Love the Indian way of explaining the world. Sometimes I wish we could go back......

Legend Of The Rainbow Path

The Iroquois Indians believed the sky was a land of its own, a lush and bountiful terrain where animal and man thrived. They viewed the Sun and the Moon as man and wife, a married couple who descended to the earth through an aperture in the sky and returned back through another hole to a better land at night.

Heng, the Thunder God, grew angry at the Sun as he viewed the Moon growing thinner and thinner and finally fading away. He believed that the Sun was mistreating his beautiful bride and so cast a giant black cloud across the shining face of the Sun. The heat from the Sun's face melted the cloud, the result being a beautiful, big rainbow.

When the animals saw the glorious rainbow and all its colors, they thought it a bridge to the land in the sky. They went to their king, Old Turtle, and pleaded with him to let them ascend the path. Old Turtle waned them of the possible danger in doing this, however the animals in their excitement ignored him. They didn't realize that once the rain stopped the rainbow would disappear, and they would be left in the sky with no way down.

The Iroquois claimed the gods outlined the animals' bodies in stars and some of our constellations are known for the animal shapes they represent.