_Birds._ We have already noted the importance of birds in Huichol and Tarahumari peyote symbolism, and are to discover that they are equally significant in the Plains. Here the “water-bird” somewhat ambiguously suggests a bird that lives in the water or the bird involved with the whistling for the midnight water. Arapaho songs refer to peyote and the birds which are its messengers, and sparrow hawk, yellow hammer and other woodpecker feathers are common in their meetings. When the fireman goes to get the water he carries an eagle wing, and the whistling which he makes is said to imitate the cry of a bird in search of water (the end of the eagle wing-bone whistle is finally dipped into the water bucket, as though it were the bird drinking).[71] The Comanche peyote bird is the “sun-eagle,” said to be just under the rising morning sun; “Comanches always mention that bird in their meeting.” This bird, the kʷina-óhap (literally, “eagle-yellow”), which is represented in the shaped ashes west of the peyote fire, “flashes like the sun; ... water bird feathers are used just because they are pretty.” In this connection it is interesting to recall the Tarahumari place name Couwápigóchi, “place of the wapigóri,” from the name of a fishing bird, “a cross between an eagle and a hawk, with feet like an eagle,” which the Mexicans call aquillala, and the brilliantly colored macao and other birds belonging to the Huichol “Grandfather Fire.”[72] The Kiowa represent their “water-bird” on peyote tie-slides as a long-necked bird like a kingfisher or crane; these have been traded all over the Plains. If a Kiowa peyote-user sees an eagle in a vision, he thereafter carries his eagle-feather fan in his left hand as a sign of this.[73] The peyote bird is prominent in symbolic Kiowa paintings also. Jonathan Koshiway, the Oto peyote teacher, said: The peyote spirit is like a little humming bird. When you are quiet and nothing is disturbing it, it will come to a flower and get the sweet flavor. But if it is disturbed, it goes quick. Hence the admonitions to sit quietly in meetings and “study” to see if you can “maybe learn something.” Tom Panther, a Shawnee leader, called the ash-bird a holy bird; it drinks as well as we do of the holy water [_i.e._ some of the ritual water is poured on the ash-figure in the morning] and it gets alive a little when people drink, and from then on is lively until morning. The martin is said to be the Shawnee peyote bird, as indicated perhaps in the “scissors-tail” shape of some ashes. A Mexican who had long lived with the Wichita had an interesting vision during the water-ceremonies of an Arapaho meeting, when he saw a white feather of the leader “turn into Christ and boss the bald-eagle feather of the fireman around.” The association of birds with peyotism, therefore, appears to be universal in the Plains and Mexico alike.