32. Thunderers. – The well-nigh universal American conception of the thunder is that it is caused by a bird or brood of birds – the Thunderbirds. Sometimes the Thunderbird is described as huge, carrying a lake of water on his back and flashing lightnings from his eyes; sometimes as small, like some ordinary bird in appearance – even the humming-bird occurring as an analogy. Very often the being is in the “medicine” or tutelary of one who has seen him in vision, and Thunderbird effigies are common among the Plains tribes. Almost the only tribal groups unacquainted with the concept are the Iroquois, in the East, whose Dew Eagle is related to the Thunderbird idea, and some of the tribes of the far West and the South-West, such as the Zuñi, who regard the thunder as made by the gaming stones rolled by the celestial Rain-Makers and the lightning as the arrows of celestial Archers. It is notable that a huge man-devouring bird appears in the mythologies of the South-Western peoples, from whose lore the Thunderbird is absent.
Excerpted from footnote 32 in The Mythology of All Races, Volume X: North American, by Hartley Burr Alexander. 1916, publisher unknown.
Incredible picture