Extraterrestrial Stories in First Nations Legend
Ever since pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted a succession of shiny discs flying over Washington’s Coast Mountains in the summer of 1947, one of the most popular theories as to the nature of UFOs – the mysterious silent objects which have haunted the skies above North America, Britain, France, and China for nearly eighty years – is that they are extraterrestrial in origin, perhaps hailing from a distant planet many lightyears away, transported to our world by means of technology unknown to us. Although UFO sightings constitute a relatively modern phenomenon, with a handful of vaguely comparable precedents scattered across the millennia, there are a few old tales from the oral traditions of Canada’s First Nations which echo the notion that our world has been visited by celestial beings from beyond the stars.
The Moon Men of Nootka
The oldest datable account approaching a native E.T. story which this author was able to unearth is set on March 29th, 1778, when the great English navigator Captain James Cook first sailed into Nootka Sound. This rugged inlet, which furrows the western coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, was home to several ancient Nuu-chah-nulth or Nootka villages. Prior to Cook’s visit, the inhabitants of these settlements had known no contact with white men save for a brief exchange of trade goods with the crew of the Spanish frigate Santiago under Captain Juan Perez, which had anchored at the Sound’s mouth during an exploratory voyage four years prior. Incidentally, in this author’s opinion at least, the story which follows more closely accords with the known circumstances of Perez’s visit to Nootka, and may be a cultural recollection of that incident mistakenly attributed to Cook’s more famous visit.
In his 1955 book Conversations with Khahtsahlano, Major James Skitt Matthews, the City of Vancouver’s first archivist, included an interesting Nootka legend regarding Cook’s visit to Nootka. This story was related to him by Reverend Charles M. Tate, a grizzled Methodist missionary who had ministered to the spiritual needs of natives up and down Canada’s West Coast following his arrival in British Columbia in 1870. The 80-year-old pioneer pastor had learned this tale from members of his former Nootka congregation on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and related it to Matthews on December 19th, 1932, one year before his death.
“Oh, I must tell you what they told me on the West Coast,” the missionary began. “When I was over there, the West Coast Indians told me – that’s quite a long time ago, too, in the 1870s or 1880s – that when their ancestors saw the first ships coming to Nootka, Captain Cook’s ships, they sent for the conjurers. ‘Wise men,’ you can call them if you like.
“I suppose the Indians first saw the ships far off on the horizon, anyways their sails were seen some distance out to sea, and with the hull half or completely out of sight owing to distance, would look rather mysterious to people who had never seen such things. The white sails were heaving and rising with the waves. The sails probably were not very white – anyway, they were very visible as the ships were tacking up and down in order to make the land. The conjurers said that the Moon Men had come down and were using big snakes for a canoe, tacking backwards and forwards.
“When the ships finally got to Nootka, they dropped anchor, and, of course, as the anchor chains dropped through the hawse pipe, they made a great noise. The conjurers said that was the moon men speaking, and the Indians fled to the woods.
“After a while, so I was told, the young men – the young braves – said, ‘You only die once, let’s go out and see what it’s all about; suppose we take a canoe and go out.’ So they did. They wore sea otter garments; very valuable furs now, very valuable furs now, very valuable indeed, but quite common with the Indians at that time. When they got out to the ships and saw the white faces of the men, why, that confirmed what the conjurers said about the moon men. It looked as though the conjurers were right. Finally, they approached closer when some of the moon men came to the edge of the ship and let down some colored beads on a string. Some of the braver Indians went closer, and then the beads were dropped into the canoe. Ultimately, one or two of the moon men came down the ladder a little way and dropped some beads into the canoes, and finally three or four of the Indians were persuaded to leave their canoes and climb up the ladder to the ship’s deck.
“Everything pointed to confirm the conjurer’s statements that these were the moon men. The moon men wore yellow. They had a brass band around their caps, they had brass epaulets and brass buttons. Then the captain of the ship came, and blew on the fur of their sea otter garments, and his features showed surprise at the fine furs.”
Tate went on to explain how, after exchanging their sea otter robes for British underwear, the braves were invited onboard and served ship’s biscuit and jam, which they supposed to be bones and blood. The natives sampled the food but did not enjoy it. They were then gifted tin plates, which they supposed were the stars.
“When the two young fellows went on shore, highly delighted,” Tate concluded, “they told the conjurers that they had seen the moon men alright; the conjurers were right, they were the moon men and they had brought the stars with them.
“The whole incident… I was told, put the Nootka Indians forever on a higher plane than any other tribe, and made them the most important tribe on the coast, for it was they who had brought the moon men and the stars to the Indians.”
The Old Man in the Copper Canoe
Although this old legend does not explicitly describe an extraterrestrial visitation, the readiness of the native medicine men to label the European sailors ‘moon men’ strongly hints at a Nootka belief in the existence of such beings and their ability to travel to the blue planet. This notion is verified by the writings of John Meares, an Irish veteran of the British Royal Navy and a pioneer of the North Pacific fur trade, who sailed to Nootka a decade after Cook’s voyage to capitalize on the region’s rich sea otter pelts described by the navigator and his sailors.
In his 1790 memoir of his late maritime adventures, Meares included an old story told to him in September 1788 by a Nootka boy from a village in Nootka Sound. This boy, whom Meares described as a child of “very uncommon sagacity,” and the son of Hanapa, the village chief, began his tale when the Irishman gestured to his copper jewelry and asked where the metal came from.
The boy told Meares that, in the days of his ancestors, an old man paddled into Nootka Sound in a copper canoe, which he propelled with a copper paddle. Astonished by the uncanny sight, the local villagers abandoned their fish traps and spilled from their longhouses to marvel at the mysterious visitor as he glided silently along the shore.
When a large crowd was assembled on the beach, the old man tossed one of his heavy paddles onto the shore and disembarked. “The extraordinary stranger then told the natives that he came from the sky,” Meares wrote, “to which he pointed with his hand…” The old man further told his listeners that their country would be destroyed one day, and that the people who perished in that cataclysm would rise again, and fly through the heavens to settle in the place from whence he came.
Apparently dissatisfied with his grim pronouncement, the natives killed the old man and took his copper canoe. Ever since, the red metal had occupied a place of reverence and esteem in the Nootka heart. The boy finished his story by stating that the misshapen human figures carved into the cedar house posts of nearly every Nootka longhouse throughout the Sound, which Captain Cook called Klumma in his journal, were representations of the old man from the sky, intended to serve as reminders of his unnerving prophecy.
The Star People
Nearly a century after Meares’ voyage to Nootka Sound, another legend from Vancouver Island found its way into print, collected by Scottish botanist Dr. Robert Brown, who is perhaps best remembered today as the leader of the 1864 Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition. In his 1873 book The Races of Mankind, Brown included an old Northern Straits Coast Salish tale told to him by a native named Toma, who served as a hunter for the expedition party.
A long time ago, the story goes, two Songhees sisters from the ancient village of Stummas went to what is now Elk Lake, north of present-day Victoria, BC, to gather camass bulbs. “One night,” Brown wrote, “they lay awake, looking up at the bright stars overhead, thinking of their lovers, and such things as girls, Indian or English, will talk about. The Indians suppose the stars to be little people, and the region they live in to be much the same as this world down below. As one of the girls looked up at the little people twinkling overhead, one said to the other, looking at Aldebaran, the red eye of the Bull, ‘That’s the little man to my liking; how I would like him for my lover!’
“‘No,’ said the other, I don’t think I should; he’s too glaring and angry-looking for me. I am afraid he would whip me. I would better like that pale, gentle-looking star, not far from him.’ And so the gamass-gatherers of Stummas talked until they fell asleep. But as they slumbered under the tall pines, Aldebaran and Sirius took pity on their lovers and came down to earth, and when the girls awoke in the morning, it was in Starland, with their lovers by their sides, in the country up in the sky.”
At first, the sisters were delighted with their change of fortune, and lived happily in Starland with their new husbands. When the thrill of novelty faded, however, the girls became homesick, and pined for their old friends on earth.
One day, one of the girls decided to pay a visit to the village of Quonsung, which lay on the Gorge Waterway that separates the present township of Esquimalt from Victoria. Instead of beseeching the assistance of her husband, who was sympathetic to her melancholy, she decided to make the journey herself, and began secretly braiding a cedar bark rope by which to lower herself to earth. She was caught in the act by her sibling, who insisted that she come with her.
For several days, the sisters braided the rope in secret, always waiting until their husbands were asleep before drawing their handiwork from its hiding place. When they deemed the rope sufficiently long, the sisters began digging a hole through the firmament. “For many days they dug,” Brown wrote, “until they heard a hollow sound, and then they knew that they were nearly through; and the next day they finished their work (at a fitting time), and saw the clouds beneath, but the earth was a long way down.”
According to Toma, the girls tied their rope to a long firm branch, which they laid securely across the hole they had dug. Their anchor in place, they began sliding down the rope, which proved to be far too short for their purpose. Satitz, the East Wind, found the sisters dangling helplessly. Taking pity on them, he conveyed the absconders to earth, leaving them dazed in the valley of the Colquitz River not far from their home. Their rope broke free from its anchor and landed in a coiled heap nearby, forming what is known today as Knockan Hill.
“And after this,” Brown concluded, “the girls went back to Quonsong, and became great medicine-women, but remained single, all for love of the ‘little people’ above. The stars, however, are gentle little folk, and were not at all angry with their wandering brides, and used often to visit them…” after sunset in the form of falling stars.
The Heavenly Woman of the Wyandots
The natives of Vancouver Island are not the only First Nations with traditional tales of visitors from the heavens. In his 1899 book Wyandot Folk-Lore, American historian William Elsey Connelley included a creation myth of the Wyandot people, a wandering amalgam of the the Huron and Petun tribes of southern Ontario, forged in the crucible of the Beaver Wars.
According to this legend, before the creation of the Earth, there were people who lived in the heavens. The mighty chief of this celestial tribe had a beautiful daughter for whom the Wyandot had no name.
One day, the chief’s daughter fell ill, and was tended to by the tribe’s medicine man. When his ministrations proved fruitless, the shaman ordered that a wild apple tree which stood near the chief’s lodge be uprooted. He told the people that the tree’s roots contained medicine that would cure his charge, which the sick woman would have to pick herself. The sky people acquiesced and began digging up the tree, laying the chief’s daughter on its roots so that she could more easily grab the medicine when it appeared. In the process of its uprooting, the tree sank through the clouds, carrying the sick woman with it.
“Underneath, in the lower world,” Connelley wrote, “was only water – the Great Water. Two Swans were swimming about there. These swans saw the young woman falling from heaven. Some accounts say that a mighty peal of thunder, the first ever heard in the lower regions, broke over the waters, and startled all the Swimmers. On looking up, the Swans beheld the woman standing in the rent heavens, clad in flames of bright lightning. She was taller than the highest tree. Thus was she accompanied in her fall from heaven by Heh-noh, the Thunder God of the Wyandots.”
Connelly went on to explain how the swans rescued the woman, allowing her to ride on their backs as they swam. Unable to bear the burden indefinitely, the swans called together the aquatic animals. A council ensued in which the water creatures debated what ought to be done with the woman from the sky.
After much deliberation, the Great Turtle, who presided over the council, volunteered to allow the woman to live on his back provided that some earth, which had fallen from the roots of the celestial apple tree into the water, could be retrieved. The animals took turns diving for the sunken dirt, which they could see glimmering beneath the water, emitting a heavenly light. Many of them drowned in the attempt.
“When it seemed that none of the Earth could be obtained,” Connelly wrote, “the Toad volunteered to go down and try and see what success she might have. The Toad was gone a long time. The Great Council despaired of her coming back again. Finally, she came up, with her mouth full of the Earth; but she was dead when she reached the surface.
“There was very little of the Earth – too little, it was supposed – and the Great Council was discouraged. But the Little Turtle urged that it be used. She rubbed it carefully about the edges of the Big Turtle’s shell, and from this small amount soon there was the Great Island upon the Big Turtle’s back.”
From that time on, Connelly explained, the woman from the heavens lived on the back of the Big Turtle, which became the Earth.
In a prelude to the story, the anthropologist identified the sky woman as the mother of the Twins – primeval siblings who created the creatures of the earth in preparation for human habitation; who appear in native folkloric traditions across the continent.
Sky Witches of the Iroquois
Another Iroquoian people with tales of extraterrestrials are the Seneca of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, some of whom left their historic haunts in upstate New York to settle in what is now southern Ontario during the American Revolutionary War. In their 1908 book Myths and Legends of the New York State Iroquois, American historian Harriet Maxwell Converse and Seneca anthropologist Arthur Caswell Parker included a strange story featuring mysterious celestial entities they called ‘sky witches’.
In this story, a man took his eleven sons into the wilderness on a hunting trip, intending to teach them the ways of the woods. One night, while the brothers were sleeping in the forest, the eldest son, Hai-no-nis, was awakened by the sound of unearthly chanting, which seemed to drift in on the breeze. Entranced by the eerie music, Hai-no-nis roused his brothers and proposed that they follow the sound as it floated softly through the trees.
The boys pursued the aerial aria on a tortuous path through the woods. The chanting led them to a large tree, where it increased in tempo, compelling them to dance. The music gradually became faster and faster, and the boys kept pace with their dancing, as if under a spell. Soon, the brothers found themselves rising into the air, unable to quit their frantic cavorting as they floated above the treetops and into the sky.
The boys continued to rise until they were among the stars, thrashing wildly in time with the bewitching melody. Alarmed by the chaos these uninvited visitors were causing in his domain, the Moon transformed the brothers into a fixed constellation of stars, which he decreed would dance in the sky forever.
In a footnote, the folklorists wrote, “Only seven of the brothers are now commonly visible because some are very small and dance behind the rest. On very clear nights, those with good eyes can see the others.” Incredibly, another footnote identifies the ‘dancing stars’ as the Pleiades constellation, only seven stars of which are supposed to be visible to the naked eye.
At the end of their narrative, Converse and Parker explained that the magic music was the chanting of the Ji-hen-yah, or Sky Witches – celestial sorcerers who, as they put it, “frequently descend to the earth in the darkness in search of victims for the sky feasts, which they are ever celebrating.”
Sources
Voyages Made in the Years 1788 and 1789 from China to the North West Coast of America (1790), by John Meares
The Races of Mankind; Being a Popular Description of the Characteristics, Manners, and Customs of the Principal Varieties of the Human Family (1873), by Dr. Robert Brown
Conversations with Khahtsahlano, 1932-1954 (1955), by James Skitt Matthews
Wyandot Folk-Lore (1899), by William Elsey Connelley
Myths and Legends of the New York State Iroquois (1908), by Arthur Caswell Parker and Harriet Maxell Converse
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