246 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



could not see the bird, and one flash struck and killed a 

 hunter. His frightened companions then fled back to 

 camp, for they knew it was a thunder-bird." 



In contrast to this the Eskimos of the lower Yukon 

 Valley tell of a former man of their race who dared, 

 after others had failed, to raid the lair of and kill a 

 gigantic fowl that for a long time had preyed as a 

 "man-eater" on the village of their ancestors ; 'and they 

 have held this man in high honor as a hero to this day. 



This conception of a thunder-and-lightning-producing 

 bird has a prominent place among the notions of the 

 native inhabitants of the northwestern American coast- 

 country, where the attributed characteristics and deeds 

 vary with local surroundings and tribal peculiarities. In 

 one place a storm was supposed to result from its 

 activity in catching whales; and a Chehalis legend has 

 it that Thunderbird sprang from a whale killed by 

 South Wind. As soon as it was born South Wind fol- 

 lowed it, and Ootz-Hooi, the giantess, found its nest 

 and threw the eggs down a cliff. From these eggs 

 sprang the Chehalis people. The Tlingit, of the South- 

 ern Alaskan coast-region, account for the great amount 

 of rain that falls in a thunder-shower by explaining 

 that the thunder-bird carries a lake on its back. A con- 

 ventional representation of the thunder-bird as it appears 

 to the Haidas of this Northwest Coast decorates the 

 title-page of this book. 



The Salish Indians of the Thomson River region, in 

 southern British Columbia, believe that the thunder- 

 bird uses its wings as bows to shoot arrows, i.e., light- 

 nings. 'The rebound of his wings in the air, after 

 shooting, makes the thunder. For this reason the 

 thunder is often heard in different parts of the sky at 



