Horned Serpent

Details vary among cultures, with many of the stories associating the mystical figure with water, rain, lightning, thunder, and rebirth.

[2][3] Horned serpents appear in the oral history of numerous Native American cultures, especially in the Southeastern Woodlands and Great Lakes.

[6] Jackson Lewis, a Muscogee Creek informant to John R. Swanton, said, "This snake lives in the water has horns like the stag.

The Yuchi Big Turtle Dance honors the Horned Serpent's spirit, which was related to storms, thunder, lightning, disease, and rainbows.

Anthropologist James Mooney, describes the creature: Those who know say the Uktena is a great snake, as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright blazing crest like a diamond on its forehead, and scales glowing like sparks of fire.

Even to see the Uktena asleep is death, not to the hunter himself, but to his family.According to Sioux belief, the Unhcegila (Ųȟcéǧila) are dangerous reptilian water monsters which lived in ancient times.

It appears three times on the Gundestrup cauldron, and in Romano-Celtic Gaul was closely associated with the horned or antlered god Cernunnos, in whose company it is regularly depicted.

This pairing is found as early as the fourth century BC in Northern Italy, where a huge antlered figure with torcs and a serpent was carved on the rocks in Val Camonica.

In a relief at a museum in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, Cernunnos' legs are depicted as two ram-horned snakes which rear up on each side of his head and are eating fruit or corn.

Isidore of Seville described it as hunting by burying itself in sand while leaving its horns visible, and attacking creatures that came to investigate them.