Classic constellations> Native American myths inspire ‘Stars of the First People’

STARS OF THE FIRST PEOPLE: NATIVE AMERICAN STAR MYTHS AND CONSTELLATIONS by Dorcas S. Miller, Pruett Publishing Co., Boulder, Colo., 1997, 346 pages (with appendices, references, index), softcover, $19.95.

Apparently the human imagination has been awe-struck by the night sky throughout history — and well into prehistory. The spectacular beauty of the stars and planets has spawned stories and cosmologies for millennia, and their eternal cycle of disappearance and return has produced every possible kind of meaning, from telling time to envisioning the afterlife.

The world’s star lore is large and inspiring enough to fill a lifetime, and Dorcas Miller’s book, “Stars of the First People,” focuses on one group of myths — those of Native Americans. This book is itself a twinkling jewel. Miller, who lives in Chelsea, near Augusta, combines an ear for entertaining stories with meticulous research, and the result is a well-designed book packed with information and enjoyable reading.

“Stars of the First People” first provides a general background to Native American star mythologies, and then urges us to look at the stars for ourselves. To help orient us, Miller describes the classical constellations of the northern hemisphere, like the Big Dipper and Orion, and includes navigable sky maps for beginning stargazers.

She then turns to the Native Americans and their star stories, looking into each of North America’s culture areas. Beginning in the Northeast, she ranges the continent to the Arctic and Pacific Northwest and returns to the Southeast. Each chapter summarizes how the indigenous people molded their lifeways to their areas, and outlines cultural details of individual tribes. We learn, for example, that the derivation of the word “Micmac” is uncertain, while the people nearby “call themselves Pestemohkatiyek (Those of the Place Where the Pollack are Plentiful)” — the Passamaquoddy.

Cultural information is followed by the myths as told by folklorists and the Native Americans themselves. The Passamaquoddy “Song of the Stars” describes the never-ending bear hunt, and a Micmac story recounts the hunt in detail. The Great Bear — our Ursa Major, or Big Dipper — slowly circles the northern pole star all year and at our latitudes never goes out of sight.

In the Micmac story, the bear sleeps all winter (if you look at the Big Dipper on a late-winter evening, you’ll see it’s upside down, or on its back), and awakens in spring. Several hungry hunters (stars in the dipper’s handle) decide to pursue the bear, and chase her all summer, into autumn. By late November the dipper has circled halfway around the pole star and begun to climb again: The Micmacs relate that the bear is rearing up to fight the hunters.

Meanwhile, some of the stars beyond the dipper’s handle have disappeared below the horizon — those hunters lost the trail. But the remaining hunters, permanently visible as the handle, kill the bear and eat it. Once again the bear lies on her back in death during winter, and the cycle repeats the next year. To the Micmacs, everything recurs eternally, as Miller’s storyteller relates: “The sky is just the same as the Earth, only up above, and older.”

Miller is deeply sensitive to the importance of this kind of knowledge. She treats the myths not as children’s make-believe, but as all literature, written or oral, should be treated: with regard — and authentic reverence — for its various meanings. Native American star myths, she indicates, made good wintertime entertainment, but they also instilled moral and spiritual values, and maintained orally a practical knowledge of the stars that signaled planting times and the tribes’ seasonal rounds.

Miller has written several books on camping and nature, including “Backpacker’s Backcountry Cooking” (1998) and “The Maine Coast” (1978). Her book “Adventurous Women” will be available next fall, and she is presently at work on a hiking guide to the coast of Maine.

The stories in “Stars of the First People” can be read to children with great pleasure. But moreover, this book is an exceptionally tasteful, clearly written, richly documented and illustrated book for adults. Anyone who has been struck by the gorgeous depths of the stars and felt compelled to learn what that feeling means, will find Miller’s book an invaluable companion, guide and informer.