The Boys in the Big Dipper is a Chumash Indian tale.

During the harvest festival each year, people tell the tale of the seven lost boys, which happened when the world was young.

One day, a man and his wife sat down to eat their roasted meat. When the woman's son sat down to join them, his mother said, "Go away. Your stepfather brought these ducks for us, not for you."

The boy was hurt and angry. He walked into the forest and picked berries to eat. Then he curled up on a bed of leaves and fell asleep.

When the sun rose, another hungry boy came along, so the first boy taught the second how to dig for roots. That night the boys shared tales of their unhappy homes.

The next morning, as the boys dug for food, Old Raccoon happened past and felt sorry for them. "Follow me," he said, "and I will show you plentiful fields."

Old Raccoon taught them where to dig for tubers, and as they dug, another boy came along.

Word seemed to spread, for before long seven boys were gathered in the forest with Old Raccoon, each one complaining that his parents had sent him away.

The days began to grow darker and cooler, but Raccoon built fires to warm his new family, and he showed the boys how to store roots and berries and tubers for the coming winter.

But one day the oldest boy said to his friends, "I want to go north. Who will travel with me?"

All six boys chimed in, "Me!" So the oldest boy took the goose down he had been collecting and handed some to each of the boys. "Put some on your head," he said, "and some on your shoulders. This will keep you warm as we travel."

"But what about Uncle Raccoon?" the youngest boy asked.

"He can come along," the oldest boy answered, and they called to Old Raccoon and gave him some down.

"Put this on," they told him. "We're moving north, and this down will keep us warm."

Old Raccoon put the goose down on his head and on his shoulders, and agreed to travel with the boys. But when the boys began to sing, Old Raccoon realized their song was magical, and that knew things would soon change.

The boys began to feel light, and then lighter, and after a while they began to rise into the sky. But no matter how quickly Old Raccoon moved, he could not rise from the ground.

"Try again," called the oldest as he rose higher and higher. "Put on some more goose down, and you'll fly too."

Old Raccoon put more down on his body, but he still could not fly.

Meanwhile, the boys were flying higher, and as Old Raccoon grew smaller and smaller, they began to cry, "Uncle Raccoon, you must come, you must come!"

An old woman walking nearby recognized one of those voices, and she ran to fetch the boy's mother.

"Your son is leaving," said the woman. "You were cruel. Now go tell him you are sorry."

The mother ran to the field, and saw her son flying away.

"Come back," she cried. "Come down this minute!" But he only flew higher.

Before long the mothers of the other boys had joined the first mother. They too called up to their sons, "Come home, come home."

But it was too late. By then the boys had transformed altogether. They had become wild geese, and when they called to their mothers, they sounded like crying babies, just the way geese sound today when they call to us.

As for Old Raccoon, he stayed on the ground and watched them go, for he understood they were going to Sky Country to settle there. They became the constellation we now call the Big Dipper. Their mothers, people say, rose into the sky too, but they became the constellation we call the Pleiades, forever reaching out for their boys but always too far away.