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The Winnebago are Siouan speakers from Wisconsin. Their dialect is closely related to that of the Chiwere speakers—the Iowa, Oto, and Missouri tribes—and they are thus linked with them at least through the past few centuries. The possibility that the northern Siouan speakers are descended from the people of prehistoric Cahokia in the central Mississippi Valley is one of the reasons contemporary anthropologists are particularly interested in their narratives and beliefs. In recent years, especially, there has been a revival of scholarly interest in the Morning Star ¤gure of the Winnebago. Paul Radin, the major ethnographer of the Winnebago in the early 20th century, originally raised the issue as he examined the unusual narrative texts he had collected, but more recent interpreters have also taken up the complex problem of the Winnebago traditions, and the subject has become confused. It is an important problem, though, because the Winnebago may be the focus of a separate tradition of Morning Star belief, one that could be descended from a prehistoric religious complex. To satisfy our search for Morning Star traditions, it is necessary to reexamine the evidence, even though it is a fairly lengthy task. The examination should begin with Radin’s work over the ¤rst half of the 20th century, for he was the primary ethnographer. For the Winnebago, there are many divinities and heroes mentioned in the myth collections, including Morning Star, and it is dif¤cult to ¤nd a single organizational structure incorporating them all. In one of his most important publications of Winnebago myths, Radin (1948) presented the texts of four “cycles” of epic length. Categorized by the hero of the story, they are the Trickster, Hare, Red Horn, and Twins cycles. The ethnoastronomical evidence in these and other Winnebago narratives is fairly sparse. Nowhere in these lengthy texts is there 4 The Morning Star of the Winnebago mention of stars by name; it is as if these are heroic Middle World stories with little connection to the celestial realm. The Trickster cycle, however, ends with this: “Then he [Trickster] left and went ¤rst into the ocean and then up to heaven. Under the world where Earthmaker lives, there is another world just like it and of this world, he, Trickster, is in charge. Turtle is in charge of the third world and Hare is in charge of the world in which we live” (Radin 1945:252, 1948:92). This structure is a bit confused; it is clari¤ed in a note in Smith’s later volume of Winnebago myths: “The Winnebagos believed that there are four worlds in their cosmology, one beneath the other . . . Maona is in charge of the heavens and he put Trickster in charge of the skies. Hare is in charge of the world. Turtle is in charge of the underworld” (Smith 1997:46n). These heroes are therefore associated with the levels of the cosmos, and they are also able to travel to them. An ability to perform sky travel is indicated: for example, when Red Horn set out on a war party with a thunderbird, he was able to ®y in the clouds with him (Radin 1948:120–21). Red Horn’s sons were also able to take the path to the celestial realm, a journey similar in detail to the “journey to the sky” of other myths (see Chapter 9) (Radin 1948:133–36). The Twins, in their adventures, “travelled all over the world and killed all the evil spirits they encountered. Then they went under the earth, under the rivers, under the ocean and then above the earth, visiting the Night-spirits, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Thunderbirds—all of them. They visited the four worlds, too. Indeed they did not miss any place” (Radin 1948:147). Nonetheless, in their heroic stories, all of these ¤gures are depicted simply as travelers, not as residents of the sky or star-born. One curious ¤gure, the son of one of the four waterspirits who keep the earth stable, was so adept at visiting all locations in the cosmos that he was even called “Traveller” (Radin 1926: 37–45). Despite these sky voyagers, the mythic narratives published by Radin in a series of articles and books over decades manifest little speci¤c celestial information, particularly about constellations or planets. In the Winnebago origin myths, however, there is a clearer connection to the celestial world. Earthmaker’s tears formed the seas, and he then formed the three additional worlds beneath him...

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