Thunderbird Mask
Long, long ago when the earth was reborn after the flood, the people spread out from the Mountain of the Eastern Sunrise and established many villages and new bands and tribes were formed. Many winter ceremonies and summer potlatches were celebrated and for the most part, the people remembered the way of Wonderful Doer and prayed to him for the help of his Spirit.
In those days the Thunderbird ghost hovered in the northern skies, looking for mischief and trickery that she could play on the innocent people who lived in seaside villages down the coast. The Thunderbird, a friend of Raven and the other rebellious spirits who warred against the Creator at the beginning, survived the flood by taking refuge in the frozen mist of northern most sky – riding on the northern lights. Sometimes she could be seen spreading her wings out among dark clouds blowing down over the waters from the north before a storm. With a mournful roar and rumbling voice, Old Thunderbird cursed the people that Wonderful Doer had made. Trying to mimic the displays of the Transformer’s power, on certain stormy nights lightening flashed from her eyes and thunder cracked from her beak, terrorizing the children and dogs in the warmth of the lodges below. They knew something evil was alive in the sky.
There was a shaman named Ska-gut who lived in a house by himself up in the foothills and called on Thunderbird. When the storms came, he would tie himself to a mortuary pole at a rocky beach and expose himself to icy wind and rain that hit his flesh like arrows hoping that the ghost would impart to him some of her powers. Shaman Ska-gut had a reputation for causing mysterious happenings to occur and was feared by all when he came to the village asking for salmon and berry paste cakes. Children hid at his presence and only the men with the most status dared to speak to him.
His waist-long hair and hairy face and rotting cedar bark tunic looked frightful. He pierced his body in many places with thin bones and his fingernails grew long like claws. He wore raven feathers in his hair and beard and otter bones and mother-of-pearl shell buttons sown into in his ears and tongue and he stained a purple image of the Thunderbird with an obsidian knife and boiling dye to form a tattoo on his chest. He also had tattoos of Lightening Snake and Raven on his arms and legs. It was his way of offering his body to the spirits.
The clawed wings of the Thunderbird tattoo was skillfully made and seemed to reach out to capture and rip apart her human victims. Ska-gut told the people that his master spirit sought to grab people, like an eagle snatching a mouse in his claws and lift them up to her perch on tall cedar tree and eat their heart and brains. The Thunderbird preyed on braves lost while fishing or women who failed to return from berry picking on the mountainsides. She also ate children who wandered too far from the village into the forest. She hated the people and demanded their blood as payment for the favors that she would sometimes grant to Shaman. “Give me some people flesh to eat and blood to drink and I may grant you your wishes,” she told Ska-gut in his trances. But, she only granted his wishes about one in four times. She promised much, but like the other trickster spirits was not generous.
Continued
In those days the Thunderbird ghost hovered in the northern skies, looking for mischief and trickery that she could play on the innocent people who lived in seaside villages down the coast. The Thunderbird, a friend of Raven and the other rebellious spirits who warred against the Creator at the beginning, survived the flood by taking refuge in the frozen mist of northern most sky – riding on the northern lights. Sometimes she could be seen spreading her wings out among dark clouds blowing down over the waters from the north before a storm. With a mournful roar and rumbling voice, Old Thunderbird cursed the people that Wonderful Doer had made. Trying to mimic the displays of the Transformer’s power, on certain stormy nights lightening flashed from her eyes and thunder cracked from her beak, terrorizing the children and dogs in the warmth of the lodges below. They knew something evil was alive in the sky.
There was a shaman named Ska-gut who lived in a house by himself up in the foothills and called on Thunderbird. When the storms came, he would tie himself to a mortuary pole at a rocky beach and expose himself to icy wind and rain that hit his flesh like arrows hoping that the ghost would impart to him some of her powers. Shaman Ska-gut had a reputation for causing mysterious happenings to occur and was feared by all when he came to the village asking for salmon and berry paste cakes. Children hid at his presence and only the men with the most status dared to speak to him.
His waist-long hair and hairy face and rotting cedar bark tunic looked frightful. He pierced his body in many places with thin bones and his fingernails grew long like claws. He wore raven feathers in his hair and beard and otter bones and mother-of-pearl shell buttons sown into in his ears and tongue and he stained a purple image of the Thunderbird with an obsidian knife and boiling dye to form a tattoo on his chest. He also had tattoos of Lightening Snake and Raven on his arms and legs. It was his way of offering his body to the spirits.
The clawed wings of the Thunderbird tattoo was skillfully made and seemed to reach out to capture and rip apart her human victims. Ska-gut told the people that his master spirit sought to grab people, like an eagle snatching a mouse in his claws and lift them up to her perch on tall cedar tree and eat their heart and brains. The Thunderbird preyed on braves lost while fishing or women who failed to return from berry picking on the mountainsides. She also ate children who wandered too far from the village into the forest. She hated the people and demanded their blood as payment for the favors that she would sometimes grant to Shaman. “Give me some people flesh to eat and blood to drink and I may grant you your wishes,” she told Ska-gut in his trances. But, she only granted his wishes about one in four times. She promised much, but like the other trickster spirits was not generous.
Continued
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