The following is taken from:
Le Roy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers:
The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation, 4 vols. (Washington,
D.C.: Review and Herald, 1954) 4:294-95. 297:
Matchless
1833 Spectacle Unsurpassed in History
According to astronomers, the
meteoric shower of the night of November 12/13, 1833, was the most remarkable
of its kind on record. The noted contemporary observer, Denison Olmsted,
professor of astronomy at Yale, who collated all the available data, called it
"an exhibition of the phenomenon called SHOOTING STARS, which was probably
more extensive and magnificent than any similar one hitherto recorded.” [18]
"A modern Harvard
astronomer" describes it thus: "In the early morning of November 13,
1833, the people of the United States were waked by early risers to turn out
and see the stars fall. And fall they did—silently, singly, in bursts and
sheaves, tiny ones and balls like the moon. All the observers saw that the
meteors darted away from a single point in the sky [in the constellation Leo];
the meteors 'were like the ribs of a gigantic umbrella.' So plain was this that
two quite amateur observers made sketches, . . so far as we know the only
drawings of the phenomenon that have survived."' [19]
Beginning about midnight, the
meteors came more frequently, until they were described as being thick as
snowflakes,' [20] just before dawn blotted out the sublime spectacle. The sky was
"literally ablaze," as "in a few hours more than a billion shooting
stars appeared over the United States and Canada alone." [21] This
"rare and wonderful display" of "terrible magnitude" [22]'
was seen in nearly equal splendor and duration from Canada to Mexico, from
mid-Atlantic to the Pacific.' [23]
The American Indians in the West
were so impressed by it that various tribes used it as "a milestone in
their calendars." [24] In these calendars, as, for example, among the
Dakota tribes, the winter of 1833/34 was designated in picture writing by some
symbol of a star shower, and called the winter when "the stars fell,"
"it rained stars," or "the stars moved around," the "storm-of-stars
winter," and similar names." [25]
With the general population of
the country "the falling of the stars" was an occasion of awe-tinged
with delight or fear, as the case might be. Many gathered in groups in
churches, schoolhouses, and homes. Some dropped to their knees to pray; others
ran to neighbors to confess wrongs. On this "night of restitution,"
as it was also called, stolen things were suddenly returned. Many felt sure the
day of judgment was at hand. And many devout students of the Word believed God
had written in the sky.
Notes for the Above:
[18] Denison Olmsted,
"Observations on the Meteors of November 13th, 1833." The American
Journal of Science, January. 1834, p. 363. For other astronomers' accounts,
see Simon Newcomb, Astronomy for Everybody (1st ed.), p. 280; W. J.
Fisher, "The Ancient Leonids," The Telescope, October, 1934,
p. 83; Clyde Fisher and Marian Lockwood, op. cit., p. 89.
[19] W. J. Fisher, op. cit.,
pp. 79, 80. These cuts first appeared in The Old Countryman, interesting
New York weekly, for Nov. 20, 1833, and were then quickly reproduced in various
journals and newspapers, such as Mechanics Magazine (November, 1833),
and The New York Journal of Commerce (Nov. 27, 1833). Fisher tells us
(p. 80) that one of The Old Countryman's editors, Henry J. Pickering
(who gave a really Biblical exposition of the phenomenon over his initial, as
noted later), personally, as an observer of the star shower, superintended the
drawing of these wood cuts.
[20] Fletcher G. Watson, Between
the Planets, p. 118.
[21] Peter M. Millman, “The
Falling of the Stars,” The Telescope, May-June, 1940, p. 57. Estimates
for the number visible at one place vary from 10,000 to 200,000 an hour. The
only actual count would indicate 34,000 an hour as the display was already
ceasing, two hours after the peak. (Charles Olivier, Meteors, p. 25.)
[22] Alexander C. Twining,
“Investigations Respecting the Meteors of Nov. 13th, 1833,” The American
Journal of Science, July, 1834, pp. 337 ff. 351.
[23] Denison Olmsted, Letters
on Astronomy, p. 349.
[24] Clyde Fisher and Marian
Lockwood, op. cit., p. 89.
[25] Garrick Mallery,
“Picture-Writing of the American Indians,” in Tenth Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
(1888-89), plate XX (between pp. 266 and 267), pp. 209, 320, 723; James Mooney,
“Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians,” in the same Bureau’s Seventeenth
Annual Report (1895-96), pp. 260, 261; Leslie Spier, Yuman Tribes of the
Gila River, pp. 138, 139 (also pp. 15, 16).
From Ibid., 4:296:
INDIAN
ANNUAL CALENDARS NOTE 1833 STAR SHOWER
(Upper) In Long Dog's Winter
Count the Year 1833 (Circled) Indicated by Falling Stars (Upper Yanktoni
Tribe). The Dating by Years Is From 1800, Painted on a Buffalo Hide. (Lower)
Set-t'an Annual Calendar (Kiowa Tribe), With the Same Event Chosen for the
Year. Both Are Native Drawings; (Inset) Only Surviving Contemporary Drawing,-
by "Mr. Pickering," Editor of The Old Countryman, Which Shows
the Divergence Point, of Radiant, From a Common Center. (Reprinted in Mechanic's
Magazine for November, 1833) (Ibid., 4:297)
