[103-2] The thunder cloud was also a bird to the Caribs, and they
imagined it produced the lightning in true Carib fashion by blowing it
through a hollow reed, just as they to this day hurl their poisoned
darts.[104-1] Tupis, Iroquois, Athapascas, for certain, perhaps all the
families of the red race, were the subject pursued, partook of this
persuasion; among them all it would probably be found that the same
figures of speech were used in comparing clouds and winds with the
feathered species as among us, with however this most significant
difference, that whereas among us they are figures and nothing more, to
them they expressed literal facts.
How important a symbol did they thus become! For the winds, the clouds,
producing the thunder and the changes that take place in the
ever-shifting panorama of the sky, the rain bringers, lords of the
seasons, and not this only, but the primary type of the soul, the life,
the breath of man and the world, these in their role in mythology are
second to nothing.
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