Claws of the Thunderbird Author:Holling C. Holling To the Reader: — All this happened many, many summers ago, before the heeled boot of the white man crunched the sanded shores of Kitchi Gami, Lake Superior. Then the trails were run by soft moccasins that made no sound. Then no bark of rifles disturbed the woods, and deer and moose went to their deaths heralded only by the twang of bowstring and ... more »the hiss of feathered shaft. The smoke of coal fires spread no haze against the sun in those days, nor was there steel for knives, nor yellow lumber for houses. Copper there was, and stone and bone and flint, and with these four things the Chippewa and the Sioux made weapons and hurled defiance, one at the other, across the forests and the plains.« less