Thunderbird (mythology)

Algonquian

Mississaugas

Ho-Chunk

Menominee

Tribal signatures using thunderbirds on the Great Peace of Montreal

The thunderbird myth and motif is prevalent among Algonquian peoples in the Northeast, i.e., Eastern Canada (Ontario, Quebec, and eastward) and Northeastern United States, and the Iroquois peoples (surrounding the Great Lakes).^[9] The discussion of the Northeast region has included Algonquian-speaking people in the Lakes-bordering U.S. Midwest states (e.g., Ojibwe in Minnesota^[10]).

In Algonquian mythology, the thunderbird controls the upper world while the underworld is governed by the underwater panther or Great Horned Serpent. The thunderbird creates not just thunder (with its wing-flapping) but lightning bolts, which it casts at the underworld creatures.^[5]

Thunderbird in this tradition may be depicted as a spreadeagled bird (wings horizontal head in profile), but also quite common with the head facing forward, thus presenting an X-shaped appearance overall^[10] (see under §Iconography below).

Ojibwe

The Ojibwe version of the myth states that the thunderbirds were created by Nanabozho to fight the underwater spirits. Thunderbirds also punished humans who broke moral rules. The thunderbirds lived in the four directions and arrived with the other birds in the springtime. In the fall, they migrated south after the end of the underwater spirits' most dangerous season.^[11]

Siouan

The thunderbird motif is also seen in Siouan-speaking peoples, which include tribes traditionally occupying areas around the Great Lakes.

Arikara

Ethnographer George Amos Dorsey transcribed a tale from the Arikaras with the title The Boy who befriended the Thunderbirds and the Serpent: a boy named Antelope-Carrier finds a nest with four young thunderbirds; their mother comes and tells the human boy that a two-headed Serpent comes out of the lake to eat the young.^[14]

Stone rings

Some thunderbird nests are doughnut-shaped stone rings. In a key archaeological investigation of a thunderbird nest, Patrick H. Carmichael excavated a site on the shore of Lake Wanipigow, Manitoba, known to him as EgKx-15, around 0.5 kilometres east of the mouth of Beaver Creek,^[16][17] labelling it a "Thunderbird Nest" "because this is the manner in which local Native inhabitants refer to such phenomena",^[16]: 282 and reporting that "an 80-year-old Native from the Hole River Reserve told me quite frankly that the Thunderbird built the nests, for 'what man has the power to lift those great stones?'".^[16]: 290 Carmichael concluded that "the exact function of the Wanipigow Thunderbird Nests remains enigmatic".^[16]: 294 They were associated in "popular theory" with vision quests, though Carmichael doubted that this would have been the original use for a structure constructed within a settlement site.^{[16]: 290–294}

The Thunderbird Nest investigated by Carmichael constituted a "large circular pile of boulders with a central depression or hollow".^[16]: 282 The ring had an outer diameter of around 6.5 metres and when excavated had a minimum height of one metre. It comprised hundreds of boulders, each estimated to weigh 20–50 kilogrammes. Excavation revealed no evidence of other structures or of fires on the site, and "the central hollow had no definable floor",^[16]: 282 though it was not excavated.^[16]: 287 The site was associated with pottery and stone projectile points suggesting occupation around 500 CE, and Carmichael thought that the nest had been constructed in a single campaign, though this did not prove dates of construction of the nest.^{[16]: 287, 294}

Carmichael was aware of two similar nests elsewhere on the lakeshore, along with a semi-circular one two hundred metres inland, along with examples as far north as Cross Lake, as far west as the Rural Municipality of Alonsa on the west bank of Lake Manitoba,^[18][19] to the southeast on Manitoba's Black River and Caribou Lake as well as in Bissett, and east into Ontario.^{[16]: 288–89, 294–95} In the 2020s, Mary E. Gage believed she had discovered an example in New Hampshire.^[20] Carmichael thought that although the raw material for the formations he inspected might in some cases have been piles of glacially deposited boulders, their arrangement was "cultural" rather than "natural".^[16]: 290

Depressions

Other thunderbird nests are large pits (similar to the Puckasaw Pits of Ontario).^[16]: 294 Reporting on conversations with the Pikangikum First Nation elders Jake Keesic, Charlie Peters, Reggie Peters, Oliver Hill and Matthew Strang, Stevenson and Natcher described the thunderbird nests of Whitefeather Forest as "circular boulder field depressions" being 10–30 metres deep and 50–150 metres in diameter, which from Stevenson and Natcher's perspective originated as "geomorphic features of the last glacial period". The elders reported how destructive clear-cutting forestry had been to these sites.^{[21]: 7–8 [22]}

X-shapes

In Algonquian images, an X-shaped thunderbird is often used to depict the thunderbird with its wings alongside its body and the head facing forwards instead of in profile.^[9]

The depiction may be stylized and simplified. A headless X-shaped thunderbird was found on an Ojibwe midewiwin disc dating to 1250–1400 CE.^[23] In an 18th-century manuscript (a "daybook" ledger) written by the namesake grandson of Governor Matthew Mayhew, the thunderbird pictograms varies from "recognizable birds to simply an incised X".^[24]