Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 10 (North American).djvu/81

Rh lightning is the flashing of his eye; the thunder is the noise of his wings. He is surrounded by assistants, the lesser Thunderers, especially birds of the hawk-kind and of the eagle-kind; Keneu, the Golden Eagle, is his chief representative. If it were not for the Thunderers, the Indians say, the earth would become parched and the grass would wither and die. Père Le Jeune tells how, when a new altar-piece was installed in the Montagnais mission, the Indians, "seeing the Holy Spirit pictured as a dove surrounded by rays of light, asked if the bird was not the thunder; for they believe that the thunder is a bird; and when they see beautiful plumes, they ask if they are not the feathers of the thunder."

The domain above the clouds is the heaven of the Sun and the Moon and the Stars. The Sun is a man-being, the Moon a woman-being; sometimes they are brother and sister, sometimes man and wife. The Montagnais told Père Le Jeune that the Moon appeared to be dark at times because she held her son in her arms: "'If the Moon has a son, she is married, or has been?' 'Oh, yes, the Sun is her husband, who walks all day, and she all night; and if he be eclipsed or darkened, it is because he also sometimes takes the son which he has had by the Moon into his arms.' 'Yes, but neither the Sun nor the Moon has any arms.' 'Thou hast no sense; they always hold their drawn bows before them, and that is why their arms do not appear.'" Another Algonquian tribe, the Menominee, tell how the Sun, armed with bow and arrows, departed for a hunt; his sister, the Moon, alarmed by his long absence, went in search of him, and travelled twenty days before she found him. Ever since then the Moon has made twenty-day journeys through the sky. The Iroquois say that the Sun, Adekagagwaa, rests in the southern skies during the winter, leaving his "sleep spirit" to keep watch in his stead. On the eve of his departure, he addresses the Earth, promising his return: "Earth, Great Mother, holding your children close to your breast, hear my power! ... I am Adekagagwaa!