Rainmaking (ritual)

[5] In an early sort of meteorology, Native Americans in the midwestern parts of the modern United States often tracked and followed known weather patterns while offering to perform a rain dance for settlers in return for trade items.

[7][8] In the Ozarks, multiple methods of attempting to call rain have been documented: Other hillmen try to produce rain by burning brush along the creeks, or hanging dead snakes belly-up on fences, or killing frogs and leaving them in the dry road, or putting salt on gravel bars, or suspending live turtles above the water.

[..] In some localities people imagine that they can cause a rain by submerging a cat in sulphur water—they don't drown the animal, but make sure that it is completely under water for a moment at least.

In a number of African societies, kings who failed to produce the expected rain ran the risk of being blamed as scapegoats and killed by their people.

[10] Omek Tannou is an ancient Tunisian rainmaking ritual which was inherited from Punic and Berber traditions[11] involving invocations of the goddess Tanit.

[17] "Shamans had to carry out an exhausting dance within a ring of fire until, sweating profusely, the falling drops of perspirations produced the desired rain.

Festus[20] distinguishes it from another lapis manalis, "stone of the Manes") brought from its usual resting place, the Temple of Mars in Clivo near the Porta Capena, into the Senate.