Bird and Serpent Worship and Symbols
The serpent and the bird appear sometimes separately, sometimes
in strange combination, in North American mythology. The bird is
always incomprehensible to the savage. It's power of flight, its
appearance in the heavens where dwell the gods, and its musical
song combine to render it in his sight of being a mystery,
possessing capabilities far above his own. From it he conceives
the idea of the winged spirit or god, and he frequently regards
it as a messenger from the bright regions of the sun or the sky
deity. The flight and song of birds have always been carefully
observed by primitive people as omens of grave import. These
superstitions prevailed among the Red Raceno less than among our
own early ancestors. Many tribes imagined that birds were the
visible spirits of the deceased. Thus the Powhatans of Virginia
believed that the feathered race received the souls of their
chiefs at death, and they were careful to do them no harm,
accordingly. The algonquins believed that birds caused the
phenomenon of wind, and they created water-spouts, and that the
clouds were the spreading and agitation of their wings. The
Navaho thought that a great white swan sat at each of the four
points of the compass and conjured up the blasts which came
therefrom, while the Dakotas believed that in the west was the
home of the Wakinyjan, 'the Flyers,' the breezes that send the
storms. The thunder, too, is regarded by some Indian peoples as
the flapping of the pinions of a great bird, whose tracks are
seen in the lightening, "like the sparks which the buffalo
scatters when he scours over a stony plain." Many of the tribes
of the north-west coast hold the same belief, and imagine the
lightening to be the flash of the thunder-bird's eye.
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