It is sometimes necessary to guard against being misled by names. Thus the natives of Nicaragua had gods whose name was that of a rabbit or a deer; yet these animals were not considered as gods. The identity of name went only to say that such and such were the gods to be invoked in hunting such and such animals.[IV-18]
The reader must have already noticed how important is the part assigned to birds in our mythology, especially in creation-myths. A great bird is the agent of the chief deity, perhaps the chief deity himself. The sweep of his wings is thunder; the lightnings are the glances of his eyes.[IV-19] Chipewyans, Thlinkeets, Atnas, Koltschanes, Kenai, and other nations give this being great prominence in their legends.
Brinton believes this bird to be the emblem of the wind, to be "a relic of the cosmogonal myth which explained the origin of the world from the action of the winds, under the image of the bird, on the primeval ocean;"[IV-20] and his view is probably correct in many cases.
The savage is ever ready to be smitten by natural powers. Ignorant and agape with wonder, is it unnatural that he should regard, with a superstitious awe and respect, the higher and more peculiar animal gifts, relating them to like physical powers, and managing to mix and confuse the whole by a strange synthesis of philosophy? Birds flew, the winds flew; the birds were of the kith of the winds, and the winds were of the kin of the gods who are over all. Poor, weary, painted man, who could only toil dustily along, foot-sore and perhaps heart-sore, with strange longings that venison and bear-meat could not satisfy--was it very wonderful if the throbbing music and upward flight of the clear-throated and swift-winged were to him very mysterious and sacred things? "All living beings," say the north-eastern Eskimos, "have the faculty of soul, but especially the bird." From the flight and song of birds, the Mexican divined and shadowed forth the unborn shapes of the to-come. He died too, if he died in an odor of warlike sanctity, in the strong faith that his soul should ultimately take the form of a bird and twitter through the ages in the purple shadows of the trees of paradise.[IV-21]