AT one point in the epic adventures of the India hero in The Song of Hiawatha, we are told that:
Fiercely the red sun descending Burned his way across the heavens, Set the sky on fire behind him, As war parties, when retreating, Burn the prairies on their war trail.
We are all familiar, of course, with the meteorological significance of such a spectacle. In native American folklore, however, the origins of the belief are to be found in the history of "the fine weather woman", a story which, in some respects, has a familiar ring to those of us raised in the Christian tradition.
The maiden in question the daughter of an important Indian chief, went one day to the beach in search of shellfish. After she had looked for some time she came upon a cockleshell, and was about to throw it away when she heard a sound that resembled a child crying. Examining the shell more closely, she found a small baby inside; she wrapped it warmly, carried it home and tended to it carefully, and her son grew rapidly and thrived. It was noticed by others of the tribe, however, that when the fine weather woman brought her son to gaze across the boundless blue of the Pacific, lair weather came and stayed for many days to come.
Mother and son lived happily for many years. But the boy, it seems, was an earthly manifestation of Sin, the Skygod, and one day he changed into a wren and flew high into the sky above his mother. Then he descended and donned the features of a blue jay, and again he flew around the sky. And finally, he adopted the shape and colours of a woodpecker, and as he soared and dived above the waters by the sea shore, the waves reflected his brilliant colours to make them look as if they were on fire. And he said to his mother: "Now I must go away, and you will never see me again, but always when the sky reflects my colours in this guise, you will know that I will send fine weather."
His mother sadly bade him farewell, but the Fine weather woman was proud that she had nurtured a divinity, and she inherited a portion of his power. Sometimes when she sits by the sea shore and shakes her robe, the wind scurries down to the ocean and the waves are ruffled by the tempest. And at other times, as she thinks upon his going, the Fine weather woman makes an offering of feathers to her glorious son an offering that we recognise as flakes of snow.