Subject: Owls
From: pouncy@campus.swarthmore.edu
Date: 1990-11-23, 12:15
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

We were reading this week's issue of the New Yorker
magazine for the holidays.  There is a longish piece 
in there by Alec Wilkinson on the Tlinget (prounounced 
Tleen-git) Indians of Admiralty Island off the Alaskan
coast.  We thought we'd share a few tidbits from the piece
about owls.  By the way the Tlingit do not, repeat do not,
live in Washington near the fictional Twin Peaks.  They
live in Alaska, but their culture has some remarkable
similarities with real Northwest Indians (such as the
Nanaido tribe).  Both revere/fear the woods and believe it
to host key spirits.  

Key quote:  "The Tlingit thought that all rocks, animals,
trees, plants, stars, planets, and the sun were alive and
had he same thought and feelings and passions and that they
did, only were generally more cunning and powerful.
They believed that owls could Tlingit and predict the weather;
before a storm, owls were thought to be saying, `Get under
trees.'  Owls were also believed to be able to identify
murderers, so sometimes they were shot..."

BTW, we believe that the Twin Peaks' owls play a more ambivalent
role in accord with Nanaido (and other Northwest tribes in
the lower forty-eight) lore.