Red Horn (Siouan Deity) - Red Horn As A Star

Red Horn As A Star

There is a little known myth of great importance that identifies Red Horn as a star. Ten brothers lived together in a longhouse. The eldest, Kunu, had four arms. The youngest brother was called "Wears Faces on His Ears" (įcohorúšika), because he had living human faces on each of his ears. By dancing all night and performing the hunting rite by which game is seduced, they were able to gain wives for themselves. However, the second brother, Hena, was jealous because his youngest brother had gotten the fattest woman (hinųk šį), so he persuaded his other brothers, all except Kunu and the next youngest, to join him in a plot to rid themselves of Wears Faces on His Ears. They brought him to the lodge of a beautiful woman who in reality was a water spirit (wakcexi). She persuaded him to go to the back of her lodge, where he fell through a trap door into the underworld. There he was made captive by the bad water spirits (wakcexi šišik). Loon and Otter were the nephews of the water spirits. Each made an impassioned plea to free the young man, but the bad water spirits were determined to eat him, so Loon and Otter left the underworld for the earth where they have lived ever after. Wears Faces on His Ears broke his chains as though they were made of string, then grabbed a fire brand and began to club the water spirits to death and to set their realm aflame. He tracked down the woman who had tricked him and chased her through the underworld, where she tried to hide as a tubercle on a weed. Just the same, he found her out and killed her. When he returned to earth, he discovered that in his absence the rebel brothers had abused his two loyal brothers. The disloyal brothers had in reality been foxes and coyotes. When Wears Faces on His Ears struck Hena with his club, he was transformed into a fox. Thus, the wicked brothers lived as animals thereafter. Wears Faces on His Ears and his two loyal brothers were stars.

Without any reference to this story, much has been said about the stellar identity of Red Horn. In 1945, many years after his field work, Paul Radin suggested that Red Horn might be identical to the Morning Star (of Venus), known to the Hocągara as Wiragošge Xetera, “the Great Star”. Most archaeologists have accepted this suggestion. However, just three years later, he was less certain, saying only that Red Horn was “either evening- or morning-star”, and in 1954 he changed his position yet again, asserting that Red Horn, “probably is identical with the Evening Star”. After an extensive discussion of the problem, Lankford summed up by saying, “It appears that the safest conclusion for this study of Morning Star traditions is to accept the Winnebago divinities as possibly stellar figures but to allow them to remain without a celestial name, insofar as ethnoastronomy is concerned.” Nevertheless, the very end of our story identifies Red Horn, in his form as Wears Faces on His Ears, as a fixed star, probably Alnilam of Orion.

"The one star that is shining most greatly of the trio, it is he. The greatly shining white one, and the blue one, and the red one; and Icohorúšika was the yellowish one. And the other ones, his older brothers, are also stars. They are the trio that are bunched together ."

Morning Star, of course, is not a fixed star. Their lack of identity is confirmed in another story in which Man Faces on His Ears coexists with Morning Star. The connection between fixed stars and living beings on the ears finds a parallel in another Hocąk story in which Polaris (the North Star) has hummingbirds as earrings.