{"collection":"folklore-oral-tradition","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Tlingit_Myths_and_Texts_The_Thunders/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Tlingit_Myths_and_Texts_The_Thunders","id":"wikisource_Tlingit_Myths_and_Texts_The_Thunders","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tlingit_Myths_and_Texts/The_Thunders","summary":null,"tags":["Headers_applying_DefaultSort_key","Pages_with_translator","Subpages"],"text":"36. THE THUNDERS\n\nA high-caste girl who had four brothers went out of the house\none morning and stepped on a snail. Then she said \"Oh! this\nnasty thing. There isn't a time when I go out but that snail is around\nthis house.\" The evening after a youth of about her own age came\nto the girl, and she went off with him.\n\nWhen the people found that she had disappeared they searched for\nher everywhere. They did not know what had become of her. Her\nbrothers also hunted everywhere, but for a long time without result.\nSome distance behind the village was a high, perpendicular cliff\nwithout a tree or a bush on it, and half way up they at last saw their\nsister with a very large snail coiled around her. They ran about\nunderneath and called to her to throw herself down, but she could\nnot. She was stuck there.\n\nAfter this the four brothers tried to find some way of flying. They\ntried one kind of wood after another and also bone for wings but in\nvain. After they had flown for a short distance they always dropped\ndown again. Finally they employed yellow cedar. The first time\nthey used it they got half way up to the place where their sister was,\nbut the second time they reached her and dragged her down, leaving\nthe snail still there.\n\nBut the four brothers now left their own village, because they said\nthat their sister had disgraced them, and they became the Thunders.\nWhen they move their wings you hear the thunder, and, when they\nwink, you see the lightning.\n\nAt the time when these brothers first went away the people at their\nfather's village were starving, so they flew out over the ocean, caught a\nwhale and brought it to the town that it might be found next morning. So nowadays people claim that the Thunder is powerful and can get anything, because they know that it was powerful at that time. After the famine was over they left the world below, went to the sky to live, and have never been seen since.\n\nThe Taq\u00east\u00eena\u2032 claim the Thunder, because those brothers belonged to that family.","title":"Tlingit Myths and Texts/The Thunders","tradition":"folklore-oral-tradition","translated_text":null,"word_count":371}