Hunting for the Mythic Female Shaman Eagle Featuring the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)

This essay explores different intonations of the episode of the Female Shaman Eagle that is found in European versions of the Bear’s Son tale. It will be shown that a retelling of this episode can be detected in other myths and legends. It has left traces in the myth of Prometheus as summarized in Hesiod, as well as more explicitly in the legends surrounding the Caucasian hero Amirani. Further to the east the episode surfaces in tales recorded among the Tuvan people while evidence for the entrenchment of the episode along with its mythical ramifications in imagery can be identified in Iran. In the pages that follow we discover that the eastern reach of variants of the Bear’s Son tale takes us into Turkey, the Caucasus, south into Iran and even further to the east into the westernmost steppes of Mongolia. In all these geographic locations it is the figure of the Female Shaman Eagle that is highlighted and acquires mythic proportions, not just in narrative form but also as a highly esteemed bird of prey, celebrated in dance and expressed in striking visual imagery. In these materials the eagle in question is regularly identified as a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). In addition, these are zones in which there have been strong traditions of raising and training Golden Eagles as hunting companions