Reading Notes: Vow to Thunder Gods, Part B

• She never sends the boy. Years pass. The Thunder gods kill him while they are outside
• Woman promises first born child to the thunder gods
• This is not explained at all.
• Why would anyone do this? There must have been a reason but it isn’t explained. It just says she hadn’t imagined the strength of a mother’s love
• Every time a storm comes (which is the signal to send sacrifices which were promised to the thunder gods
• She sings a sorrowful song about what happened and never has another child
• Who was the father of the first child? Where did he go? Could it have had something to do with why she promised her child in the first place?
• What if the boy hadn’t died?
• He could go looking for his mother, or run into her somehow?



(source)

• What if she could do something to revive him?

An Indian's Vow to the Thunder Gods: Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest, especially of Washington and Oregon, by Katharine Berry Judson (1910).