Another way of reconciling solar and lunar cycles

[steorran_worulde]

While I was poking around doing research for this post (specifically, trying to find evidence of Native North American cultures having ecologically-named and possibly ecologically-based months on a lunisolar calendar), I stumbled across a way of reconciling the cycles of solar year and lunar month that I hadn't heard of before. I came across it in the Musqueam reference grammar by Wayne P. Suttles. The evidence for how the Musqueam calendar worked is kind of thin, but other Salishan languages use the system described (p. 517):

One way of adjusting a lunar calendar to the solar year is to insert a thirteenth month every four years or so, as the Jewish and Chinese calendars do. Another, probably more common way is to begin counting moons with some event that is determined by the solar year, count up to, say, ten moons, stop counting, and then begin again when the event that you started with comes again. In this way a "Sandhill Crane Moon" will correspond to the coming of the sandhill cranes.

Counting moons, leaving a gap, and beginning the count again with the observation of something determined by the solar year is just what was done by people upriver from the Musqueam. According to Diamond Jenness (1955, 7-9), the Katzie, who spoke a Downriver Halkomelem dialect very close to that of the Musqueam, counted ten months beginning with the arrival of the sockeye in August of the Gregorian calendar, leaving a period covering June and July with two names but not regarded as part of the count. The Chehalis, an Upriver Halkomelem-speaking peoople, as reported by Charles Hill-Tout (1904, 334-35), began a count of moons with the chinook salmon spawning in October, counted ten moons, and stopped counting in July, leaving a period called by a term said to refer to the coming together of the ends of the year. Neither Jenness nor Hill-Tout gave any reason for this uncounted period. But James Teit (1900, 339), describing the practice of the Ntlakapmux (Thompson), is very clear about it. The Ntlakapmux began a moon count with the rutting of the deer or some other animal in the fall, counted eleven months, and left a period as "the rest of the year." "This indefinite period of unnamed months," Teit explains, "enabled the Indians to bring the lunar and solar years into harmony".

This isn't relevant for my blind society, but is worth being aware of for more general calendar-making, as another way things can be done.