Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [236]
In one myth, an Arctic seabird known as a fulmar, and noted for its foul (no pun intended) smell, sees Sedna and falls in love with her. Assuming human form, the bird makes himself a parka, woos Sedna, and invites her home. When they arrive, Sedna realizes that she has been tricked by the birdman and desperately calls for her father, Anguta, to help her. But he doesn’t hear her cries, and she has to spend months in this awful place. When Anguta eventually finds Sedna, he kills the mischievous bird. Discovering the murder, the other birds surround the father’s kayak, flap their wings in what seems like a Hitchcockian scene from The Birds, and create a storm that tosses the kayak in the waves.
Afraid the boat will capsize, Sedna’s father decides to look out for number one—himself! To lighten the boat’s load, he tosses his daughter into the sea. When she clings to the boat, Anguta takes out his knife and hacks off her fingers, one by one. In one version of the tale, each of Sedna’s fingers turns into a sea animal.
Angry at her father, Sedna seeks revenge. She calls on a team of dogs to attack him and gnaw on his hands and feet. He curses and screams until the earth opens up and they all tumble into the underworld. That is where Sedna lives and reigns as queen, blessing hunters with animals and creating terrible storms. The only thing she cannot do is comb her hair, since she has no fingers.
In another myth, Sedna begins life as a beautiful young woman but later becomes a one-eyed giantess who populates the sea with ocean life while Anguta, her father, makes the earth, sea, and heavens. But Sedna’s appearance is so hideous that only medicine men can bear to look at her. And some of her personal habits are pretty awful, too. On one occasion, which mirrors a scene from Night of the Living Dead, she feels the urge to eat some human flesh and begins to nibble on her mother and father. They wake up and discover what is going on, take Sedna far out to sea, and cast her overboard. Once again, as in other myths about her, Sedna desperately clings to the side of the boat, prompting her father to chop off her fingers. In this myth, Sedna’s severed fingers turn into whales, seals, and fish as they touch the water. Sedna then sinks to the bottom of the sea, where she lives, ruler of the underworld, keeping guard over the ungrateful dead. These include her own parents, who have been devoured by sea animals.
So why name a celestial object after a gruesome, murderous child? The not-quite-a-planet is thought to be very dark and very cold, so the goddess of the Arctic underworld seems perfectly appropriate. That’s the same reason Pluto was named for the Roman god of the underworld.
Sedna was actually the second of two recently discovered celestial objects to get a Native American name. In 2002, another large piece of orbiting rock was picked out of the very distant Kuiper Belt, the band of ice-and-rock objects at the very far reaches of our solar system. This rock was named Quaoar. The word comes from the Creation myth of the Tongva people, who are sometimes called the San Gabrielino Indians. The Tongva people lived in the Los Angeles area before the arrival of the Spanish and other Europeans.
Not exactly a god in the traditional sense, Quaoar is seen as the great force of Creation, who literally performs a “song and dance.”
When Quaoar dances and sings, the first sky father is born. This pair continues to sing and dance, and then the Earth Mother comes into existence. Now a trio, they all sing together, and grandfather sun comes to life. As each emerging deity joins the festivities, the song becomes more complex and the dance more complicated. Grandmother moon, the goddess of the sea, the lord of dreams and visions, the bringer of food and harvests, the goddess of the underworld all eventually join