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Overview
In Tomah Josephs’s mountain-visit account, a lone hunter follows snowshoe tracks up Katahdin. A young woman emerges from the rock, answers his unspoken thoughts and leads him through the stone into a household. Her father welcomes him. Her brothers return with a crash and flash: immense men whose eyebrows and cheeks are stone. They fly above the world and strike dangers threatening their friends. When the hunter returns home after what seems one day, seven years have passed.
The Thunder and Lightning Men, obtained through Louis Mitchell’s manuscript collection, gives a different visit. A storm carries a man to the Thunders’ settlement, where he is transformed and receives detachable wings. The chief organizes journeys and warns that becoming trapped in a tree fork is fatal. Their wingbeats make thunder; the closing explanation identifies lightning with the fire and smoke of their pipes. They hunt a great southern bird without success, play ball and eventually return the homesick visitor to his people, again after seven earthly years.
A third account names Badawk as Thunder and Psawk-tankapic as his sister Lightning. After the family shelters a persecuted woman, she marries Badawk and has a son, whose newly attached wings produce the distant rumbling before a storm. This family arrangement remains specific to that story, rather than replacing the two brothers of Josephs’s account.
Origins & earliest records
Leland’s 1884 collection labels the three accounts Passamaquoddy. Josephs is explicitly credited for the hunter’s Katahdin visit, and Mitchell for obtaining the manuscript of the Thunder and Lightning Men. The third selected story does not name an individual narrator in its immediate text.
Records & interpretation
All three narratives were read completely. Leland’s proposed Arctic ancestry and his identification of the unnamed southern bird are conjectures, excluded from the narrative facts. These person-shaped weather beings are not collapsed into the separate Apsáalooke Thunderbird profile.
In the literature
“their eyebrows were of stone, while their cheeks were as rocks.”
Thunder Stories — How a hunter visited the Thunder Spirits who dwell in Mount Katahdin · Leland English collector/reteller; individual source qualifications retained
The hunter enters rock with a thought-reading girl and is entertained by her father and two giant brothers. The males have stone eyebrows and rock cheeks; their flights bring thunder and lightning to attack friends’ enemies. A day’s experience turns out to have occupied seven years. The girl and visitor are pleased with one another, but no marriage is expressly completed in this case.
“these wings can be laid aside, and kept for use.”
Thunder Stories — The Thunder and Lightning Men · Leland English collector/reteller; individual source qualifications retained
A storm-carried stranger joins the winged Thunder community, lays aside and reuses wings, plays celestial ball and travels with them. They unsuccessfully pursue a southern great bird; its Wuchowsen identification is an editorial probability, not named in the main telling. The visitor asks to return and is willingly brought home after seven years. Thunder is wing noise and lightning pipe fire/smoke here, distinct from the rock-faced sibling account.
“the distant rumbling is the muttering thunder made by the child”
Thunder Stories — Of the Woman who married the Thunder, and of their Boy · Leland English collector/reteller; individual source qualifications retained
A woman assaulted by a lake serpent is expelled by her community and sheltered by a shining girl and old man in a mountain dwelling. Her twelve snake offspring are killed and she recovers; practical ceremonial sequence omitted. The old man has son Badawk, Thunder, and daughter Psawk-tankapic, Lightning. The woman chooses to remain, marries Badawk and bears a boy whose wings create distant muttering; the father produces the full storm crash and aunt lightning. The mountain is not specifically named Katahdin in this separate telling.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
The Algonquin Legends of New England
Thunder Stories: How a hunter visited the Thunder Spirits who dwell in Mount Katahdin; The Thunder and Lightning Men; Of the Woman who married the Thunder, and of their Boy.
- 02
The Algonquin Legends of New England — three distinct Thunder Stories
Leland originalwork1884; selected Gutenberg6803 plain transcription, exact source print impression and printedpages unidentified. Full author Preface and Authorities independently read.
Family, evolution & connections
Josephs’s Katahdin household — Leland’s hunter account
The complete hunter’s visit attributed by Leland to Tomah Josephs, labelled Passamaquoddy.
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- Unnamed daughter, the hunter’s guide
- First of two unnamed giant sons
- Second of two unnamed giant sons
Explicit father, daughter and two sons in this one collected account. No mother or personal family names are supplied. The two giant brothers are not merged with Badawk and Psawk-tankapic in the separately collected marriage account. Leland’s proposed Arctic or Norse connections are not treated as established origin.
Badawk and Lightning’s family — Leland’s marriage account
The complete third Thunder story, Of the Woman who married the Thunder, and of their Boy.
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- Unnamed old father and grandfather
- Their unnamed son, distant rumbling thunder
Explicit old father, named son and daughter, completed marriage, and expressly identified father and grandfather of the boy. The immediate text names no individual narrator and does not explicitly name the mountain Katahdin. This family is kept separate from Josephs’s two-brother household and Mitchell’s transformed visitor. No mother of Badawk or Lightning is supplied.
The old father and his daughter in Josephs’s account
The old man explicitly calls the young woman his daughter. Her unnamed mother is not supplied, and neither father nor daughter is assigned a personal name.
The two giant sons in Josephs’s account
The old father addresses the two returning giants as sons; the young woman is their sister. They remain the two male siblings of this account, distinct from Badawk and Lightning in the later story.
Badawk and Psawk-tankapic
The third account explicitly gives the old man a son, Badawk (Thunder), and a daughter, Psawk-tankapic (Lightning). It does not explicitly name their mountain Katahdin or identify them with Josephs’s two brothers.
Badawk’s unnamed wife
After sheltering the persecuted woman, Badawk marries her. The account states the marriage as completed, rather than merely an offer or prediction.
Badawk’s unnamed son
The woman bears a son, and the closing passage explicitly calls Badawk his father. The boy’s distant rumbling is distinguished from his father’s roaring thunder.
The boy’s unnamed grandfather and Lightning aunt
The old man is expressly called the boy’s grandfather. Psawk-tankapic is Badawk’s sister, making her the boy’s paternal aunt within this account; no additional descendants are supplied.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
The Algonquin Legends of New England
Leland originalwork1884; selected Gutenberg6803 plain transcription, exact source print impression and printedpages unidentified. Full author Preface and Authorities independently read.
- The hunter enters rock with a thought-reading girl and is entertained by her father and two giant brothers. The males have stone eyebrows and rock cheeks; their flights bring thunder and lightning to attack friends’ enemies. A day’s experience turns out to have occupied seven years. The girl and visitor are pleased with one another, but no marriage is expressly completed in this case.
- A storm-carried stranger joins the winged Thunder community, lays aside and reuses wings, plays celestial ball and travels with them. They unsuccessfully pursue a southern great bird; its Wuchowsen identification is an editorial probability, not named in the main telling. The visitor asks to return and is willingly brought home after seven years. Thunder is wing noise and lightning pipe fire/smoke here, distinct from the rock-faced sibling account.
Thunder Stories — The Thunder and Lightning Men; complete bounded case and all attached commentary
- A woman assaulted by a lake serpent is expelled by her community and sheltered by a shining girl and old man in a mountain dwelling. Her twelve snake offspring are killed and she recovers; practical ceremonial sequence omitted. The old man has son Badawk, Thunder, and daughter Psawk-tankapic, Lightning. The woman chooses to remain, marries Badawk and bears a boy whose wings create distant muttering; the father produces the full storm crash and aunt lightning. The mountain is not specifically named Katahdin in this separate telling.
No entire collection, independent oral recording or separate manuscript/comparative book reviewed. Family identities, mountain setting and narrator credits kept source-specific; no diffusion chronology inferred.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- ResearchLeland: complete located narratives and contributor notesResearch access: 2026-10-05
- ReferenceUniversity of Pennsylvania: original 1884 edition bibliographyResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
