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Native Americans and Meteorites - Part 4 of 6

Jeanne wrote:

> I was also wondering if your book mentions anything about Native
> American usage of Canyon Diablo irons for tools, amulets or other
> spiritual items.

BURKE J.G. (1986) Cosmic Debris - Meteorites in History, pp. 223-225:

The Skidi Pawnee Indians, whose ancestral home was in east-central
Nebraska along the Platte River, called meteorites the children of
Tirawahat, their chief god. They wrapped objects believed to be
meteorites in bundles that they considered sacred and that belonged
either to individuals or to the tribe. A wonderful being named
Pahokatawa came from the sky as a turtle-shaped stone, as legend
predicted, and the tribe carried it with them in a bundle. When the
warriors offered prayers and smoke to it before battle, they were
successful, and there was no disease when the stone was in the camp.
When they moved to Indian Territory (Oklahoma), they left the stone on a
high hill in western Nebraska.
Other Indian tribes had very similar beliefs about the Willamette,
Wichita County, and Iron Creek meteoritic irons. We noted in chapter 6
that the Clackamas Indians of northwestern Oregon venerated the
Willamette meteorite as Tomanowos, or "Visitor from the Moon," and that
before battles the warriors washed their faces and dipped their arrows
in the water that collected in the hollows of the iron. The Kiowas,
Comanches, and Apaches in Indian Territory venerated the Wichita County
meteorite, whose original site was just across the Red River in north
Texas. They believed that it came from the Great Spirit, and well-worn
trails indicated frequent visits to it by these tribes. The Cree and
Blackfeet Indians of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Montana thought that the
Iron Creek meteorite had fallen from heaven, and venerated the iron as a
"medicine-stone." When white men removed it about 1870 to a mission
house 60 miles distant, an old medicine man predicted that war, disease,
and a dearth of buffalo would result. In only a few months famine,
plague, and war did come to the Indians.


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