They are He who creates, He who gives Form, He who gives Life, and He who reproduces.[82-1] This acute and extraordinary analysis of the origin and laws of organic life, clothed under the ancient belief in the action of the winds, reveals a depth of thought for which we were hardly prepared, and is perhaps the single instance of anything like metaphysics among the red race.

It is clearly visible in the earlier portions of the legends of the Quiches, and is the more surely of native origin as it has been quite lost on both their translators.
Go where we will, the same story meets us.

The empire of the Incas was attributed in the sacred chants of the Amautas, the priests assigned to take charge of the records, to four brothers and their wives.

These mythical civilizers are said to have emerged from a cave called _Pacari tampu_, which may mean "the House of Subsistence," reminding us of the four heroes who in Aztec legend set forth to people the world from Tonacatepec, the mountain of our subsistence; or again it may mean--for like many of these mythical names it seems to have been designedly chosen to bear a double construction--the Lodgings of the Dawn, recalling another Aztec legend which points for the birthplace of the race to Tula in the distant orient.

The cave itself suggests to the classical reader that of Eolus, or may be paralleled with that in which the Iroquois fabled the winds were imprisoned by their lord.[83-1] These brothers were of no common kin.