Mythical Creatures
Thunderbird
Birds
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Thunderbird is a term covering distinct beings in a number of unrelated North American traditions, and the singular English name conceals real differences. Among Northwest Coast peoples it is a specific supernatural whose wingbeat is thunder and who hunts whales, and it appears on crest poles as a lineage prerogative rather than as public property. Among Plains and Great Lakes peoples the thunderers are usually plural, associated with the upper world and with storms, and set against horned underwater beings, and among Algonquian speakers this opposition structures a good deal of cosmology. Treating these as one pan-Indian sky god flattens traditions that do not agree with each other.
Facts
Attestation
HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2 Meaning in the Attesting SourceStand in a defined relationship to the beings of the water 2Tradition: Anishinaabe tradition as recorded by Basil Johnston Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe animikiig, beings of the upper world associated with thunder and sky 2Tradition: Anishinaabe tradition as recorded by Basil Johnston Origins
Origin of the Name"Thunderbird" is an English calque of Algonquian terms such as Ojibwe animikii, a name built directly from the being's association with thunder rather than from any description of its shape. 2Tradition: The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway Cult
Attributes and IconographyStandard accounts across Plains and Woodlands traditions describe the thunderbird as a colossal eagle-like bird whose eyes flash lightning and whose beating wings produce the sound of thunder, an image found across Ojibwe, Lakota and other regional tellings. 1Tradition: Encyclopedia of Religion Function
Domain / FunctionDomain of storms and thunder, and in several Plains and Woodlands traditions a protective, war-associated power invoked against underwater or subterranean adversaries such as horned serpents. 1Tradition: Encyclopedia of Religion Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseUsed as a decorative and commercial motif across North America 2 Contested or Appropriated Modern UseUsed as a generic symbol, detached from the specific nations and cosmologies 2 Learn More
One English Word Over Many Distinct Beings
"Thunderbird" is an English term that covers distinct beings belonging to a number of unrelated Indigenous North American traditions, and the single name conceals real differences that the traditions themselves maintain. Among several Northwest Coast peoples it is a specific and powerful supernatural whose wingbeat is the thunder and the flash of whose eyes is the lightning, and which in some accounts hunts the whale; it appears on crest poles and regalia belonging to particular lineages and clans, where it carries defined rights and meanings.
Among Plains and Great Lakes peoples other thunder-beings appear, related to but not identical with these, often opposed to underwater powers such as the horned serpent or the underwater panther. Because these are living traditions with their own protocols about who may depict or narrate a given being, the generic pan-Indian "thunderbird" of hobby books, sports teams and cars is a modern abstraction rather than a single Native concept, and the respectful course is to name the particular people whenever the specific being is meant.
What One English Word Flattens
Thunderbird is a translation, and it covers beings that the nations concerned do not treat as the same. On the Northwest Coast the Thunderbird is a crest figure with owners: the right to display it belongs to particular lineages and is held, transferred and validated at potlatch, which makes it property in a legal sense as well as an image. Among Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe and other peoples of the Great Lakes the thunderers are a class of beings standing in a fixed relation to the underwater powers, and the relation is the content rather than the bird.
That relation is the part most often lost. Where the sources describe an ordered opposition between the powers above and the powers below, with human beings positioned between them, a retelling that extracts only the bird has removed the structure and kept the illustration.
Two practical cautions follow. Ceremonial material is often restricted, and its absence from a reference entry is usually deliberate rather than a gap to be filled. And the crest images are held by named lineages, so reproducing them is not the neutral act that reproducing a public-domain engraving would be. Describing that these constraints exist is the accurate thing an atlas can do; describing the restricted content is not.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The thunderers arrive in spring and leave in autumn, and are addressed as manidoog.
The thunderers are addressed as manidoog, arriving in spring and leaving in autumn.
Thunderbirds are powerful sky manidoog of Ojibwe tradition, whose storms cleanse the earth.
Attested in Region
Thunderbird covers distinct beings in a number of unrelated North American traditions, and the singular English name conceals real differences. Treating them as one pan-Indian sky god flattens traditions that do not agree with each other.
Belongs to Tradition
Among Plains and Great Lakes peoples the thunderers are usually plural, associated with the upper world and with storms, and set against horned underwater beings. Among Algonquian speakers that opposition structures a good deal of cosmology.
Commonly Conflated with (See Note)
The roc belongs to a genre of wonder literature about the edges of the known world. The modern habit of treating it as a cousin of the Thunderbird, or of the Persian simurgh, runs together birds with quite different functions.
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Entry on thunderbird imagery across Plains and Woodlands traditionsView the Source 1. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Entry on the thunderbird as a storm and war power opposed to underwater serpentsView the Source 1. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Entries on North American indigenous religions: thunder beings and the opposition of upper and lower worldsQuote, Entries on North American indigenous religions: thunder beings and the opposition of upper and lower worlds
Thunder beings are conceived differently across unrelated traditions, appearing as a single crest being on the Northwest Coast and as a plurality opposed to horned underwater beings among Great Lakes peoples.
2. The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway
Basil Johnston, HarperCollins, 1995On animikii and the Ojibwe naming of the thunder beingView the Source 2. The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway
Basil Johnston, HarperCollins, 1995on Anishinaabe thunder-beingsView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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