VI. THE POWERS ABOVE
Even greater than the Wind Giant is the Thunderer,[32] whom the Iroquois deemed to be the guardian of the Heavens, armed with a mighty bow and flaming arrows, hater and destroyer of all things noxious, and especially to be revered as having slain the great Serpent of the waters, which was devouring mankind. Hino is the Thunderer's name, and his bride is the Rainbow; he has many assistants, the lesser Thunderers, and among them the boy Gunnodoyah, who was once a mortal. Hino caught this youth up into his domain, armed him with a celestial bow, and sent him to encounter the great Serpent; but the Serpent devoured Gunnodoyah, who communicated his plight to Hino in a dream, whereupon the Thunderer and his warriors slew the Serpent and bore Gunnodoyah, still living, back to the Skies. Commonly the Thunderer is a friend to man; but men must not encroach upon his domain. The Cherokee tell a tale of "the Man who married the Thunder's sister":[17] lured by the maiden to the Thunder's cave, he is there surrounded by shape-shifting horrors, and when he declines to mount a serpent-steed saddled with a living turtle, Thunder grows angry, lightning flashes from his eye, and a terrific crash stretches the young brave senseless; when he revives and makes his way home, though it seems to him that he has been gone but a day, he discovers that his people have long given him up for dead; and, indeed, after this he survives only seven days.[33]
One of Hino's assistants is Oshadagea, the great Dew Eagle, whose lodge is in the western sky and who carries a lake of dew in the hollow of his back. When the malevolent Fire Spirits are destroying Earth's verdure, Oshadagea flies abroad, and from his spreading wings falls the healing moisture. The Dew Eagle of the Iroquois is probably only the ghost of a Thunderbird spirit, which has been replaced, among them, by Hino the Heavenly Archer. The Thunderbird is an invisible spirit; the
