Snow Boy (bringer of snow and frost)
Lenape · numen · Lenape traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Snow Boy is the Lenape spirit of snow and winter cold. In the recorded tale he is born to a young woman with no known father; as an infant he freezes the fingers of other children who anger him, and is finally set adrift down the river on a cake of ice, promising to return each year as the snow. His story carries a double aspect: the harmful side of winter, which numbs and blackens with cold, and its benevolent side, for the snow that is his body spread upon the ground lets hunters follow the tracks of game. He is distinguished from 'Our Grandfather of the North,' who merely supplies the north wind, and offerings were made to Snow Boy to ensure enough snow for the winter hunt.
Domains
- winter and snow
- hunting and tracking
Powers
- to bring snow and killing frost with his touch
- to spread his body as snow so hunters can track game
Sources
- Snow Boy is a Lenape winter being, a fatherless child who controls snow and frost, to whom offerings were made to secure enough snow for tracking game in the winter hunt.: M. R. Harrington, Religion and Ceremonies of the Lenape, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1921 (secondary); John Bierhorst, Mythology of the Lenape: Guide and Texts, University of Arizona Press, 1995 (secondary); Frank G. Speck, A Study of the Delaware Indian Big House Ceremony, Publications of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, vol. 2, 1931 (secondary)