For many North American Native peoples, the thunder was produced by a mysterious being, represented as a huge bird, which moved in the stormy clouds making the rumble of thunder with the clapping of its wings and emitting the lightning from its eyes. According to the Lakota, the Thunder Spirit was called Wakinyan, which literally signifies “winged sacred being”, and was described in the ancient records as an entity having characteristics both terrific and paradoxical: it was one and many at the same time, it had no feet but enormous heels, no head but a great beak, with teeth like those of a wolf, it had only one eye, whose glance produced lightning, and in its nest there was always an egg, from which its brood came forth, which the bird immediately devoured (Comba 1999: 207). These images produce deliberately a sense of inconsistency and contradiction: “Wakinyan is the exact opposite of all natural things [...] He delights in opposition and contrariness”  (Walker 1983: p. 214).

Among the Algonquian peoples, the Thunder Bird represented the upper world and was in a continuous struggle against the beings abiding in the water, the underwater monsters. This struggle was a symbol of the cosmos, as it was described in these cultures, where the space of humankind took the form of a sort of “middle ground” between the heavenly world and the underground world, both inhabited by powerful and fearsome beings. Among the Plains Arapaho,  which belonged themselves to the Algonquian stock, the Thunder Bird represented the summer season, which manifests itself with the first thunders bringing the beneficial rain, and was perpetually at war with the being representing the winter power, the White Owl Woman, who appeared under the shape of this bird which showed itself only when the land was covered with snow, the “snow owl” (Bubo scandiacus), with its white plumage.

	Painted front side of a house in Alert Bay (British Columbia), representing a Thunder Bird seizing a whale (Photo E. Comba)

Among the Lakota, the individual who obtained a vision from the Thunder Spirit became an heyoka, a ceremonial buffoon, who spoke contrariwise and behaved in reversed way respecting the norms and the logic of the common sense. The behaviour of the heyoka revealed the relationship with a spiritual power which impersonated the most bewildering and contradictory aspects of the universe, producing a sort of possession, a “folly” which separated that individual from the ordinary condition of the human being. The Thunder was furthermore associated with war, since the awesome and violent unleashing of the storm was regarded as the temporary disruption of the cosmic order provoked by a mysterious and powerful entity. In the human domain, the violent struggle between groups was regarded as the microcosmic equivalent of the power of the storm and the warriors tried to make favourable to themselves the powers of thunder and lightning, in order to employ them against their enemies.

Totem pole in the Alert Bay (British Columbia) burial ground, representing in the upper part a Thunder Bird, standing above a Dzonokwa, the Wild Woman of the Woods (Photo E. Comba)