Thunderbird

“ Little Thunderbird lay just inside the tepee and had heard his father speaking with his mother. Rising from his bed, he ran out of the tepee and headed through the village to find his friends. His parents understood and did not try to call him back. Finally, he found them, once again seated in a council circle like the men of the tribe. When they saw him coming, the tallest arose from his place and stopped Little Thunderbird before he could reach the circle.
“What is it you want here, teller of lies?” he asked angrily. “We do not want you for a friend. Go from this place. ”

“ With both Cheyenne and Arapaho the thunder (ba′a′) is a large bird, with a brood of smaller ones, and carries in its talons a number of arrows with which it strikes the victim of lightning. For this reason they call the eagle on our coins baa. When it thunders, they say ba′a′ nänitŭ′hut, “the thunder calls.” In Indian pictography the Thunderbird is figured with zigzag lines running out from its heart to represent the lightning. A small figure of it (represented in figure 92) , cut from rawhide and ornamented with beads, is frequently worn on the heads of the dancers. ”

“ Thus the Thunderbird of the Pacific Coast degenerates into a servant of the Ojibwa medicine man, or else the servant grows to the proportion of a God as he travels West according to which version is taken as to the origin, but it is likely that the servant grew to be the God, as all tales grow in the telling, especially among an ignorant people like the Indians. ”

“ This Thunderbird lives somewhere up in the sky and can only be brought to the earth by the Mide or shaman priests, who are the medicine men of the tribe, and members of the Mide-wiwin society, and then only to serve some good end in the making of medicine. ”

“ At another place, near the summit of the Coteau des Prairies, in eastern South Dakota, a number of large round bowlders are pointed out as the eggs of the Thunderbird. According to the Comanche there is a place on upper Red river where the Thunderbird once alighted on the ground, the spot being still identified by the fact that the grass remains burned off over a space having the outline of a large bird with outstretched wings. The same969 people tell how a hunter once shot and wounded a large bird which fell to the ground. ”

“ They treated him all right, but when old Thunderbird, his own self, brings them some white men, they may not be so glad to see them, and those chaps have copper-pointed spears and arrows, not to speak of rifles. ”

“ Thunderbird began. “One day, while he was out on a hunt with some other braves of the tribe, he spotted a mountain lion. They were high in the hills and they had been looking for some ponies that had strayed from the herd. When my father saw the mountain lion, he spoke with the other braves and they decided to kill the beast. As you know, the mountain lion preys upon our pony herds. By killing this one, that would be one less lion to worry about. My father looked around the circle of braves and asked who would go with him to kill the lion. ”

“ This song probably refers to the Thunderbird. There is an energetic swing to the tune that makes it a favorite. In Indian belief the earth is a circular disk, usually surrounded on all sides by water, and the sky is a solid concave hemisphere coming down at the horizon to the level of the earth. In Cherokee and other Indian myth the sky is continually lifting up and coming down again to the earth, like the upper blade of the scissors. ”

“ The figure is carved on their totem posts and canoe stems and painted on the house fronts, and various implements with the belief, as among the Twanas, that it gives them power, courage and luck in hunting, fishing or war. A mask representing the head of the bird is worn in the Ta-mahn-a-wis dances and ceremonies, which have something to do with the Thunderbird, though just what this is has never been clearly ascertained, as the Indians will not allow whites to witness these Ta-mahn-a-wis practices, which are of the nature of a secret society among civilized people. ”

“ Fog rises from lake one day and boy sees monster with two heads crawling out of lake. Storm comes from west and Thunderbirds return, making lightning, which strikes serpent. Lightning throws it back, but it again crawls up. Monster opens its mouth to swallow boy. He shoots black arrow into its mouth. Monster falls and bursts open. Other head comes and boy shoots red arrow into its mouth and head broken in pieces. Thunderbirds come with all kinds of birds, which feast upon serpent. They give boy power as objects which he swallows. Boy chief of all birds and kills all bad animals. ”

“ Thunderbird. A mythical giant bird usually thought of as a thunder-god. — *Harris Boanerges 13—30 passim, Harris Picus who is also Zeus vii; *Encyc. Religion and Ethics I 529a; Hatt Asiatic Influences 36ff. ”

“ When the thunderbirds shake their wings favorably, it rains. There was a time when they tired of living between heaven and earth, and asked the Great Mystery if they might become men and live on earth. ”

“ The Thunder-Bird resorts to cunning. He takes the form of a large bird, but his disguise is always penetrated by the smallest forest-bird; they know him, and, like faithful servants, keep near their lord. Again and again the thunder rolls, and the lightning plays about the branches of the tree. The waters swell and rise up to anger the Thunder-Bird, and to tempt him to do battle, but he has too many quarrels to resent against the forest gods, and the day of his vengeance is come. It is not often that he has courage to tempt the forest god to battle, for he knows his power ”

“ When he sails out from them, the sky is darkened; and the flapping of his wings makes the thunder, and the winking of his eyes the lightning. It is very strange that the "thunder-bird" should be one of the deities of the Indians of the North-west, where thunder is so rare as to be phenomenal. We heard of him in other parts of British Columbia, and see him represented in carvings from Sitka. ”

“ You alone, girl as you are, know the full secret of the Thunder Bird, as you romantically call it, the principle on which I am working, child–in so far as you can understand it–in creating this model rocket for experiments and the master sky-rocket, the full-fledged Thunder Bird, later, to soar even to the moon itself–Mars, too, maybe–you alone know and you have kept it dark. ”

“ All through the day the air is filled with them—gulls and airplanes sharing amicably the island and the air above it.
Up from the south, with her nose pointed determinedly northward and her rudder set steady as the tail of a frozen fish, the Thunder Bird came humming defiantly, flying swift under the moon. Over San Diego bay, watching through night-glasses the outlaw bird, the two scouting planes dipped steeply toward their nesting place on North Island. Three planes were up with students making practice flights and doing acrobatics by moonlight. ”

“ Thunder-Bird put on his Sunday-best war outfit to let me see him, and he was splendid to look at, with his face painted red and bright and intense like a fire-coal and a valance of eagle feathers from the top of his head all down his back, and he had his tomahawk, too, and his pipe, which has a stem which is longer than my arm, and I never had such a good time in an Indian camp in my life, and I learned a lot of words of the language, and next day BB took me to the camp out on the Plains, four miles, and I had another good time and got acquainted with some more Indians and dogs ”

“ Una! Although they’re pretty eyes–I’ll admit that!” mused the critic further. “Goodness! won’t she open them one of these days when the world is all ringing with talk of Dad and his rocket: when the Thunder Bird, the finished, full-fledged Thunder Bird, undertakes its hundred-hour flight to the moon.... ”

“ In eddies round us, and our leader’s roar
Smote peal on peal, and from their bases flung
The rocks that towered along the trembling shore.
A Thunder-Bird—alas, my chosen friend,
But even so a warrior’s life should end,—
A Thunder-Bird was stricken; his bright beak,
Cleaving the tumult like a lightning streak,
Smote with a fiery hiss the watery plain;
His upturned breast, where gleamed one fleck of red,
His sable wings, one moment wide outspread,
Blackened the whirlpool o’er his sinking head.
The Water-Demon’s sons by scores were slain
By our swift arrows falling like the rain ”

“ The Thunder Bird will lay its golden egg for us–if it drops its expiring one upon the moon. It will send us back the first record from space, the very first information as to what it may be that lies up–away up–a couple of hundred miles, or so, above us, in the outer edges of the earth’s atmosphere of which less is known at present than of the deepest soundings of the ocean. Our Thunder Bird will be the–first–explorer.”
“Oh! de-ar Mammy Moon–what a shock she’ll get.” ”

“ Cliff gave him that tolerant smile which Johnny found so intolerable. "It is not at all necessary. I thought of all possible contingencies when I first saw the Thunder Bird. Across the line the name absolutely identifies it, which is rather important. On this side it is known as a bird fond of doing the unusual. Your reputation, old man, may help you out of a tight place yet. Now we are duck hunters, remember. Hereafter we shall be hunting ducks with an airplane—something new, but not at all improbable, especially when it is the Thunder Bird doing the hunting. ”

“ The Dakotas believe that thunder is produced by the flapping of the wings of an immense bird which they call Wakinyan—the Thunder-bird. Near the source of the Minnesota River is a place called "Thunder-Tracks" where the foot-prints of a "Thunder-bird" are seen on the rocks twenty-five miles apart. Mrs. Eastman's Dacotah, p. 71. There are many Thunder-birds. The father of all the Thunder-birds—"Wakinyan Tanka"—or "Big Thunder," has his teepee on a lofty mountain in the far West. His teepee has four openings, at each of which is a sentinel; at the east, a butterfly; at the west, a bear ”

“ Johnny got thrills of which his hardy nerves had never dreamed themselves capable. Riding the sky in the Thunder Bird was tame to the point of boredom, compared with riding up and over and down and around a squirmy black line with the pound of the Pacific in his ears and the steady beat of the motor blending somehow with it, and the tingle of uncertainty as to whether they would make the next sharp curve on two wheels as successfully as they had made the last. ”

“ The kiddies, grouped close to watch the Thunder Bird's flight, blinked and turned their faces from the dust storm kicked up by the exhaust. The plane shook, ran forward faster and faster, lifted its little wheels off the ground and went whirring away toward the dark blur of the mountains that rimmed the southern edge of the valley.
Johnny circled twice, getting sufficient altitude to clear the hills, then flew straight for the border. ”

“ The view on Thunder-Bay is one of the grandest in America. Thunder-Cap, with its sleeping stone-giant, looms up into the heavens. Here Ka-be-bon-ikka—the Ojibway's god of storms—flaps his huge wings and makes the Thunder. From this mountain he sends forth the rain, the snow, the hail, the lightning and the tempest. A vast giant, turned to stone by his magic, lies asleep at his feet. The island called by the Ojibways the Mak-i-nak (the turtle) from its tortoise-like shape, lifts its huge form in the distance. ”

“ As he heard the last beat of the Thunder Bird's wings dying slowly, slowly, faintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird, too, was dying, for its soul was leaving its monster black body, and presently that soul appeared in the sky. ”

“ Ramón called wildly. [Pg 213] “Come! Oh Bird, settle a moment on my wrist, over my head, and give me power of the sky, and wisdom. Oh Bird! Bird of all the wide heavens, even if you drum your feathers in thunder, and drop the white snake of fire from your beak back to the earth again, where he can run in, deep down the rocks again, home: even if you come as the Thunderer, come! Settle on my wrist a moment, with the clutch of the power of thunder, and arch your wings over my head, like a shadow of clouds; and bend your breast to my brow, and bless me with the sun. ”

“ It is the symbol, or "totem" of the chief's tribe. Below the wolf there are many strokes of red paint, which Yellow Thunder likes to count, for each stroke tells of a scalp taken in warfare.
[52]
Not many miles up the river above Yellow Thunder's home, beavers are hunted. Black Cloud likes to catch them, because their flesh is good to eat, and the skin is covered with fine fur. Last winter he allowed his son to go with himself and a party of men to hunt for this clever little creature.
Yellow Thunder believes that the beavers were once people and able to speak like himself. ”

“ From out of the west, in response to their blue despondency, the clouds blew over the plains—the thunder rumbled—the rain came splashing and beating and then fell in blinding sheets. The Fire Eater arose and standing on the edge of the bank raised his arms in thanks to the Thunder Bird for his interposition in their behalf, saying: “Brothers, the Thunder Bird has come to his poor warriors to drive our enemies back as was promised to the prophet. He will put out the fires of the Yellow-Eyes, behind their medicine-logs. We are not afraid—our medicine is strong.” ”

“ The Indians believed that thunder was made by this bird clapping its wings together. If a storm should arise while they were out in their canoes, and if they should meet with some fatal disaster, it was believed that the thunder bird had devoured them. ”