The Swastika Part 22

_Dwellings._--Among the Hidatsa, the cross and the circle represent neither the sun nor any religious ideas, but merely lodges, houses, or dwellings. The crosses in fig. 319 represent Dakota lodges; the small circles signify earth lodges, the points representing the supporting poles. Buildings erected by civilized people were represented by small rectangular figures, while the circles with dots in a square represent earth lodges, the home of the Hidatsa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 320. LATIN CROSSES REPRESENTING THE DRAGON FLY. Dakota Indians.]

_Dragon fly (Susbeca)._--Among some of the Indian tribes, the Dakotas among others, the Latin cross is found, i. e., upright with three members of equal length, and the fourth, the foot, much longer. The use of this symbol antedates the discovery of America, and is carried back in tradition and myth. This sign signifies the mosquito hawk or the dragon fly (fig. 320). It is called in that language the "Susbeca," and is a supernatural being gifted with speech, warning man of danger, approaching his ear silently and at right angles, saying, "Tci," "tci," "tci," an interjection equivalent to "Look out!" "You are surely going to destruction!" "Look out!" "Tci," "tci," "tci!" The adoption of the dragon fly as a mysterious and supernatural being is on account of its sudden appearance in numbers. In the still of the evening, when the shades of darkness come, then is heard in the meadows a sound as of crickets or frogs, but indistinct and prolonged; on the morrow the Susbeca will be hovering over it. It is the sound of their coming, but whence no one knows. The cross not only represents the shape of the insect, but also the angle of its approach. It is variously drawn, but usually as in fig. 320 _a_ or _b_, and, in painting or embroidery, _c_, and sometimes _d_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 321. DOUBLE CROSS OF SIX ARMS REPRESENTING THE DRAGON FLY. Moki Indians, Arizona. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 1165.]

Fig. 321 is described in Keam's MS. as follows:

This is a conventional design of dragon flies, and is often found among rock etchings throughout the plateau [Arizona]. The dragon flies have always been held in great veneration by the Mokis and their ancestors, as they have been often sent by Oman to reopen springs which Muingwa had destroyed and to confer other benefits upon the people.

This form of the figure, with little vertical lines added to the transverse lines, connects the Batolatci with the Ho-bo-bo emblems.

The youth who was sacrificed and translated by Ho-bo-bo reappeared a long time afterwards, during a season of great drought, in the form of a gigantic dragon fly, who led the rain clouds over the lands of Ho-pi-tu, bringing plenteous rains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 322. FIGURES OF CROSSES AS USED BY THE ESKIMO TO REPRESENT FLOCKS OF BIRDS. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 1228. Cat Nos. 44211 and 45020, U. S. N. M.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 323. PETROGLYPH FROM TULARE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. Large white Greek cross. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig.

1229.]

_Mide' or Shamans._--Colonel Mallery (or Dr. Hoffman) tells us (p. 726) that among the Ojibways of northern Minnesota the cross is one of the sacred symbols of the Society of Mide' or Shamans and has special reference to the fourth degree. The building in which the initiation is carried on has its opening toward the four cardinal points. The cross is made of saplings, the upright poles approaching the height of four to six feet, the transverse arms being somewhat shorter, each being of the same length as the top; the upper parts are painted white or besmeared with white clay, over which are spread small spots of red, the latter suggesting the sacred sh.e.l.l of Mide', the symbol of the order. The lower arm of the pole is square, the side toward the east being painted white to denote the source of light and warmth; the face on the south is green, denoting the source of the thunder bird which brings the rains and vegetation; the surface toward the west is covered with vermilion, relating to the land of the setting sun, the abode of the dead; the north is painted black, as the direction from which comes affliction, cold, and hunger.

_Flocks of birds._--Groups of small crosses on the sides of Eskimo bow drills represent flocks of birds (Cat. Nos. 45020 and 44211, U. S. N. M.).

They are reproduced in fig. 322. Colonel Mallery's fig. 28, page 67, represents a cross copied from the Najowe Valley group of colored pictographs, 40 miles west of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, Cal.

The cross measured 20 inches in length, the interior being painted black while the border is of a dark red tint. This design, as well as others in close connection, is painted on the walls of a shallow cave or rock shelter in the limestone formation. Fourteen miles west of Santa Barbara, on the summit of the Santa Ynez Mountains, is a cavern having a large opening west and north, in which are crosses of the Greek type, the interior portion being painted a dull earthy red, while the outside line is a faded-black tint. The cross measures nearly a foot in extent. At the Tulare Indian Agency, Cal., is an immense bowlder of granite. It has been split, and one of the lower quarters has been moved sufficiently to leave a pa.s.sageway six feet wide and nearly ten feet high. The interior walls are well covered with large painted figures, while upon the ceilings are numerous forms of animals, birds, and insects. Among this latter group is a white cross about 18 inches in length (fig. 323), presenting a unique appearance, for the reason that it is the only petroglyph in that region to which the white coloring matter has been applied.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 324. PETROGLYPHS FROM OWEN'S VALLEY, CALIFORNIA. (_a_, _b_) Greek crosses, (_c_) double Latin cross, (_d-f_) Latin crosses representing human figures. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 1230.]

An interesting example of rock sculpturing in groups is in Owens Valley, south of Benton, Cal. Among them are various forms of crosses, and circles containing crosses of simple and complex types. The most interesting in this connection are the groups in fig. 324, _a_ and _b_. The larger one, _a_, occurs upon a large bowlder of tracite 16 miles south of Benton, at the "Chalk grave." The circle is a depression about one inch in depth, the cross being in high relief. The small cross _b_, found three miles north from this is almost identical, the arms of the cross, however, extending to the rim of the circle. In this locality occurs also the cross, _c_, same figure, and some examples having more than two cross arms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 325. CROSS IN ZIGZAG LINES REPRESENTING THE HUMAN FORM. Navajo Indians.]

_Human forms._--Other simple crosses represent the human form. Some of these are engraved or cut on the rocks of Owens Valley and are similar to those above described (fig. 324), but they have been eroded, so that beyond the mere cross they show slight relation to the human body (fig.

324, _d_, _e_, _f_). Col. James Stevenson, describing the Hasjelti ceremony of the Navajoes,[288] shows the form of a man drawn in the sand (fig. 325). Describing the character shown in fig. 326, Keam says: "The figure represents a woman. The breath is displayed in the interior."[289]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 326. MALTESE CROSS(?) REPRESENTING A WOMAN. The figure in the center is intended to indicate the breath.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 327. MALTESE AND SAINT ANDREW'S CROSSES. Emblems of maidenhood. Moki Indians.]

_Maidenhood._--Concerning fig. 327 Keam, in his ma.n.u.script, says the Maltese cross was the emblem of a virgin, and is still so recognized by the Moki. It is a conventional development of the common emblem of maidenhood, wherein the maidens wear their hair arranged as in a disk three or four inches in diameter on each side of the head (fig. 327_b_).

This discoidal arrangement of the hair is typical of the emblem of fructification worn by the virgin in the Muingwa festival. Sometimes the hair, instead of being worn in the complete discoidal form, is dressed upon two curving twigs, and presents the form of two semicircles upon each side of the head. The part.i.tion of these is sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical. The combination of these styles (fig. 327 _a_ and _b_) present the forms from which the Maltese cross was conventionalized.[290]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 328. CROSS WITH BIFURCATED FOOT. Used by the Innuits to represent a shaman or evil spirit.]

_Shaman's spirit._--Among the Kiatexamut and Innuit tribes, a cross placed on the head, as in fig. 328, signified a shaman's evil spirit or demon.

This is an imaginary being under the control of the shaman to execute his wishes.[291]

_Divers significations._--The figure of the cross among the North American Indians, says Colonel Mallery,[292] has many differing significations. It appears "as the tribal sign for Cheyenne" (p. 383); "as Dakota lodges" (p.

582); "as a symbol for trade or exchange" (p. 613); "as a conventional sign for prisoners" (p. 227); "for personal exploits while elsewhere it is used in simple enumeration" (p. 348). Although this device is used for a variety of meanings when it is employed ceremonially or in elaborate pictographs of the Indians both of North and South America, it represents the four winds. This view long ago was suggested as being the signification of many Mexican crosses, and it is sustained by Prof. Cyrus Thomas in his "Notes on Mayan Mexican Ma.n.u.script,"[293] where strong confirmatory evidence is produced by the arms of the crosses having the appearance of conventionalized wings similar to some representations of the thunder bird of the northern tribes; yet the same author, in his paper on the study of the "Troano Ma.n.u.script,"[294] gives fig. 329 as a symbol for wood, thus further showing the manifold concepts attached to the general form of the cross. Bandelier thinks that the cross so frequently used by the aborigines of Mexico and Central America were merely ornaments and not objects of wors.h.i.+p, while the so-called crucifixes, like that on the Palenque tablet, were only the symbol of the "new fire," or the close of the period of fifty-two years. He believes them to be representations of the fire drills more or less ornamented. Zamacois[295] says that the cross was used in the religion of various tribes of the peninsula of Yucatan, and that it represented the G.o.d of rain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 329. ST. ANDREW'S CROSSES, USED AS A SYMBOL FOR WOOD.

Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 1233.]

It is a favorite theory with Major Powell, Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, that the cross was an original invention of the North American Indian, possibly a sign common to all savages; that it represented, first, the four cardinal points, north, south, east, and west; and afterwards by accretion, seven points, north, south, east, west, zenith, nadir, and here.

Capt. John G. Bourke, in his paper on the "Medicine Men of the Apache"[296] discourses on their symbolism of the cross. He says it is related to the cardinal points, to the four winds, and is painted by warriors on their moccasins when going through a strange district to keep them from getting on a wrong trail. He notes how he saw, in October, 1884, a procession of Apache men and women bearing two crosses, 4 feet 10 inches long, appropriately decorated "in honor of Guzanutli to induce her to send rain."

Dr. Brinton[297] tells of the rain maker of the Lenni Lenape who first drew on the earth the figure of a cross. Captain Bourke quotes from Father Le Clerq[298] as to the veneration in which the cross was held by the Gaspesian Indians, also from Herrara to the same effect. Professor Holmes[299] makes some pertinent observations with regard to the meanings of the cross given by the American Indians:

Some very ingenious theories have been elaborated in attempting to account for the cross among American symbols. Brinton believes that the great importance attached to the points of the compa.s.s--the four quarters of the heavens--by savage peoples, has given rise to the sign of the cross. With others, the cross is a phallic symbol derived, by some obscure process of evolution, from the veneration accorded to the procreative principle in nature. It is also frequently a.s.sociated with sun wors.h.i.+p, and is recognized as a symbol of the sun--the four arms being remaining rays after a gradual process of elimination.

Whatever is finally determined in reference to the origin of the cross as a religious symbol in America will probably result from exhaustive study of the history, language, and art of the ancient peoples, combined with a thorough knowledge of the religious conceptions of modern tribes, and when these sources of information are all exhausted it is probable that the writer who a.s.serts more than a probability will overreach his proofs. * * * A study of the designs a.s.sociated with the cross in these gorgets [figs. 302-304] is instructive, but does not lead to any definite result; in one case the cross is inscribed on the back of a great spider [figs. 275-278]; in another it is surrounded by a rectangular framework of lines, looped at the corners and guarded by four mysterious birds [figs. 263-266], while in others it is without attendant characters, but the workmans.h.i.+p is purely aboriginal. I have not seen a single example of engraving upon the sh.e.l.l that suggested a foreign hand, or a design, with the exception of this one [a cross], that could claim a European derivation. * * * Such delineations of the cross as we find embodied in ancient aboriginal art, represent only the final stages of its evolution, and it is not to be expected that its origin can be traced through them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 330. GRAPHIC DELINEATION OF ALLIGATOR. From a vase of the lost color group. Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 257.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 331. GRAPHIC DELINEATION OF ALLIGATOR. From a vase of the lost color group. Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 258.]

Continuing in his "Ancient Art in Chiriqui,"[300] presenting his "Series showing stages in the simplification of animal characters," and "derivation of the alligator," Professor Holmes elaborates the theory how the alligator was the original, and out of it, by evolution, grew the cross. His language and accompanying figures are quoted:

Of all the animal forms utilized by the Chiriquians, the alligator is the best suited to the purpose of this study, as it is presented most frequently and in the most varied forms. In figs. 257 and 258 [figs.

330 and 331 in the present paper] I reproduce drawings from the outer surface of a tripod bowl of the lost color group. Simple and formal as these figures are, the characteristic features of the creature--the sinuous body, the strong jaws, the upturned snout, the feet, and the scales--are forcibly expressed. It is not to be a.s.sumed that these examples represent the best delineative skill of the Chiriquian artist. The native painter must have executed very much superior work upon the more usual delineating surfaces, such as bark and skins. The examples here shown have already experienced decided changes through the constraints of the ceramic art, but are the most graphic delineations preserved to us. They are free-hand products, executed by mere decorators, perhaps by women, who were servile copyists of the forms employed by those skilled in sacred art.

A third ill.u.s.tration from the same group of ware, given in fig. 259 [fig. 332 of the present paper] shows, in some respects, a higher degree of convention. * * *

I shall now call attention to some important individualized or well-defined agencies of convention. First, and most potent, may be mentioned the enforced limits of the s.p.a.ces to be decorated, which s.p.a.ces take shape independently of the subject to be inserted. When the figures must occupy a narrow zone, they are elongated; when they must occupy a square, they are restricted longitudinally, and when they occupy a circle, they are of necessity coiled up. Fig. 265 [fig.

333 of the present paper] ill.u.s.trates the effect produced by crowding the oblong figure into a short rectangular s.p.a.ce. The head is turned back over the body and the tail is thrown down along the side of the s.p.a.ce. In fig. 266 [fig. 334 of the present paper] the figure occupies a circle and is, in consequence, closely coiled up, giving the effect of a serpent rather than an alligator. * * *

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 332. CONVENTIONAL FIGURE OF ALLIGATOR. From a vessel of the lost color group. Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 259.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 333. CONVENTIONAL FIGURE OF ALLIGATOR CROWDED INTO A SMALL GEOMETRICAL FIGURE. Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 265.]

I present five series of figures designed to ill.u.s.trate the stages through which life forms pa.s.s in descending from the realistic to highly specialized conventional shapes. In the first series (fig. 277) [fig. 335 of the present paper] we begin with _a_, a meager but graphic sketch of the alligator; the second figure, _b_, is hardly less characteristic, but is much simplified; in the third, _c_, we have still three leading features of the creature--the body line, the spots, and the stroke at the back of the head; and in the fourth, _d_, nothing remains but a compound yoke-like curve, standing for the body of the creature, and a single dot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 334. CONVENTIONAL FIGURE OF ALLIGATOR CROWDED INTO A CIRCLE. Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig.

266.]

The figures of the second series (fig. 278) [fig. 336 of the present paper] are nearly all painted upon low, round nodes placed about the body of the alligator vases, and hence are inclosed in circles. The animal figure in the first example is coiled up like a serpent [fig.

334], but still preserves some of the well-known characters of the alligator. In the second example [fig. 336_b_] we have a double hook near the center of the s.p.a.ce which takes the place of the body, but the dotted triangles are placed separately against the encircling line. In the next figure the body symbol is omitted and the three triangles remain to represent the animal. In the fourth there are four triangles, and the body device being restored in red takes the form of a cross. In the fifth two of the inclosing triangles are omitted and the idea is preserved by the simple dots. In the sixth the dots are placed within the bars of the cross, the triangles becoming mere inters.p.a.ces, and in the seventh the dots form a line between the two encircling lines. This series could be filled up by other examples, thus showing by what infinitesimal steps the transformations take place. * * *

We learn by the series of steps ill.u.s.trated in the annexed cuts that the alligator radical, under peculiar restraints and influences, a.s.sumes conventional forms that merge imperceptibly into these cla.s.sic devices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 335. SERIES OF FIGURES OF ALLIGATORS SHOWING STAGES OF SIMPLIFICATION. Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 277.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 336. SERIES SHOWING STAGES IN THE SIMPLIFICATION OF ANIMAL CHARACTERS, BEGINNING WITH THE ALLIGATOR AND ENDING WITH THE GREEK CROSS. Chiriqui. Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig.

278.]

Professor Holmes's theory of the evolution of the cross from the alligator and its location in Chiriqui is opposed to that of Professor Goodyear, who, in his "Grammar of the Lotus," ascribes the origin of the cross to the lotus and locates it in Egypt. I file what in law would be an "interpleader"--I admit my want of knowledge of the subject under discussion, and leave the question to these gentlemen.

INTRODUCTION OF THE CROSS INTO AMERICA.