A total lunar eclipse will begin tonight at 6:45, peaking between 9 and 10. Ancient Iraqi astronomers discovered how to predict eclipses about 2,700 years ago, but the rest of the world remained awestruck by them for centuries.

According to an early observer, "The Indians do not like to see eclipses of the sun or moon," noted Thomas Forsyth about the Sauk and Fox tribes in Wisconsin in 1826. "They say that some bad munitoo (spirit) is about to hide and devour the sun or moon. The Indians always fire at the eclipse to drive away the munitoo, which they think they succeed in when the eclipse is over."

Thanks to European science, early missionaries in Wisconsin not only knew why eclipses happened but also when they would occur.

They used this knowledge to make their Native American hosts think they had special powers. Father Thierry Beschefer (1630-1711), head of the Jesuits in North America, confessed in 1683 that, "this prediction of eclipses has always been one of the things that have most astonished our savages; and it has given them a higher opinion of their missionaries."

Beschefer defended the deception with the time-honored excuse that the ends justified the means: "God makes use of everything to save souls," he wrote.

The first recorded eclipse in Wisconsin occurred on April 19, 1670, while Father Claude Allouez (1622-1689) was portaging rapids on the Fox River near Oshkosh. It "lasted from noon until two o'clock," he wrote, "a third of the Sun's disk, or nearly that, appeared to be eclipsed, the other two-thirds making a Crescent."

— Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

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