AUTHOR: Karen Floren, Staff Writer for TheDay.com

Narragansett Tribal Historian John Brown says "the birds that carry the wind" have always had a religious and cultural significance to his tribe, and that people who deal with birds of prey in Rhode Island are well aware of that.

So tribal members felt slighted after learning that a red-tail hawk killed last week by turbulence from an airplane at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, R.I., was turned over to an employee of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center.