Slo'w (the Golden Eagle)
Chumash · deity · Chumash traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Slo'w is the giant Golden Eagle of the Chumash upper world. The astronomy recorded by Hudson and Underhay describes the house of the Sun and indeed the whole upper world as resting upon his outstretched wings, and tells that he stands motionless save when, to ease his tiredness, he slowly stretches those wings; in so doing he passes them before the moon, and the Chumash explained the waxing and waning of the moon by this stretching. He is also one of the upper-world gamblers, partnering the Sun against Sky Coyote and Morning Star in the nightly game of peon.
Domains
- sky vault
Powers
- to hold up the upper world upon his outstretched wings
- to partner the Sun in the nightly peon game against Sky Coyote
Epithets
Relations
- ally: Kakunupmawa (the Sun)Golden Eagle is the Sun's partner against Sky Coyote and Morning Star in the nightly peon game of the upper world.Travis Hudson and Ernest Underhay, Crystals in the Sky (Ballena Press, 1978) (secondary)
Sources
- Slo'w, the giant Golden Eagle, is the Chumash sky being who upholds the upper world on his wings and whose wing-stretching is given as the cause of the moon's phases.: Travis Hudson and Ernest Underhay, Crystals in the Sky: An Intellectual Odyssey Involving Chumash Astronomy, Cosmology, and Rock Art (Ballena Press Anthropological Papers No. 10, 1978) (secondary); Thomas C. Blackburn, December's Child: A Book of Chumash Oral Narratives (University of California Press, 1975) (secondary)