Throughout the world, people have marveled at the night sky and invented stories about the myriad of stars overhead. Throughout the world, people have developed calendars based on the sun, the moon, and the stars. In North America, American Indians have used these calendars as vital aids for hunting, for fishing, forgathering wild plants, and for the planting of domesticated crops. These calendars were also used to schedule seasonal ceremonies. In some cases, the people constructed special monuments dedicated at least in part to the meaning of the cycles they observed in the heavens.
With regard to the Native people of North America, David Hurst Thomas, in his section in The Native Americans: An Illustrated History, writes:
“Native Americans have always lived close to the heavens, paying attention to what was overhead and intertwining their lives with the perpetual cycles of sun, moon, planets, and stars. They observed eclipses and the conjunctions of planets, devised calendars for festivals, and established dates for planting.”
While knowledge of the heavens is generally acknowledged to have been of great importance to ancient farmers, it was also important for people whose subsistence was based, at least in part, on gathering wild plants, hunting, and fishing. For example the Pomo, a California Indian people, traditionally watched the position of the Big Dipper in scheduling their fishing expeditions. An example of the ceremonial use of Native astronomy is seen among the Pawnee who used the appearance of a pair of stars known as the Swimming Ducks to start their spring Thunder Ritual.
While today the kind of knowledge captured by astronomers is written down in books and scientific reports, American Indians traditionally kept this knowledge in their oral stories and mythologies, in their ceremonies, in art, and in symbolic architecture.
While modern astronomers record their observations in written form, ancient American Indian astronomers tended to record their observations in the form of art—rock art, cave art, mounds, and winter counts. For example, in a number of places sacred to the Navajo in northeastern Arizona there are star-ceiling sites. These are representations of stars painted on the cliffs high overhead or on the roofs of rock shelters.
In 1054 C.E., Chinese astronomers recorded what appears to have been a supernova. In his chapter in North American Exploration. Volume 1: A New World Disclosed, Malcolm Lewis reports:
“It was visible in China for 23 days and for 653 nights and, except for the sun, was probably the brightest object seen in the sky in human memory.”
This supernova was probably noticed in North America. Malcolm Lewis writes:
“Examples of closely juxtaposed crescent (moon) and circle (supernova) have been found at more than fifteen rock-art sites in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Baja California. At least some of these appear to be representations of the outbursts of the supernova, though confirmation of particular cases must await the development of precise techniques for dating rock art.”
Modern astronomers often use telescopes for observing the heavens. While it is generally assumed that American Indians did not have this technology, there has been some limited speculation, based on archaeological finds, that the ancient people in North America may have had a telescope-like instrument for looking at the stars. In 1842, three mounds of the Elizabethtown group (a group of burial mounds) in West Virginia were excavated and, among the artifacts uncovered were found several tubes of stone described as telescopic devices. In his 1871 book Notes on American Archaeology, John Baldwin reports:
“The longest measured twelve inches, the shortest eight. Three of them were carved out of steatite, being skillfully cut and polished. The diameter of the tube externally was one inch and four tenths; the bore, eight tenths of an inch. This caliber was continued till within three eights of an inch of the sight end, when it diminishes to two tenths of an inch. By placing the eye at the diminished end, the extraneous light is shut from the pupil, and distant objects are more clearly discerned.”
It should be noted that these stone tubes could have been pipe stems or tubes used for blowing air on a fire to make it hotter.