Morning Star

The Morning Star is the brilliant star of the predawn sky, reckoned the male star and the harbinger of the sun. In the Osage account of origins the sky-dwelling ancestors received counsel from four powers, among them the male star and the female star, before they descended to the earth. As a raptorial being poised at the arch of the heavens, the Morning Star was long associated in the wider region with warfare and renewal, and Osage tradition counts him among the star people, children of the Sun and the Moon. Sources differ on whether the male star should be identified strictly with Venus or more broadly with the great winter herald-star.

Parentage

• paternal: Grandfather the Sun
• maternal: Grandmother the Moon

Domains

• stars
• war

Powers

• heralds the coming of the sun

Epithets

• Mi-ka-k'e do-ga — the Male Star (Morning Star)Duncan & Diaz-Granados, 'The Cosmology of the Osage' (2004). (secondary)

Relations

• sibling: Evening StarDuncan & Diaz-Granados, 'The Cosmology of the Osage' (2004). (secondary)
• sibling: The Radiant StarDuncan & Diaz-Granados, 'The Cosmology of the Osage' (2004). (secondary)

Sources

• The Morning Star, the male star, is one of the four powers who counsel the Little Ones and a child of the Celestial Family.: Duncan & Diaz-Granados, 'The Cosmology of the Osage' (2004). (secondary); Osage Creation Story, Arkansas Archeological Survey, 'Indians of Arkansas.' (secondary)