So natural and so general is
such a superstition, and so wide-spread is the respect it still obtains
in civilized and Christian lands, that it is not worth while to summon
witnesses to show that it prevailed universally among the red race also.
What imprinted it with redoubled force on their imagination was the
common belief that birds were not only divine nuncios, but the visible
spirits of their departed friends. The Powhatans held that a certain
small wood bird received the souls of their princes at death, and they
refrained religiously from doing it harm;[102-2] while the Aztecs and
various other nations thought that all good people, as a reward of
merit, were metamorphosed at the close of life into feathered songsters
of the grove, and in this form passed a certain term in the umbrageous
bowers of Paradise.
But the usual meaning of the bird as a symbol looks to a different
analogy--to that which appears in such familiar expressions as "the
wings of the wind," "the flying clouds.
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