Pawnee mythology
[2]: 465 The Skidis were "the great star specialists",[2]: 465 with a belief system focusing on visible objects on the night sky.
Stars east of the Milky Way were regarded as male gods, while the female powers reigned in the western sky.
[1]: 40 The South Bands acknowledged the creative powers of some celestial objects and meteorological phenomena, but largely counted upon animals for support and guidance.
[3] Atíʼas Tirawa, which means "Our Father Above" in the Pawnee language (often translated, inaccurately, as "Great Spirit"),[4] was the creator god.
[1]: 38 and 179 [5]: 66 He was believed to have taught the Pawnee people tattooing, fire-building, hunting, agriculture, speech and clothing, religious rituals (including the use of tobacco and sacred bundles), and sacrifices.
[1]: 67 While the Skidi Pawnee relied a great deal on the powers and the aid of stars and other objects in cosmos, the South Bands came through foremost by the assistance and advice of a number of animals.
The physical construction of the house required setting up four posts to represent the four cardinal directions, "aligned almost exactly with the north–south, east–west axis.
[12] According to one Skidi-band Pawnee man at the beginning of the twentieth century, "The Skidi were organized by the stars; these powers above made them into families and villages, and taught them how to live and how to perform their ceremonies.
It can be tied to celestial observation, held at the time when the priest first tracked "two small twinkling stars known as the Swimming Ducks in the northeastern horizon near the Milky Way."
[15]: 159 However, two members of the Long Expedition in 1820 believed that the young Pawnee man Petalesharo had rescued the Comanche girl and urged an end to the Morning Star ritual.
[18] Indian Agent John Dougherty and some influential Pawnees tried without luck to save the life of a Cheyenne girl before mid-April 1827.
At the first instruction, both the visionary and the priest would cry, knowing that the mission put upon them by the Morning Star was wrong to carry out.
[1]: 115 The man, aided by volunteers, then had to carry out an attack on an enemy village and capture a girl of suitable age.
A five-day ceremony then began with the priest singing songs describing the advancing stages in the rite, and the girl was symbolically transformed from human to celestial form, as the ritual representation of the Evening Star.
On the final day of the ceremony, a procession of men, boys and male infants carried by their mothers accompanied the girl outside the village to a scaffold.
[1]: 124 The scaffold was made of sacred woods and skins, representing "Evening Star's garden in the west, the source of all animal and plant life.
The dead girl's chest would then be cut open by the priest with a flint knife while her captor caught her blood on dried meat.
")[1]: 123 All male members of the tribe would then press forward and shoot arrows into the dead body, then circle the scaffold four times and disperse.
Her blood would drip down from the scaffolding and onto the ground which had been made to represent the Evening Star's garden of all plant and animal life.
The spirit of the Evening Star was understood to be released and the ceremony supposedly ensured the success of the crops, the continuation of all life on the Plains, and the perpetuation of the Universe.
