Quileute One version can be summarized as follows: The famine experienced on Quileute may not necessarily be blamed on the whales, and Thunderbird makes a gift of a whale, its usual prey to the starving folk, as in a version collected by
Ella E. Clark (pub. 1953). There are also disparate short pieces of lore which Clark stitches together into one narrative; with the individual pieces resembling the short lore collected by
Albert B. Reagan (mostly 1905–1909). Thus one narrative tells of the Thunderbird pitted against its prey, the whale which kept trying to elude capture, and this escalated to such turmoil that it uprooted trees, and no tree ever grew back again in the area. But in Boas's version the battle takes place between Thunderbird and , the leader of the animals. The latter retaliates against Thunderbird carrying away one of his sons, by raising an army carried in an artificial whale. In the battle at the village, Thunderbird's four children (named "One-Whale-Carrier", etc.) are drowned, and Thunderbird himself is killed, survived only by the "nine-month old infant in the cradle".
Comox In one of many variant versions of the myth, the sound of the whale dropping into the sea is the source of thunder. A young boy of a
Vancouver Island people, the
Comox, was fascinated by the sound of thunder, and heard it from behind a point of land. He crossed that point, following the sound of thunder, and discovered the spectacle of the Thunderbird seizing and dropping the whale. The Thunderbird saw the boy, and told him that the story was now his, and he had the right to wear the Thunderbird mask and wings at the
potlatch. ==Reconstructing the myth==