Eclipses of sun and moon were believed by Yana to be due to their dogs devouring them. Atsugewi and mountain Maidu felt that the heavenly bodies were dying. The former were of the opinion that Lizard was eating Sun or Moon as the case might be. They shouted loudly, shot arrows into the air toward the eclipse and beat all available female dogs. Mountain Maidu thought that Frog was eating Moon or Sun.
A reddish moon foretold of disaster and was a sign of war for Atsugewi, but to Yana it meant hot weather ahead.
Only a few star groups of the night sky were named.
Yana thought the constellation we call the Belt of Orion was Coyote’s arrow. All local tribes believed the Milky Way to be a road, or river in some cases, which was traveled by departing spirits or souls of the dead. Shooting or Falling stars, (more properly meteorites) presaged good weather to the Atsugewi who thought these were torches carried by spirits from one house to another in the sky. For this tribe too, a single conspicuous star—no doubt a planet—seen near the moon was an evil sign. If the star were on the left someone nearby would die soon; if it lay to the right of the moon someone farther away was doomed.
Atsugewi called the Seven Sisters wir-etisu. These girls were seduced by a little rabbit boy at a puberty dance. They became ashamed and went up in the sky to become stars. The Big Dipper was called Coyote’s Cane. Maidu thought that stars were made of something soft like buckskin.
Chapter XXXI
WEATHER PHENOMENA
As mentioned in the preceding chapter, weather was determined by agreement between sun and moon, but it appears that many things could influence their decisions.
Atsugewi assumed it to be the natural thing that it would sprinkle a little after a funeral. They also felt that rolling rocks down mountain sides or loud shouting in the mountains would cause rain. Furthermore they believed that the occurrence of precipitation could be influenced by shamans, if they felt like it, by smoking tobacco while looking at the sun. The nature of the spirit of a girl, whose ears were pierced at this time, was also thought to either cause it to rain or to stop doing so according to her spirit power.
Rainbows brought good wild crops as far as the Atsugewi were concerned. However, both they and mountain Maidu were of the opinion that pointing with a finger at a rainbow, particularly among children would cause the finger to become crooked or to fall off.
Thunder and lightning were feared by all tribes of the Lassen region. To Atsugewi thunder was the shouting of an old man who wears a rabbit skin and who goes about looking for women whom he kills. Mountain Maidu thought it to be due to an old man who lives up above and who was once a boy on earth, but who had been sent away because he was too fast and ate everything in sight. How he made the noise we do not know.