THE THUNDER BIRD

In the body paintings of the Cheyenne dancers, during the Sun Dance celebration, appears the symbols of tornado and hail: the tornado is the symbol of the male sexual organ, while the hailstones represent the male seed. The thunderstorms occurring in the spring and announcing the change of the season from winter to summer, are a powerful representation of the fertilizing forces of nature. 
The Thunder Bird, with its fertilizing power which manifests itself in the rain and hail, is a symbol associated with the male generative power, as the lightning, uniting with a sudden brightness the sky and the earth, constitutes an image of the male sexual organ.

 

Bag for the storage of food or to put away objects, made by the Potawatomi around 1890, with a decoration representing the Thunder Bird (The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan)

 

In the dances, men represented often aggressive supernatural beings, with phallic attributes, bringers of rain and fertility, while women personified the generative power and fecundity. In the Great Plains area, the individuals having a vision or a direct contact with the Thunder Spirit were destined to become ceremonial clowns, like the Lakota heyoka. These personages wore special costumes, made of rags and patches, and masks with the recurrent element of a long nose. There are no available documents about the meaning of these characteristic, however it is not improper to suggest that it was a phallic symbol, alluding to the generative and fertilizing power attributed to thunder and lightning. As a confirmation, among the Crow the ritual clown wore a huge willow-bark phallus, covered with mud (Lowie 1935: p. 97).

 

Decorated shield covering painted by Lakota artist Joseph No Two Horns around 1890-1900, representing a Thunder Bird from whose wings rain and hail emanate. The Thunder Bird was frequently invoked as protector of warriors (State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck)

Another drawing on cloth by artist No Two Horns (1852-1942) illustrating the war records of his own father, Red Hail. Both the warrior's name and the lightning paintings on his horse indicates that he was under the protection of the Thunder Bird (Mandan Indian Shriners, Bismarck, North Dakota)

 

Phallic symbols are frequently found in the rock art in a variety of North American sites, as a witness of the wide distribution and antiquity of a symbolism which probably was rapidly suppressed and concealed under the influence of  Christian missionaries.
For example, among the petroglyphs discovered in the Garfield site, along the Passaic river, New Jersey, there is the representation of a phallus. The engravings are datable with difficulties, but the attributable period is from the Woodland culture (about 1000 B.C.) to the era of the first European contacts (around 1650). The meaning of these figure is probably to be interpreted not as a realistic description, but as an abstract or ritual symbol, aimed at demanding abundance and fertility of the fish schools, an important food resource for the peoples of the area. Near this image is found an engraving of a bear’s paw, which is reminiscent of another important symbolic element in the Native cultures (Lenik  2002), that was often associated with the sexual maturity of women, as in the case of the Ojibwa, and which could represent the female counterpart of the phallic symbol.

 

Rock carvings from the site of Garfield, New Jersey, showing a phallic symbol and a bear's paw, probable allusion to the bear's role in the the ceremonies related to the sexual maturation of girls.