The eagle appears in North America with two principal species: the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)  and the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). The latter has been declared national bird of United States and its image is shown in the official seals of the United States government as a national emblem.
For Native cultures the eagle represented an animal which owned a great power and it appeared in innumerable mythical narratives. Since it was believed that the eagle could fly higher than any other bird, until it disappears from view, it was regarded as a medium between the earthen world, inhabited by humans, and the heavenly world. In various cases the eagle was regarded as a messenger or a manifestation of the Thunder Spirit.

		The feathers from its wings were largely utilized in the making of several objects and ornaments. Primarily in the Great Plains these feathers were worn by the warriors, as a symbol of power and as a protection against the dangers in fighting. In particular, the war bonnets sometimes worn during warfare represented the eagle power, which the warrior sought to acquire, while the fluttering of its ends represented the beating of the eagle wings and infused in the one who wore it the rapidity, courage and protection of the bird of prey.
	Arapaho Eagle feather war bonnet (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia)

Some Plains groups, as the Hidatsa, Mandan and Arikara, hunted the eagles with a very peculiar method: the hunter went down in a pit, expressly dug and covered with branches and leafs, on which a bait was put: a rabbit or a stuffed coyote. When the eagle went down on what it believed was a prey, the hunter had to grasp quickly the bird by its legs and choke it. This kind of hunting was encompassed by a great number of prescriptions and was a very ritual form of hunting  (Wilson 1928).

	Assiniboin eagle catcher (Photo E.S. Curtis, 1926)		Crow warrior wearing an eagle headdress (Photo E.S. Curtis)

Among various peoples Eagle Dances were performed, in which the dancers imitated the movements of the bird, with the purpose of propitiating the hunt or warfare or of obtaining from the eagle its healing powers. This was the case of the Iroquois Eagle Dance (Ganegwae), in which the bird was regarded as having the power to bring to life again and to attract the animals in the hunters’ hands. The members who participated to the dance were regarded as forming a “medicine society”, a group of men associated with sacred animals. To the birds was indeed attributed the power to turn into human beings and to participate into the ceremony together with the humans belonging to the society (Fenton 1953: p. 75).