Hinon the Thunderer

Maker of rains

Arthur C. Parker, himself Seneca, introduces Hi'non in Seneca Myths and Folk Tales (1923) as one of the great beings of Seneca tradition, but of the second order: in the cosmology he serves the good-minded twin, who in Parker's retelling subdues him and assigns him his work in the world. Parker describes him as the maker of rains, whose frown is the thunder and whose glance is the lightning, and whose charge is to drive the malicious beings of the underworld back to their places and to kill the great water serpents.

The serpent hunter

Hi'non's enemy in the stories is the horned serpent of the deep waters, which can take the shape of a handsome man. In Parker's tale 26 the Thunderer rescues a young woman who has been lured away by such a serpent, striking it dead with an arrow as it rises from a lake. The Thunderers are thanked today in the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address as the Grandfathers, who bring the rains and keep the waters fresh; that address is shared publicly by the nations themselves.

Variation

Tellers and collectors differ on whether Hi'non is one being or one of several Thunderers, and on where he lives. Nineteenth-century writers often placed his home behind Niagara Falls; this site notes that association without treating it as the only one.