Saving the Sun

When the total eclipse descends on Cherokee, North Carolina, this August, a tradition reaching back thousands of years will live on. 

A great ruckus of shouting and drumming will rise up into the sky to scare away the giant frog that’s eating the sun, or so goes the Cherokee mythology surrounding an eclipse.

It’s astounding that something as rare as an eclipse was imprinted in Cherokee culture, but that’s the power of oral traditions, explains Barbara Duncan with the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.

“Even if people didn’t see it in their own lifetime, the knowledge was taken very seriously—‘we know about this, we know it is not the end of the world, we know it is going to pass and here’s what we do to make that happen,’” Duncan says. “And that knowledge gets passed down because it always worked.”

An eclipse was an elusive and disconcerting phenomenon in earlier times, and cultures all over the world had similar mythology to explain it.

“In China, it is a dragon eating the sun. And in Northern Europe and Scandinavia, it is a wolf,” says Duncan.

Making noise to scare away the animal in the sky was also common across many cultures.

“Acting as a group is a way of relieving anxiety,” Duncan says.

The sun and moon were one and the same celestial body to the Cherokee, and the call to action was the same for both a solar and lunar eclipse, as witnessed in the 1730s by a white trader living among the Cherokee.

“They all ran wild, this way and that way…firing their guns, whooping and hallooing, beating of kettles, ringing horse bells, and making the most horrid noises that human beings possibly could,” James Adair chronicled in the History of the American Indians in 1775. “This was done to assist the suffering moon.”

Let’s hope the strategy works this time, too. You can join the tradition with an eclipse festival at the Cherokee Fairgrounds on August 21.