Skidi Pawnee's Influence On The Astronomy Of Stars

Throughout history, humankind has made connections and has had some knowledge of what astronomical structures are. The Skidi Pawnee were Indians that knew a lot about the astronomy of stars and connected them with their beliefs and lifestyle. The Pawnee was a Native American tribe that lived in Nebraska whom were considered one of the best sky watchers. The Indians regarded the stars as gods. They worshipped a star, The North Star, as a creator god. Whereas, for the South Star, they feared it because they thought it belonged to the underworld. One important aspect of the North Star was that according to the Pawnee, it was in charge of protecting people as well as the stars. Fascinatingly, they had a lot of knowledge of the science of stars by just observing and had predictions that we can now prove are in some aspects correct through proven research. The Indians knew about the meteorites, sun, moon, and the five planets by tracing the movements of the celestial objects with the only resource they had, their naked eye. This is astounding because they had no telescopes or material to help them come up with such scholarly conclusions or observations. …show more content…
Nevertheless, they did not give importance to the Path of the Sun or developed a lunar calendar like other Indian tribes did because their concentration was on the stars. For this reason, many of the beliefs they had only involved the stars. One of the beliefs being their myth of how the universe was created, they thought that two stars, The Red Morning Star and The Evening Star, had a daughter who gave birth to the first