Haietlik

Also Known As: Nuu-chah-nulth hai’i’Lik in Philip Drucker’s transcription, which he translated “Feathered Serpent”; also written ḥiʔiiƛ̓iik, and known in English along the coast as the lightning snake
Region/Culture: North America (Nuu-chah-nulth, west coast of Vancouver Island)
Mythos: Native American Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: It is the lightning itself in serpent form, and a single scale off one of them was reckoned an extremely potent charm.
Role in Mythos: The Nuu-chah-nulth described these serpents as the hunting dogs of the thunderbird, met far more often than the thunderbird himself.
Relation to Humans: Whalers carried the creature in the form of a charm and cut its likeness into the barbs of their harpoons, and chiefs held the right to display it in canoe formations, headdresses and potlatch figures. It was the sign that the man who owned it hunted the way the sky hunted.

A Hesquiat song for towing a dead whale home tells the paddlers to keep going, and it tells them how: go through the water the way the Feathered Serpent goes through the mountains. Picture what that instruction is answering. Forty tons of whale dragging behind the canoe, a following sea, arms gone numb somewhere around the third hour, and the encouragement on offer is a creature that treats solid rock the way a paddle treats water. Nobody in the canoe needed it explained.

Philip Drucker took down the fullest account of the being in the 1930s among the northern and central Nootkan tribes, and the first thing his record does is rearrange the picture most outsiders arrive with. The thunderbird lived up among the remote snow-covered peaks. He was not a bird. He was a huge man who put on a birdlike dress when he wanted to hunt whales, and hardly anyone ever met him. What people met were his dogs.

That is the relationship, and Drucker’s informants stated it without any ceremony at all. Thunder is the sound of the man’s wings working. The lightning that comes down with it is the pack, loosed. The serpents and the lightnings were not two things standing in for each other; they were the same thing named twice. And there was more than one kind of them. The elders described enormous ones, and the younger men who had seen reptiles pictured in books reached for the nearest comparison they had and said alligator. There were also very small ones. And there were some with a head at each end, a detail nobody in the record felt the slightest need to justify.

Anatomy beyond that is thin, and the thinness is honest rather than accidental. What the sources hand down instead is the outline that mattered to the people who carved it: a long body with no legs, a head honed to a point, and a plume set back behind the skull, which is why Drucker reached for the word feathered. The tongue throws light. In its mask form the creature became a headdress of kerfed and bent cedar board, curved into the serpent’s line and carved on the outer face, called ha’inikhsim; Boas published two of them in 1895. At a potlatch a chief might bring it out as a large articulated figure with a head and tail that moved. One Kyuquot chief held the right to call his visiting canoe haithaiyatct, the Feathered Serpent canoe.

The name is older than the ethnographers by a century and a half, which is not something every entity on this coast can claim. In 1791 John Hoskins, the young American clerk of the Boston trading ship Columbia Rediviva, saw the design painted on the bows of Nootkan canoes and, unusually for a trader, took the trouble to learn what it was called. He wrote it down. Drucker cites him for exactly that reason.

A scale off one of these creatures was among the most powerful charms a person could carry, and the Clayoquot preserved a tradition about how one family came by more than a scale. Chief Joseph gave it to the missionary Charles Moser, who passed it to the collector Charles Newcombe. The second Wikininish was a formidable whaler, and he used to climb a high mountain on the darkest nights to pray for help in his work. On one of those nights something inspired him to kill a supernatural being in the shape of a snake, and to skin it. He kept the skin in a locked box and took it with him whaling.

The gear carried the creature too, and the rules for putting it there were precise. In October 1905 a Clayoquot man named Atliyu sent Newcombe a whaling harpoon and wrote ahead about it, with the cheerful salesmanship of a man who knows what he has: this was no common relic but one that carried the charm to win ten whales in a year. The harpoon’s name was the spear of the Thunder Bird. Atliyu also explained which etching went on the antler barbs and when. The lightning serpent was for men who had already succeeded, for a novice’s first hunt, and for whales taken inshore. In fine weather, with the whales out beyond the surf, a man used the thunderbird etching instead. Two designs, one hunt, and a whole grammar of when each was correct.

Ashore, the serpent came out for weddings. When the Kyuquot went to fetch a bride from the Ehetisat, the first marriage privilege they performed was a hai’i’Lik: every canoe in a single column, paddling a zigzag course counterclockwise around the cove, all of them singing, four full circuits before they touched the beach. Then the blankets came out of the hulls and were handed to every last member of the bride’s people, the low-ranked called by name along with the chiefs. On another occasion ten Ehetisat canoes made a Feathered Serpent in front of the Kyuquot village while the bride sat on a box in the lead canoe, painted, with sixteen sticks beside her standing for the sixteen privileges she was bringing into the marriage.

Its power is the strike, and the strike is not a tool the thunderbird picks up. It is an animal he keeps. That is also the limit. Across the whole record the haietlik does nothing on its own account: no origin, no name, no death, no quarrel with its master, no story in which it is the one who wants something. It is only ever the flash between the peak and the water, and then gone, and then the thunder catching up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Haietlik?

The Haietlik is a supernatural serpent of the Nuu-chah-nulth people of the west coast of Vancouver Island, and it is the lightning itself in animal form. Philip Drucker recorded the name as hai’i’Lik and translated it “Feathered Serpent.” The Nuu-chah-nulth described these serpents as the hunting dogs of the thunderbird.

What is the Haietlik’s relationship to the Thunderbird?

The Haietlik belongs to the thunderbird as a dog belongs to a hunter. In the Nuu-chah-nulth account recorded by Drucker, the thunderbird is a huge man who puts on a birdlike dress to hunt whales; the thunder is his wings and the lightning is his serpents. People very rarely encountered the thunderbird himself, but they encountered the Haietlik.

Why did Nuu-chah-nulth whalers value the Haietlik?

A scale from a Haietlik was considered an extremely potent charm. The Clayoquot preserved a tradition that an ancestral chief called Wikininish killed and skinned a supernatural snake on a mountaintop and carried the skin in a locked box when he whaled. Whalers also had the serpent etched onto the antler barbs of their harpoons.

What does the Haietlik look like?

Sources give the Haietlik a long limbless body, a sharpened head, a plume behind the skull and a tongue that throws light. Drucker recorded three kinds: huge ones that elders compared to alligators, very small ones, and some with a head at each end. Detailed anatomy beyond that is not recorded.

How does the Haietlik appear in Nuu-chah-nulth ceremonies?

Chiefs held hereditary rights to display the Haietlik. At one Kyuquot wedding the groom’s canoes formed a single column and paddled a zigzag course counterclockwise around the cove four times before landing to distribute blankets. It also appeared as a bent-cedar headdress called ha’inikhsim, as an articulated potlatch figure with a moving head and tail, and as a chief’s canoe name.