Local astronomer and storyteller Gerard Tsonakwa, a member of the Abenaki tribe of Southern Quebec, recounts his tribe's story of Misengwe:
"Mars is Misengwe, the Red and Black Mask Being. Red on one side and black on the other, Misengwe sorts out good and evil. This time of year, he hunts Gitaskogak, the Great Serpent, in the southern sky. What my people see as the great serpent, many people call the constellation Scorpius. Misengwe's red side is turned to us this time of year so we can see him, but at other times, he presents his black side and is invisible in the night sky."

Early Times

Long before telescopes and spaceships, ancient people noticed stars that moved differently through the sky than all the rest. These "wandering stars" were planets and one of them was a rusty-red color that reminded people of fire and blood. The Romans named this small planet after Mars, their god of war. When Mars appeared in the sky, some people thought it was a sign that a terrible war was coming.

Our view of Mars through time

*COPERNICUS: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) used mathematical evidence to find that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe. This was an unpopular idea because Christianity taught that everything revolved around the Earth.

*GALILEO: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) built his own telescope and made observations that proved Copernicus' ideas about a heliocentric universe. Galileo was warned to keep quiet about his beliefs and was eventually found guilty of heresy, beliefs opposed to the church. He was imprisoned and forbidden to publish his ideas. But Galileo and Copernicus were right.

* PERCIVAL LOWELL: Percival Lowell (1855-1916) used his powerful telescope in Flagstaff to look for proof of alien life on Mars. He claimed he had found 500 canals on the red planet built by Martians to bring water from its polar ice caps to its drier areas.

*SPACE OPERA: Percival Lowell's ideas about life on Mars sparked a slew of books, magazine stories and movies about Martian spaceships landing on Earth. In 1938, Orson Welles performed and directed an adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds on the radio. More than 11 million people listened and more than a few actually thought that Martians were invading Earth, despite warnings that the broadcast was just fiction. Mars and outer space remain popular subjects for Hollywood in television shows like "The Jetsons" and "Star Trek" and movies like "Mission to Mars."

*ROBERT GODDARD: Goddard built and launched a rocket in 1926 that flew 41 feet into the air, and eventually built multistage rockets that climbed to more than 9,000 feet. He paved the way for the exploration of space and 43 years after Goddard's first rocket launch, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon.

* MARS UP CLOSE: In the 1960s, the United States and Russia began sending spacecraft to Mars and proved once and for all that there were no canals or intelligent life there. But many scientists now are convinced that at one time there was water on the planet and possibly simple forms of life.