Invisible, imponderable, quickening with vigorous motion, slackening in rest and sleep, passing quite away in death, it is the most obvious sign of life.

All nations grasped the analogy and identified the one with the other.

But the breath is nothing but wind.
How easy, therefore, to look upon the wind that moves up and down and to and fro upon the earth, that carries the clouds, itself unseen, that calls forth the terrible tempests and the various seasons, as the breath, the spirit of God, as God himself?
So in the Mosaic record of creation, it is said "a mighty wind" passed over the formless sea and brought forth the world, and when the Almighty gave to the clay a living soul, he is said to have breathed into it "the wind of lives." Armed with these analogies, we turn to the primitive tongues of America, and find them there as distinct as in the Old World.

In Dakota _niya_ is literally breath, figuratively life; in Netela _piuts_ is life, breath, and soul; _silla_, in Eskimo, means air, it means wind, but it is also the word that conveys the highest idea of the world as a whole, and the reasoning faculty.

The supreme existence they call _Sillam Innua_, Owner of the Air, or of the All; or _Sillam Nelega_, Lord of the Air or Wind.
In the Yakama tongue of Oregon _wkrisha_ signifies there is wind, _wkrishwit_, life; with the Aztecs, _ehecatl_ expressed both air, life, and the soul, and personified in their myths it was said to have been born of the breath of Tezcatlipoca, their highest divinity, who himself is often called Yoalliehecatl, the Wind of Night.[50-1] The descent is, indeed, almost imperceptible which leads to the personification of the wind as God, which merges this manifestation of life and power in one with its unseen, unknown cause.