Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/381

Rh of his existence, but have even seen him, and in the far north the story is told how he created the world. The Ahts of Vancouver's Island talk of Tootooch, the mighty bird dwelling aloft and far away, the flap of whose wings makes the thunder (Tootah), and his tongue is the forked lightning. There were once four of these birds in the land, and they fed on whales; but the great deity Quawteaht, entering into a whale, enticed one thunder-bird after another to swoop down and seize him with his talons, when plunging to the bottom of the sea he drowned it. Thus three of them perished, but the last one spread his wings and flew to the distant height where he has since remained. The meaning of the story may probably be that thunderstorms come especially from one of the four quarters of heaven. Of such myths, perhaps that told among the Dacotas is the quaintest: Thunder is a large bird, they say: hence its velocity. The old bird begins the thunder; its rumbling noise is caused by an immense quantity of young birds, or thunders, who continue it, hence the long duration of the peals. The Indian says it is the young birds, or thunders, that do the mischief; they are like the young mischievous men who will not listen to good counsel. The old thunder or bird is wise and good, and does not kill anybody, nor do any kind of mischief. Descending southward to Central America, there is found mention of the bird Voc, the messenger of Hurakan, the Tempest-god (whose name has been adopted in European languages as huracano, ouragan, hurricane) of the Lightning and of the Thunder. So among Caribs, Brazilians, Hervey Islanders and Karens, Bechuanas and Basutos, we find legends of a flapping or flashing Thunder-bird, which seem simply to translate into myth the thought of thunder and lightning descending from the upper regions of the air, the home of the eagle and the vulture.