Thunderbird – Desert Botanical Garden, Papago Park, Phoenix, Arizona

The thunderbird is a legendary creature in certain North American indigenous peoples’ history and culture. It is considered a supernatural being of power and strength. It is especially important, and frequently depicted, in the art, songs and oral histories of many Pacific Northwest Coast cultures, but is also found in various forms among some peoples of the American Southwest, East Coast of the United States, Great Lakes, and Great Plains.

A monstrous, winged predator – labeled "Thunderbird" in the deserts of the Southwest and in other parts of the Americas – played stirring roles in the myths of peoples worldwide. It produced thunder from its wings and issued lightning from its beak. It raised and shaped landforms. It created mankind. It symbolized Native American "heaven." It enforced ritual. It fed on men, women and children as well as large animals and even killer whales, littering the floor of its lair with the bones of its prey.

In the Sonoran Desert, a Thunderbird, which lived in a mountainous cave, preyed on the Pima Indians, according to a story in the True Authority Internet site. It died at the hands of Pima braves, who found the cave and blocked and fired the exit. The Thunderbird, roaring in a maddened anger, perished in the flames and smoke. Another Thunderbird died in a similar trap set by Pima Indians at a Puebloan village in southern Arizona. Still another fell to the arrows of a young Yaqui Indian boy, who had lost his entire family to the great predator.

Thunderbird figure, rock art in far western Texas.In northeastern New Mexico, said Mark A. Hall in his book Thunderbirds: America’s Living Legends of Giant Birds, a Thunderbird stood guard over the Capulin volcanic crater. It died when attacked by an Indian warrior. In revenge, its spirit called the volcano to life, threatening to annihilate the warrior’s people. Appeased when the warrior’s brother sacrificed himself by leaping into the boiling lava, the Thunderbird returned the volcano to calm.

In far west Texas, on the western flanks of the Franklin Mountains, a Thunderbird survived attacks of Indians, who nevertheless managed to imprison it alive in its cave, according to Ken Hudnall and Connie Wang in their Spirits of the Border: the History and Mystery of El Paso del Norte. "Woe be unto him who frees the Thunderbird, for he will be responsible for death and destruction far beyond anything mankind has yet experienced." On the western side of Thunderbird Peak, its presence is still marked, by a large red rhyolite formation shaped like a Thunderbird, "guarding the desert landscape, wings outstretched, head turned to the side, an immense, mythical silhouette. . . "

The Thunderbird made its mark in Navajo mythology when it carried a warrior to a ledge at the top of the sacred Winged Rock (Ship Rock, located in northwestern New Mexico), said Hall. It appeared in Pueblo mythology as a great bird with "feathers like knives. . ."

The Thunderbird takes on many forms in the rock art of the Southwest, but it typically bears a resemblance to the bald eagle on the Great Seal of the United States of America.