The Canoe Is the People
Indigenous Navigation in the Pacific
Star Compass
“We use Papa Tom’s [Sir Tom Davis’] houses. Houses are divided into 32 portions in the sky where the stars live. I think of them as stars living in a house, just like people living in a house.”
Hawaiian wayfinder, Keahi Omai (taught by Nainoa Thompson)
From Bader, H. and McCurdy, P., eds (1999).
Stars move across the sky from east to west. Each night, they rise and set a few minutes earlier than the night before. Near the equator, each star rises from the same point on the horizon GLOSSARY horizon - the line where the earth and sky seem to meet in the east and sets at the same point in the west.
The Carolinians divide the horizon into 32 points where specific stars rise and set. The Polynesian Te Ngapore o te Ao (Directions Around the World) also has 32 points. People from other places, like Indonesia, use similar models. Each star point, or paafu in Satawalese, has a name. It also has a pair. For example, the star x rising is paired with the star x setting. A wayfinde learns each pair as well as the pair of stars that rise and set at right angles to it. This way, he can steer by lining up rising and setting stars with the front, side, or back of his canoe.
When no stars are visible (in the day or on a cloudy night), a wayfinder can still use the star compass to steer because he knows the direction of the swell GLOSSARY swell - rolling waves caused by trade winds and storms and the wind in relation to it.
Figure 1. Diagram based on the diagram which appears in "Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian and Pacific Societies." Edited by David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis, 1998, pg 462.
Carolinian Star Compass
Figure 1
Upright
Antares
Altair
The Carolinian navigators used pieces of coral to represent the 32 compass points, and bundles of coconut leaves to represent the 8 swell directions.