Tuil
Itelmen · deity · mythic / first times · Recorded classification
Tuil (also written Tuila) is the personified cause of Kamchatka's earthquakes in the beliefs of the Itelmen (Kamchadals) as recorded in the eighteenth century: he drives a sled beneath the earth, and whenever his dog Kozei stops to shake the snow from its coat the ground above trembles. The explanation, noted by Krasheninnikov during the Second Kamchatka Expedition and repeated in modern ethnographic surveys, belongs to the same series of nature-masters as the sea-master Mitg and the cloud-dwelling thunderer Bilyukai; no kinship with the raven family is recorded for him.
Domains
- earthquakes
Powers
- to shake the earth as he rides beneath it
Sources
- Tuil is the Kamchadal earthquake god who rides on a sled beneath the earth; the ground shakes whenever his dog Kozei shakes the snow from itself.: S. P. Krasheninnikov, Opisanie zemli Kamchatki [Description of the Land of Kamchatka] (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1755), vol. 2, pt. 3. (secondary); A. A. Sirina and O. A. Murashko, 'Verovaniia itel'menov' [Beliefs of the Itelmens], in Narody Severo-Vostoka Sibiri, ed. E. P. Bat'ianova and V. A. Turaev (Moscow: Nauka, 2010). (secondary); S. P. Krasheninnikov, Explorations of Kamchatka: North Pacific Scimitar, trans. E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1972). (secondary)