Here we have the same reference to matter falling on the earth from the heavens, associated with devouring fire. And we have the same sequence of events, for we learn that when all of Ta-wats was consumed but the head, "his tears gushed forth in a flood, which spread over the earth and extinguished the fires."
The Aleuts of the Aleutian Archipelago have a tradition that a certain Old Man, called Traghdadakh, created men "by casting stones on the earth; he flung also other stones into the air, the water, and over the land, thus making beasts, birds, and fishes."[4]
It is a general belief in many races that the stone axes and celts fell from the heavens. In Japan, the stone
[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 170.
2. Ibid., p. 181.
3. Major J. W. Powell, "Popular Science Monthly," 1879, p. 799.
4 Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 104.]
{p. 259}
arrow-heads are rained from heaven by the flying spirits, who shoot them. Similar beliefs are found in Brittany, in Madagascar, Ireland, Brazil, China, the Shetlands, Scotland, Portugal, etc.[1]
In the legends of Quetzalcoatl, the central figure of the Toltec mythology, we have a white man--a bearded man--from an eastern land, mixed up with something more than man. He was the Bird-serpent, that is, the winged or flying serpent, the great snake of the air, the son of Iztac Mixcoatl, "the white-cloud serpent, the spirit of the tornado."[2] He created the world. He was overcome by Tezcatlipoca, the spirit of the night.