Thunderbird Tattoo Meaning

Power, the storm, the sky being, and the great bird whose wings make thunder.

The Thunderbird is the great supernatural sky-being of Native American tradition — a bird of immense power and scale whose beating wings make the thunder and from whose eyes the lightning flashes, the ruler of the storm and the upper world, hunter of whales and bringer of rain. To carry the Thunderbird is to carry power, the storm, and the sky being — the colossal bird whose wings make thunder and whose flight commands the heavens, the supreme being of the upper world, the awesome power of the storm and the sky made into a great and sacred bird.

Among the peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast — the Kwakwaka'wakw, Haida, Nuu-chah-nulth, and others — the Thunderbird is the most powerful of all the supernatural beings of the sky, a being of awesome scale and might. So vast and powerful is the Thunderbird that it hunts orcas and whales, swooping down from the heavens to seize even these great creatures of the sea in its talons and carry them off to its mountaintop home. The beating of its enormous wings causes the thunder that rolls across the sky, and lightning flashes from its eyes — or is hurled by the lightning-serpents that it carries beneath its wings — striking the earth below.

The Thunderbird is a being of supreme power, a ruler of the upper world and the storm, depicted prominently in the great art of the Northwest Coast — on totem poles, masks, house fronts, and regalia — with its curved beak, great wings, and often horns or curling head-plumes. It is honored as one of the most powerful and important beings in the cosmology and art of these peoples, the mighty lord of the sky and the storm. The Pacific Northwest Thunderbird is the supreme sky being who hunts whales and whose wings make thunder. The Pacific Northwest Thunderbird is the great sky being of the Northwest Coast — the most powerful supernatural being of the sky among the Kwakwaka'wakw, Haida, Nuu-chah-nulth, and others, so vast it hunts orcas and whales from the heavens, the beating of its wings making thunder and lightning flashing from its eyes (or from the serpents it carries), prominently honored in totem poles, masks, and regalia as the mighty lord of sky and storm.

The Thunderbird appears across North American Indigenous traditions with remarkable consistency despite the geographic diversity of the cultures: a great bird that causes thunder with its wings and lightning with its eyes or with the supernatural serpents it carries, that is associated with rain and storms, that is among the most powerful beings in the cosmology. The Pacific Northwest versions are particularly elaborated — the Thunderbird appears on totem poles, in potlatch regalia, in formline designs that are among the most sophisticated graphic traditions in the world. Some researchers have proposed that Thunderbird traditions preserve memories of the Teratornis (a giant condor-like bird with a 3.5-4 meter wingspan) or of pterosaur-like creatures in oral history. The Thunderbird and Whale/Orca (Kolus and Tyee Simoogit in some traditions) — the great sky creature and the great sea creature in eternal combat — is one of the most powerful mythological dualities in North American tradition.

Thunderbird across cultures

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