The Greater Bear
Their brightest gems to tell
Must first direct his mind's eye north
And learn the Bear's stars well.
Ursa Major, or the Greater Bear, is the most easily recognised and the most widely known of all the constellations. In all the records of an astronomical character that have come down to us we find allusions to this famous group of northern stars. It is unquestionably the most ancient of all the constellations, and universally known as "the Bear."
On the banks of the Euphrates thousands of years ago it was so designated, and the Iroquois Indians of North America called this star group "Okouari," their name for "bear." The Algonquin Indians called the constellation "the Bear and the Hunters," and as they were evidently sensible of the incongruity of attributing a conspicuously long tail to an animal that had none, they consequently regarded the three stars in the tail of the Bear as three hunters pursuing the beast.
The Finns called Ursa Major "Otawa," a title resembling the "Okouari" of the Iroquois, and it is inferred that they regarded this constellation as representing a Bear.
Thus in remote parts of the earth, in the far north, from the valley of the Euphrates to the region of the Great Lakes of North America, we find the same stars likened to an identical animal, "the relic of some primeval association of ideas long since extinct."
The arrangement of the stars in Ursa Major in no way
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