| To the Eskimos the
stars are not just put in the sky to give light or guide the
wandering traveler. They are living things, sent by some twist
of fate to roam the heavens forever, never swerving from their
paths.
One of these creatures who left
the earth and went to live in the sky was Nanuk the bear.
One day Nanuk was waylaid by a pack of fierce Eskimo hunting
dogs. Nanuk knew only too well that Eskimo dogs are not to
be trifled with, and he tried to give them the slip. Faster
and faster he ran over the ice, but the dogs were still at
his heels. For hours the chase went on, yet he could not shake
them off. In the fury and terror of the hunt, they had come
very close to the edge of the world, but neither Nanuk or
his pursuers noticed. When at last they reached it, they plunged
straight over into the sky and turned into stars. The Europeans
they are the Pleiades, in the constellation of Taurus the
bull. But to this day Eskimos see them as Nanuk the bear,
with the pack of savage dogs out for his blood.
Up in the sky directly overhead
the Eskimos see a giant caribou, though we cll it the Great
Bear. Over on the other side of the sky, they can make out
some stars in the shape of an oil lamp. (We say it is the
constellation of Cassiopeia.) On the horizon between then
lamp and the caribou the Eskimos see stars like three steps
carved out of the snow. They call it the stairway from Earth
to the sky, but we talk of Orion the hunter.
Sometimes, on the darkest nights,
the Eskimos' dead ancestors come out to dance. The stars are
the lights round the dance floor. Then Gulla glows across
the sky: the shimmering pattern of the Aurora Borealis, or
Northern Lights.
But to the people of the Far North,
the loveliest and most wonderful star of all is the sun. They
see her as a young girl of dazzling beauty. In their brief
Arctic summer she is there night and day, for this is the
season of the midnight sun, when her brother Aningan, the
moon, chases her round and round the North Pole so she cannot
escape over the horizon.
Aningan the moon is a great hunter,
and he chases animals as well as his sister the sun. He has
a faithful pack of hunting dogs to help him. Sometimes his
hounds are carried away by the joy of the hunt, and they jump
over the edge of the sky and run down the stairway in orion
to Earth. That is why there are shooting stars.
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