Apparently the underlying idea of this myth is of a bird flying through the heavens, so huge that he darkens the skies. The flapping of his wings is the thunder, the winking of his eyes causes the lightning, and so forth. Fair weather signifies that the bird is in good humor; bad weather that he is displeased. A big black bird therefore seems to answer fairly well the inquiries of the native mind regarding the phenomena of storms.[173] All myths have at least one universal feature, animals and heavenly bodies are endowed with human qualities, and associate indiscriminately with man. [Powell tells us that whatever challenges attention, gives rise to a myth.[174]] If, then, the “tawny patch on the shoulder of a rabbit,” the antlers of a deer, the crest of a bird, are full of meaning to the Indian mind, we can understand that there must be an inexhaustible store of tales, varying from tribe to tribe with the living creatures and the local conditions that obtain in each. Though we to-day after the long sophistication of the years may regard this phase as childish, ignorant, and superstitious, and resent its tyrannous fettering of the human mind, we must remember that it was the only view of life possible at the period of its sway—a life of Nature, speaking with many voices, sensitive to every changing facet of the created world—and that from such rude beginnings all primitive religion and poetry have arisen. We cannot afford to ignore or lose the only contribution thereto made on the western continent. Myths represent incidents long past and not to be repeated, those which occurred in the morning of the world when man had few or none of his present customs and arts. Folk-tales, on the other hand, are busied with more recent events and may even be woven about present-day occurrences. The myth therefore appeals especially to the imagination and the emotions, and to that deep-seated belief of the Indian that the world of sense and the world of spirit are so intimately linked that the former is ruled in minutest detail by the latter.[175] The “ritualization of myths”[176] takes place when an attempt is made to weave together these far-away happenings into a consistent tribal, clan, or fraternity story, the telling of which is frequently accompanied by ceremonies. Since there is usually a desire shown to arrange these chronologically, they may become an historical record of the tribe’s beginnings. At the same time, it must never be forgotten that these myths are handed down verbally by the older men of the tribe through successive generations, and must suffer certain alterations and embellishments as time passes.