This special relationship between purple martins and people is one of the few in North America to cross cultural boundaries between native groups and European settlers.
The next spring, with the reappearance of the martins, came four, which familiarly flew into the chamber, visited all the walls, and expressed their recognition by the most clamorous twitterings of joy.
Four brothers had watched with indignation the felonious attempts of a sparrow to possess himself of the nest of a house martin, in which lay its young brood of four unfledged birds.