35 
When a breeze blows gently from a certain direction the thunders are sleep- 
ing and breathing quietly; when the air. is calm they are sleeping, or else 
they have gone high up into the sky. 
Instead of a company of forty-eight thunders, however, some Indians 
believe in only twelve, called collectively by the name animki, “ thunder,” 
but with individual names as follows : 1 
ninamidabines : the chief, who sits quiet and gives orders. He may be the same 
as. or equal in rank with, the Great Spirit, Kitchi Manido. 
biangukkwam: the noiseless thunder who operates in a cloudless sky without 
lightning; i.e. the thunderbolt. 
nigankwam : the “ leader ” in the clouds, the first thunder to come in the spring 
of the year. 
jawanibines: the “southern’' thunder, or the thunder that operates in the south. 
beskinekkwam : the thunder that gives a sharp crack and sets fire to trees and 
houses. 
andjibnes: the “ renewer ” of power. 
besreudang: The “echoer aloft”; i.e. the thunder that seems to come from the 
highest clouds and to mark the end of a storm. 
zaubikkwang : “rainbow floats on water after a thunderstorm.” 
bodreudang: the “approaching” thunder. 
giwitawewidang : the “scout” thunder that goes all round the sky. 
bebomawidang : the thunder that advances, retires, and advances again. 
mekumiguneb: “ice-bird”; the last thunderstorm in the autumn, which causes 
a thaw immediately followed by freezing. Sometimes it comes in winter 
also. 
Nevertheless, the Indians generally speak of thunder as if it were a 
single manido , regarding it as a brotherhood of supernatural powers that 
work in unison. It is the most powerful of all manidos except the Great 
Spirit; yet it rarely harms human beings, and then only those who insult it. 
The Indians for their part throw an offering of tobacco into the fire when a 
thunderstorm is impending; or, if travelling in a canoe, they blow smoke to 
the thunder from their pipes. Normally thunder lives in the south whence 
most thunderstorms come, but even in winter, when far away, it is still able 
to protect its human proteges. 
The chief enemies of both man and thunder are the water-serpents, 
which can travel underground and steal away a man’s soul. So if lightning 
strikes a tree near an Indian’s wigwam it is the thunder-mamdo driving 
away some water-serpent that is stealing through the ground to attack the 
man or his family. The boss of all the water-serpents is Nzagima, one of 
whose contests with thunder is the theme of a well-known myth. 
“ A girl who had reached adolescence was placed alone in a hut in the expecta- 
tion that she would receive a blessing from the Great Spirit. But the great serpent 
visited her in the form of a man and 1 persuaded her to marry him. She remained in 
her hut longer than was required, but on the eighth day she begged her mother to 
let her return home, saying that her husband would come to her the following morn- 
ing. But the following morning when the mother went to her hut, water had 
flooded the site and both the hut and the girl had disappeared. The mother 
returned hastily to her camp and reported the event. Some medicine-men ( kusa - 
bindugeyunim) discovered that the girl had been claimed and carried off by the 
great serpent, Nzagima, and their statements were confirmed two mornings later by 
her younger brother, who saw her sitting at the foot of the great falls at Niagara. 
All the medicine-men then gathered together and called on the Great Spirit to help 
1 Mary Sugedub. 
