Why Does a Bird Make the Storm? Something Enormous Above the Clouds

The being appears across a very wide area, including Plains, Great Lakes, Northwest Coast and Northeastern nations, and the details differ substantially between them, which is important since the traditions are distinct rather than versions of one thing. Common features include enormous size, the production of thunder by the beating of wings, lightning from the eyes or from flashing objects carried, and a home in high places or above the clouds. The being is generally a powerful and dangerous force rather than a benevolent one, capable of great destruction, and is treated with respect and caution rather than affection. In several traditions it is a guardian of people against other powerful beings.

The being occurs in material culture as well as in narrative:

• •Carved on poles and house fronts on the Northwest Coast
• •Painted on tipi covers, shields and drums across the Plains
• •Worked into beadwork, quillwork and silver among Great Lakes nations
• •Depicted in rock art at sites across the continent
• •Represented in dances and ceremonies in several traditions
• •Adopted as a name and emblem by modern nations and organisations

A recurring structure in several traditions sets this being against a powerful underwater one, frequently horned and serpentine, and the opposition between them organises a great deal of the cosmology. The sky being and the water being are hostile, their conflicts produce storms, and each governs a different domain with different dangers and different requirements. People stand between them and must observe obligations towards both. That structure of an upper power and a lower power in tension is a serious theological arrangement rather than a story about weather, and reading it as merely an explanation of thunder misses what the traditions are actually doing.

Whether any real animal contributed to the figure is a question raised frequently and answered cautiously. The California condor has a wingspan approaching three metres and formerly ranged across a far wider area of North America than it does now, reaching the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest, and it is large enough to be startling. Golden and bald eagles are widespread and conspicuous. Fossils of a very large extinct condor relative with a wingspan around four metres have been found at sites people occupied. Whether people knew any of these and whether that knowledge shaped the traditions is not something outside researchers can settle, and the nations concerned generally regard the question as beside the point.

The figure has been used commercially and casually to an extent that many Indigenous people object to, and the pattern is worth recognising. The name has been applied to cars, aircraft, sports teams, hotels and consumer products, generally with no connection to or permission from any nation. Depictions have been simplified into a generic decorative motif that flattens genuinely different traditions into one image. Claims about sightings of enormous birds have attached the name to a cryptozoological story that has nothing to do with the traditions. Museums and researchers have increasingly worked with the relevant nations on how material is displayed and described, and several institutions have returned objects.

Traditions across many distinct nations describe an enormous being whose wings produce thunder and whose eyes produce lightning, powerful and dangerous rather than benevolent. It appears on poles, tipi covers, beadwork and rock art as well as in narrative. In several traditions it stands opposed to a horned underwater being, which is a cosmological structure rather than a weather explanation. Commercial use of the name is widespread and objected to.