40 M. W. Harrington— Weather making. 
wind. Mr J. Owen Dorsey says the Kanze (Kansa or Kaw) gens 
of the Omaha tribe, being Wind people, “ flap their blankets to 
start a breeze.”* He adds that when there is a blizzard the 
other Kansa tribe of Indian territory beg the members of the 
Wind gens to interpose, saying, “O grandfather, I wish good 
weather. Cause one of your children to be decorated.” Then 
the youngest son of a Kanze man, say one about four feet high, 
is chosen for the purpose, and painted with red paint. The youth 
rolls over and over in the snow, reddening it for some distance 
all around him. This is supposed to stop the blizzard. 
The following account is from a book entitled ‘‘ The Fourteen 
loway Indians” (London, 1844), and relates to raising wind: 
A packet ship, with Indians on board, was becalmed for several days 
near the English coast. It was decided to call upon the medicine man 
to try the efficacy of his magical powers with the endeavor to raise the 
wind. After the usual ceremony of a mystery feast, and various invo- 
cations to the spirit of the wind and ocean, both were conciliated by the 
sacrifice of many plugs of tobacco thrown into the sea; and in a little 
time the wind began to blow, the sails were filled, and the vessel soon 
wafted into port. 
The Indians also have many associations with thunder. 
Madam Lucy Elliot Keeler, in a paper recently contributed to 
the “American Agriculturist ” for December, 1892, says: 
The Dakotas used to have a company of men who claimed the exclusive 
power and privilege of fighting the thunder. Whenever a storm which 
they wished to avert threatened, the thunder fighters would take their 
bows and arrows, their magic drum, and a sort of whistle made of the 
wing-bone of a war eagle, and, thus armed, run out and fire at the rising 
cloud, whooping, yelling, whistling and beating their drum to frighten it 
down again. One afternoon a heavy black cloud came up, and they re- 
paired to the top of a hill, where they brought all their magic artillery 
into play against it; but the undaunted thunder darted out a bright flash 
which struck one of the party dead as he was in the very act of shaking 
his long-pointed lance against it. After that they decided that no human 
power could quell the thunder. 
In the “ Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-tales,” published by 
George Bird Grinnell, we find the following: 
An old Pawnee Indian said: ‘‘ Up north, where we worshipped at the 
time of the first thunder, we never had cyclones. Down here [Indian 
territory], now that this worship has been given up, we have them.” 
* 3rd Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, p. 241. 
