Ani Hyuntikwalaski

Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Native American Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: The Ani Hyuntikwalaski are the Thunderers of Cherokee tradition, sky-dwelling storm spirits whose lightning placed the world’s first fire in a hollow sycamore.
Role in Mythos: They command thunder and lightning from Galunlati above the sky vault and from the Darkening Land in the west, and the world owes its fire to them.
Relation to Humans: Unlike many storm beings, the Ani Hyuntikwalaski are held to be kindly disposed toward people, and humanity’s fire descends from their lightning. Mortals who pry into their household, however, do not keep that knowledge for long.

The cold came first. In the oldest Cherokee telling there was no fire anywhere in the world, and every living thing shivered through the dark, until a storm gathered and the Thunders sent a bolt down into the base of a hollow sycamore standing on an island. The tree began to burn from the inside. Across the water the animals could see thin smoke threading out of the top of the trunk, and they could smell it, resin and char drifting over cold water. They held a council on the far shore. Warmth existed now. It was simply out of reach.

The senders of that bolt were the Ani Hyuntikwalaski, the Thunders, the Thunderers, storm spirits who live up in Galunlati, the world above the sky vault. The name is plural and has nearly as many spellings as Cherokee has dialects; a single one of them is an Ayvdaqualosgi. James Mooney, who recorded the fire story among the Eastern Band of Cherokee in the late 1880s, spelled their name with a full kit of diacritics, which is one reason most modern readers meet them under the simpler title Thunder Beings.

They are easy to confuse with their louder cousins elsewhere on the continent, and the difference matters. Most neighboring nations gave thunder wings: a vast raptor whose wingbeats roll across the sky. Cherokee thunder walks on two legs. The Ani Hyuntikwalaski are human in form, and they are friendly to people, which is rarer than it sounds in the storm-spirit line of work. When a summer storm crosses the ridges and the first long roll comes out of the west, that is the Thunders talking among themselves, voices pitched too deep for words. The rain follows them down the valleys, the air cools, and no one has been harmed.

Their family tree runs into the center of Cherokee myth. In the story of Kanati the Lucky Hunter and Selu the Corn Mother, the couple’s two boys, wild and disobedient and crackling with power, travel at last toward the Darkening Land in the west, where the sun goes down, and settle there; the low rolling thunder heard from that direction is the two of them talking to each other. Many communities fold these Thunder Boys and their descendants into the Ani Hyuntikwalaski. Others keep them apart, placing the Thunder Boys in the sacred age of myth and the Ani Hyuntikwalaski in the working weather of the present world. The tradition never settled the question and does not seem bothered by that.

What the tradition does settle is the debt. The First Fire story is the Thunderers’ signature myth, and they appear in it for a single act before stepping back to let the animals carry the plot. The bolt goes into the sycamore. Then the world’s first relay of volunteers begins. The Raven crosses the water first, big and confident, and perches on the burning tree to consider his next move; the heat scorches every feather black and he flies home with nothing. The little Screech Owl peers down into the hollow, and a blast of hot air all but burns his eyes out, which is why those eyes are red to this day. The Hooting Owl and the Horned Owl get close enough that wind-borne ash draws white rings around their eyes that never wash off. The black racer slips in through a hole at the bottom of the trunk, lands on a bed of hot ashes, and darts frantically back out, charred black, doubling on his own track the way racers still do. The great blacksnake called the Climber goes down the hollow head first, chokes on the smoke, and falls into the burning stump. Every volunteer comes back marked, or comes back with nothing.

Then the Water Spider says she will go, the small one with black downy hair and red stripes along her body. She spins thread from her own body and weaves it into a little tusti bowl, fastens the bowl on her back, and runs across the surface of the water and through the island grass to the fire. She places one coal in the bowl and carries it home over the water. Every fire since has come from that coal, and the water spider carries her bowl still.

The Thunders stay offstage in that story, which fits how the tradition handles them generally: near enough to visit, dangerous to know. In another tale Mooney recorded, two women with beautiful long hair appear at a dance at Sakwiyi, at the head of the Chattahoochee, and a young warrior asks to marry one of them. She answers that her brother at home must be consulted, sets the man a seven-day fast, and in time leads him to the family home behind the roaring water at Ugunyi, the falls now called Tallulah. There the courtship turns strange. The sisters lift off their long hair and hang it on a rock, leaving their heads smooth as pumpkins; the seat the guest is offered turns out to be a living turtle that rises and stretches out its claws; and when a thunderclap splits the air, the women’s brother is standing in the doorway. The brother is Thunder. The young man flees home, keeps the secret for a while, then tells it, and within seven days he is dead, because no one returns from that household, describes what is in it, and lives.

As for what the Thunderers themselves look like, the honest answer is that the stories withhold faces. Human form is attested, and that is nearly all. Thunder’s household is described in stranger detail than its owners: the hair on the rock, the turtle furniture, the thunderclap in the doorframe. No height, no eyes, no garments survive in the early records, and later writers who give the Thunder Beings glowing eyes or unearthly beauty are decorating, not reporting.

Their powers sit at the top of the weather. They command thunder and lightning outright, move between Galunlati, the western Darkening Land, and the country behind waterfalls, and their one great recorded gift, fire, remade life for everything in the world below. Their benevolence is itself a kind of power; Cherokee tradition treats them as kindly disposed rather than as a terror to be bought off. Their limits are quieter. They do not carry their gifts the last mile: the lightning delivered fire to an unreachable island, and it took two failed councils, six scorched volunteers, and a spider’s silk bowl to finish the job. And their friendliness ends at the threshold of their house. A mortal may cross it, may even be courted there. What he sees inside is not his to carry home, and the stories are unanimous about the price of trying.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Ani Hyuntikwalaski?

The Ani Hyuntikwalaski are the Thunderers or Thunder Beings of Cherokee mythology, storm spirits who live in Galunlati, the world above the sky vault, and command thunder and lightning. Unlike the thunder spirits of many other Native American traditions, they take human form rather than bird form, and they are considered friendly toward humans.

What did the Ani Hyuntikwalaski do in the First Fire story?

They sent their lightning into the bottom of a hollow sycamore tree on an island, creating the first fire in a cold world. The animals then sent the Raven, the Screech Owl, the Hooting Owl and Horned Owl, and two snakes after it, and all of them failed, until the Water Spider carried a single coal home in a woven tusti bowl on her back.

Are the Ani Hyuntikwalaski friendly or dangerous to humans?

The Ani Hyuntikwalaski are considered kindly disposed toward people, and Cherokee tradition credits their lightning with giving the world fire. They are still dangerous to know too closely: in the tale of the man who married the Thunder’s sister, a warrior who visited Thunder’s home and later described what he saw there died within seven days.

Where do the Ani Hyuntikwalaski live?

Cherokee stories place the Ani Hyuntikwalaski in Galunlati, above the sky vault, and in the Darkening Land in the west, where low rolling thunder is said to be the Thunder Boys talking to each other. One story also locates Thunder’s household behind the falls at Ugunyi, now known as Tallulah Falls in Georgia.

How are the Ani Hyuntikwalaski related to the Thunder Boys?

In many Cherokee communities the Thunder Boys, sons of Kanati the Lucky Hunter and Selu the Corn Mother, are counted among the Ani Hyuntikwalaski or regarded as their ancestors. Other communities treat the two as distinct, assigning the Thunder Boys to the sacred mythic age and the Ani Hyuntikwalaski to the material world.