Seven Sisters

Tonight, I have told you, Stars, of gods and extraordinary mortals and the stubborn will of humanity.  There are mortals, people who are ordinary all the way through, solid to the core, who find their way into our presence.  They are the few who find the path into eternity because, while they are of the earth and firmly grounded, they see the magic in the soil, the grace in the mountain, and the spirit in the wind.  My cousins, those that the earth calls the Pleiades, in human stories you have been hens, stones, and men who danced into the sky.  In the story that I tell tonight, you are sisters, young members of the Kiowa, and you are far away from the camp of your people.

The sisters had wandered far from their family's fires and tents, too enraptured by the feel of earth damp from recent rain on the soles of their feet to worry that they might have strayed too far.  When the middle sister, the fourth of seven, signaled her concern, the others teased her into silence.  She had always been the most timid of the siblings, overpowered by the confidence of the three elder and swept away beneath the enthusiasm of the three younger.  Besides, the sisters assured each other, they had followed the river.  It would not be hard to find the way back.

But the river twisted and turned, and the night comes swiftly when it is not looked for.  Perhaps the river caught and held the sunlight, perhaps it reflected and amplified the light of the first of us to shine, or perhaps it glowed with its own spirit.  Perhaps none of these is true and the sisters were careless, too caught up in the sound of their own laughter to mind the passing of time.  Whichever is true, the night wrapped around them when they were far from their camp, and they remembered the warning of the middle sister and that this was a country of bears.  They grew afraid and asked the middle sister for advice, but the only advice she had was to have turned away from their course and returned to the protective ring of fire and tents long ago.

As soon as the bears were remembered, it was inevitable that they would come since the world does not let such Fate-tempting thoughts to pass unnoticed.  The bears came, stood between them and their path home, and so they left the river, running with feet no longer contemplating the touch of the soil, running with bears crashing behind, running until their breath scorched their throats and they stumbled.  The youngest lost her footing first, and such was the sisters’ love for each other that they all stopped as one to help her, and it was the oldest who pulled her along instead of leaving her to the bears.

As their strength faded, one by one, they slowed, and the bear still came.  Each of the sisters had a partner, older and younger, whom they helped as they ran, except for the middle sister, so she was able to think as she ran, and she knew that they would have to stop before the bears gave up their chase.  And she also knew that they would fight because not one of them would abandon another, and that they would die.

She called them all to a stop and told them to stand on top of a small rock; her sisters wondered what she was going to attempt, but they did not question her after their first questioning had brought them all so much danger.  She knelt, and they knelt with her.  She called to the Great Spirit, feeling it in herself and the earth and the sky, calling for aid; her sisters gathered around her and did the same, so none of them saw the bears approaching, but they heard them as a ripple through their calming minds.

Neither did they see the rock rise out of the ground, growing as a tree; they heard the bears' roars of frustration and the whine of claw on stone, so they continued to pray until they heard no more, and they opened their eyes and saw a pillar of stone whose flat top the size was of the rock that they had gathered on stretching out below them, and below that the earth spread out like a great blanket, and they saw the river and their tribe’s fires.  Their feet touched neither the pillar nor the earth; all around them was a blackness with startling bursts of color.

Their tribe followed their footprints down the river the next day, ran with their trail as the bear pursued them, and stopped at its end at the base of the giant stone tower with large gashes in its sides.  The sisters’ parents called for their daughters, but no one answered.  That night, the Kiowa camped at the base of the tower, and high above it, higher than they had imagined, there were seven new points of light.

Words from the Typist

The Pleiades, or the Seven Sisters, are some of the most talked about stars in existence, mythologically speaking.  They are mentioned in Greek, Hindu, Australian, and Norse mythology, to name a few, and figure prominently in the Mayan and Aztec calendars.  I am sure there are other cultures whose people have found significance in the Pleiades, but these are the ones that I came across in my research.  Most of the myths focusing on the Pleiades involve the people who are to become the stars fleeing from something and eventually finding their way into the heavens.  I chose to tell the story from the Native American view because that is the first story of the Pleiades that I had heard, and I did not yet have an indigenous culture in my storybook.

While I attribute this story to the Kiowa, several other tribes, such as the Lakota and the Sioux, have similar stories.  I did not alter this tale from my source beyond expanding it with the exception of treating the sisters a little more as individuals.  They do not develop personalities in my version, by any means, but in the original they are never mentioned beyond the group.  I decided to make the middle sister cautionary because I thought that the story would benefit from someone issuing a warning, and once I mentioned her specifically, it seemed logical that she would be the one who starts praying.

The pillar of stone raises the sisters into the sky is commonly known as Devil’s Tower.  It’s still a very sacred site for Native Americans.  Most of us, however, know it from its rather dramatic appearance in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.