The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its...

The four winds.—The Greek cross is the form found by Colonel Mallery to be most common among the North American aborigines, possibly because it is the simplest. In this the four arms are equal in length, and the sign placed upright so that it stands on one foot and not on two, as does the St. Andrew’s cross. The Greek cross (fig. 314) represents, among the Dakotas, the four winds issuing out of the four caverns in which souls of men existed before the incarnation of the human body. All the medicine men—that is, conjurors and magicians—recollect their previous dreamy life in these places, and the instructions then received from the gods, demons, and sages; they recollect and describe their preexistent life, but only dream and speculate as to the future life beyond the grave. The top of the cross is the cold, all-conquering giant, the North Wind, most powerful of all. It is worn on the body nearest the head, the seat of intelligence and conquering devices. The left arm covers the heart; it is the East Wind, coming from the seat of life and love. The foot is the melting, burning South Wind, indicating, as it is worn, the seat of fiery passion. The right arm is the gentle West Wind, blowing from the spirit land, covering the lungs, from which the breath at last goes out gently, but into unknown night. The center of the cross is the earth and man, moved by the conflicting influences of gods and winds.

Sun and star symbols.—Great speculation has been made, both in Europe and America, over the relation between the Swastika and the sun, because the two signs have been associated by primitive peoples. Colonel Mallery gives the Indian signs for the sun, stars, and light.[287] These have been segregated, and it will be seen that the cross and circle are used indiscriminately for one and the other, and the fact of the two being found associated is no evidence of relationship in religious ideas (figs. 315-319).

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.

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.

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.

Midēᐟ 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 Midēᐟ 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 shell of Midēᐟ, 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 passageway 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.

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.

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]

Maidenhood.—Concerning fig. 327 Keam, in his manuscript, 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. 327b). 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 partition 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]

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 Manuscript,”[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 Manuscript,”[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 worship, 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.

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 Guzanutlí 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 compass—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 associated with sun worship, 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 asserts more than a probability will overreach his proofs. * * * A study of the designs associated 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 workmanship is purely aboriginal.

I have not seen a single example of engraving upon the shell 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.