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Glooscap and the Bird
Mon Jan 12, 2004
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.
Weather figures in to all kinds of religious and cultural practices. In the Abenaki
confederacy, for instance, Glooscap-the "first human" used his special powers to do such
things as calm storms and create rivers in what we know today as Maine.
Etna, Maine resident Arnie Neptune is the elder of the Penobscot tribe, part of the Abenaki
confederacy. As an elder, he passes down by oral tradition the history, knowledge and wisdom
of the tribe. Recently, he told us how Glooscap tamed some pretty nasty winds for his
people.
AN: Glooscap had to go and tell this giant bird to stop flapping it's wings because it was
putting out the fires and was creating cold in all the villages where the people lived, so the
people were starting to freeze. So, they asked Glooscap, the teacher, what to do and he said
he would go and find whatever was creating this wind. He didn't know it was the giant bird at
the time, but when he finally came to the origination of the wind he found that it was a giant
bird flapping it's wings constantly. He asked the bird if he would just flap one wing so that
it wouldn't be as strong blowing against the people. So, he did that and went back to the
people, but it still wasn't adequate. So, he had to slow the bird down and what he did was he
made the bird smaller so that the bird could still flap it's wings, but it wouldn't take up
such an effect over all the Earth.
That's Arnie Neptune elder of the Penobscot tribe in Maine. He talked to our assistant
producer, Doug Sanborn. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington
Observatory. It is supported by the National Science Foundation.
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