail
they are told that morning is at hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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