Whirlwind-Woman is a female spirit-being who moves in the turning of the whirlwind and is credited as the origin of the sacred art of porcupine-quill ornamentation, the highly symbolic craft carried on by Arapaho women's quilling societies. Her circling motion is bound in Arapaho thought to the spiral and to the decorated ceremonial field. In the trickster cycle she matches herself against Nih'ançan and prevails, adding a note of the uncontainable natural power she personifies.