The third term, _Vuch_ or _Vugh_, was chosen according to Ximenez because this animal is notoriously cunning, “_por su astucia_.” This may be correct, and we may have here a reminiscence of an animal myth. But the word has several other significations which should be considered. It was the name of a sacred dance; it expressed the trembling in the ague chill; the warmth of water; and the darkness which comes before the dawn.[130] Of these various meanings one is tempted to take the last, and connect Hun-ahpu-vuch with the auroral gods, the forerunners of the light, like the “Kichigouai, those who make the day,” of Algonkin mythology. There is a curious passage in the _Popol Vuh_ which is in support of such an opinion. It occurs at a certain period of the history of the mythical hero Hunahpu. The text reads: “Are cut ta chi r’ah zakiric, “And now it was about to become white, “Chi zaktarin, And the dawn came, “U xecah ca xaquinuchic. The day opened. “Ama x-u ch’ux ri Vuch? ‘Is the _Vuch_ about to be?’ “Ve, x-cha ri mama. Yes, answered the old man. “Ta chi xaquinic; Then he spread apart his legs; “Quate ta chi gekumar chic; Again the darkness appeared; “Cahmul xaquin ri mama. Four times the old man spread his legs. “Ca xaquin-Vuch,” ca cha vinak “Now the opossum (_Vuch_) spreads vacamic. his legs,” say the people yet (meaning that the day approaches). As the same word _Vuch_ meant both the opossum and the atmospheric change which in that climate precedes the dawn, the text may be translated either way, and the homophony would give rise to a double meaning of the name. This homophony contains, indeed, rich material for the development of an animal myth, identifying the _Vuch_ with the God of Light, just as the similarity of the Algonkin _waubisch_, the dawn, and _waubos_, the rabbit, gave occasion to a whole cycle of curious myths in which the Great Hare or the Mighty Rabbit figures as the Creator of the world, the Day Maker, and the chief God of the widely spread Algonkin tribes.[131] In the second name, _Hun-ahpu-utiu_, the last member _utiu_ means the coyote, the native wolf, an animal which plays an important symbolic part in the cosmogonical myths of Californian, Mexican and Central American tribes. It appears generally to represent the night, and I would render the esoteric sense of the two names by “Master of the Night,” and “Master of the Approaching Dawn.” The same concealed sense seems to lurk in the next name, _Zaki-nima-tzyiz_, literally, “The Great White Pisote,” the pisote being the proboscidian known as _Nasua narica_, L. These names are repeated in a later passage of the _Popol Vuh_ (p. 20).