This recognition of the peak of Kulshan being the home of the Thunderbird coincides with the meaning of the title Kulshan itself, referring concurrently to something struck by thunder and burning, as the caldera of an active volcano is, or meaning a great white peak, as the volcano is when dormant.

Theodore Winthrop was the first settler to record the name of the mountain while he traveled from Victoria on a visit to the Lummi people on August 14th and 15th, 1853. His encounter with the Lummi prompted a rather impassioned argument for the use of the native name Kulshan, a perspective that resonates still today.

“Kulshan, misnamed Mount Baker by the vulgar, is their northernmost buttress, up at 49° and Fraser River. Kulshan is an irregular, massive, mound-shaped peak, worthy to stand a white emblem of perpetual peace between us and our brother Britons. The northern regions of Whulge [Puget Sound] and Vancouver Island have Kulshan upon their horizon. They saw it blaze the winter before this journey of mine; for there is fire beneath the Cascades, red war suppressed where the peaks, symbols of truce, stand in resplendent quiet. Kulshan is best seen, as I saw it one afternoon of that same August, from an upland of Vancouver Island, across the golden waves of a wheat-field, across the glimmering waters of the Georgian Sound, and far above its belt of misty gray pine-ridges. The snow-line here is at five thousand feet, and Kulshan has as much height in snow as in forest and vegetation. Its name I got from the Lummi tribe at its base, after I had dipped in their pot at a boiled-salmon feast. As to Baker, that name should be forgotten. Mountains should not be insulted by being named after undistinguished bipeds, nor by the prefix of Mt. Mt. Chimborazo, or Mt. Dhawalaghiri, seems as feeble as Mr. Julius Caesar, or Signor Dante.”

Like the other peaks discussed in this series, Kulshan has various names from the native peoples who inhabited the Salish coast. They include;