The Swastika Part 17

52. One sh.e.l.l mask, one sh.e.l.l gorget, one sh.e.l.l ornament.

These objects are now in the U. S. National Museum and in my department.

The list is taken from the official catalogue, and they number from 115505 to 115684. I have had the opportunity of comparing the objects with this description and find their general agreement. Dr. Palmer, the finder, was an employe of the Bureau of Ethnology, is a man of the highest character, of great zeal as an archaeologist and naturalist, and has been for many years, and is now, in the employ of the Bureau or Museum, always with satisfaction and confidence. Mr. Emmert was also an employe of the Bureau for many years, and equally reliable.

The specimens of sh.e.l.l in this and several other mounds, some of which are herein figured, were in an advanced stage of decay, pitted, discolored, and crumbling, requiring to be handled with the utmost care to prevent disintegration. They were dried by the collector, immersed in a weak solution of glue, and forwarded immediately (in 1885), with other relics from the neighborhood, to the Bureau of Ethnology and National Museum at Washington, where they have remained ever since. There is not the slightest suspicion concerning the genuineness or antiquity of this specimen or of those bearing the Swastika as belonging to the mound-building epoch in the valley of the Tennessee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 239. Sh.e.l.l GORGET. Two fighting figures with triangular breech-clout, garters and anklets, and dots and circles. Fains Island, Tennessee. Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 452, fig. 128. Cat. No. 62930, U. S. N. M.]

Other figures of sufficient similarity to the Swastika have been found among the aborigines of North America to show that these do not stand alone; and there are also other human figures which show a style of work so similar and such resemblance in detail of design as to establish the practical ident.i.ty of their art. One of these was a remarkable specimen of engraved sh.e.l.l found in the same mound, Fains Island, which contained the first Swastika (fig. 237). It is described in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, page 301, under the name of McMahon's mound. It is a large polished Fulgur sh.e.l.l disk which, when entire, has been nearly 5 inches in diameter (fig. 239). A little more than one-third has crumbled away, and the remaining portion has been preserved only by careful handling and immediate immersion in a solution of glue. It had been engraved on the concave side. The design represents two human figures plumed and winged, armed with eagles' talons and engaged in mortal combat. The design apparently covered the entire sh.e.l.l, leaving no s.p.a.ce for encircling lines. The two figures are in profile and face each other in a fierce onset. Of the right-hand figure, only the body, one arm, and one leg remain. The left-hand figure is almost complete. The outline of the face, one arm, and one foot is all that is affected. The right hand is raised above the head in the act of brandishing a long knife pointed at both ends. The other combatant, clutching in his right hand a savage-looking blade with its point curved, seems delivering a blow in the face of his antagonist. Of the visible portions of the figures, the hands are vigorously drawn, the thumbs press down upon the outside of the forefingers in a natural effort to tighten the grasp. The body, arms, and legs are well defined and in proper proportion, the joints are correctly placed, the left knee is bent forward, and the foot planted firmly on the ground, while the right is thrown gracefully back against the rim at the left, and the legs terminate in well-drawn eagles' feet armed with curved talons. The head is decorated with a single plume which springs from a circular ornament placed over the ear; an angular figure extends forward from the base of this plume, and probably represents what is left of the headdress proper. In front of this--on the very edge of the crumbling sh.e.l.l--is one-half of the lozenge-shaped eye, the dot representing the pupil being almost obliterated. The ankles and legs just below the knee and the wrists each have three lines representing bracelets or anklets. It is uncertain whether the leg is covered or naked; but between the waistband and the leggings, over the abdomen, is represented on both figures a highly decorated triangular garment, or, possibly coat of mail, to which particular attention is called.[252] In the center, at the top, just under the waistband, are four circles with dots in the center arranged in a square; outside of this, still at the top, are two triangular pieces, and outside of them are two more circles and dots; while the lower part of the triangle, with certain decorations of incised lines, completes the garment. This decoration is the same on both figures, and corresponds exactly with the Buddha figure. An ornament is suspended on the breast which shows three more of the circles and dots. The earring is still another. The right-hand figure, so far as it can be seen, is a duplicate of the left, and in the drawing it has, where destroyed, been indicated by dotted lines. It is remarkable that the peculiar clothing or decoration of these two figures should be almost an exact reproduction of the Buddha figure (pl. 10). Another interesting feature of the design is the highly conventionalized wing which fills the s.p.a.ce beneath the uplifted arm. This wing is unlike the usual specimens of aboriginal art which have been found in such profusion in that neighborhood. But it is again remarkable that this conventionalized wing and the bracelets, anklets, and garters should correspond in all their peculiarities of construction and design with the wings on the copper and sh.e.l.l figures from the Etowah mound, Georgia (figs. 240, 241, and 242)[253]. Behind the left-hand figure is an ornament resembling the spreading tail of an eagle which, with its feather arrangement and the detail of their mechanism, correspond to a high degree with the eagle effigies in repousse copper (fig. 243) from the mound in Union County, Ill., shown in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (p. 105) and in the Twelfth Annual Report (p. 309).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 240. COPPER PLATE. Entowah Mound, Georgia. Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 42. Cat. No. 91113, U. S.

N. M.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 241. COPPER PLATE. Repousse work. Entowah Mound, Georgia. Cat. No. 91117, U. S. N. M.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 242. ENGRAVED Sh.e.l.l. Triangular breech-clout with dots and circles. Entowah Mound, Georgia. Cat. No. 91443, U. S. N. M.]

_Hopewell Mound, Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio._--A later discovery of the Swastika belonging to the same period and the same general locality--that is, to the Ohio Valley--was that of Prof. Warren K.

Moorehead, in the fall and winter of 1891-92, in his excavations of the Hopewell mound, seven miles northwest of Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio.[254] The locality of this mound is well shown in Squier and Davis's work on the "Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" (pl. 10, p. 26), under the name of "Clark's Works," here reproduced as pl. 11. It is the large irregular unnumbered triple mound just within the arc of the circle shown in the center of the plan. The excavation contemplated the destruction of the mound by cutting it down to the surrounding level and scattering the earth of which it was made over the surface; and this was done.

Preparatory to this, a survey and ground plan was made (pl. 12). I a.s.sisted at this survey and can vouch for the general correctness. The mound was surrounded by parallel lines laid out at right angles and marked by stakes 50 feet apart. The mound was found to be 530 feet long and 250 feet wide. Squier and Davis reported its height at 32 feet, but the excavation of the trenches required but 18 and 16 feet to the original surface on which the mound was built. It was too large to be cut down as a whole, and for convenience it was decided by Mr. Moorehead to cut it down in trenches, commencing on the northeast. Nothing was found until, in opening trench 3, about five feet above the base of the mound, they struck a ma.s.s of thin worked copper objects, laid flat one atop the other, in a rectangular s.p.a.ce, say three by four feet square. These objects are unique in American prehistoric archaeology. Some of them bore a resemblance in form to the scalloped mica pieces found by Squier and Davis, and described by them in their "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" (p.

240), and also those of the same material found by Professor Putnam in the Turner group of mounds in the valley of the Little Miami. They had been apparently laid between two layers of bark, whether for preservation or mere convenience of deposit, can only be guessed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 11. PLAN OF NORTH FORK (HOPEWELL) WORKS. Ross County, Ohio. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. I, Pl. X.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 12. PLAN OF HOPEWELL MOUND, IN WHICH ABORIGINAL COPPER SWASTIKAS WERE FOUND. Ross County, Ohio. Moorehead, "Primitive Man in Ohio," Pl. x.x.xIV.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 243. COPPER PLATE SHOWING FIGURE OF EAGLE. Repousse work. Union County, Ill. Cat. No. 91507, U. S. N. M.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 244. SWASTIKA CROSS OF THIN COPPER. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. 1/4 natural size.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 245. FLAT RING OF THIN COPPER. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. 1/5 natural size.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 246. STENCIL ORNAMENT OF THIN COPPER. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. 1/8 natural size.]

The following list of objects is given, to the end that the reader may see what was a.s.sociated with these newly found copper Swastikas: Five Swastika crosses (fig. 244); a long ma.s.s of copper covered with wood on one side and with squares and five similar designs traceable on the reverse; smaller ma.s.s of copper; eighteen single copper rings; a number of double copper rings, one set of three and one set of two; five pan lids or hat-shaped rings; ten circular disks with holes in center, represented in fig. 245, originally placed in a pile and now oxidized together; also large circular, stencil-like ornaments, one (fig. 246) 7-1/2 inches in diameter; another (fig. 247) somewhat in the shape of a St. Andrew's cross, the extreme length over the arms being 8-3/4 inches.

About five feet below the deposit of sheet copper and 10 or 12 feet to the west, two skeletons lay together. They were covered with copper plates and fragments, copper hatchets, and pearl beads, shown in the list below, laid in rectangular form about seven feet in length and five feet in width, and so close as to frequently overlap.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 247. STENCIL ORNAMENT OF THIN COPPER. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. 1/4 natural size.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 248. FISH ORNAMENT OF THIN COPPER. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. 1/6 natural size.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 249. LOZENGE-SHAPED STENCIL OF THIN COPPER. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. 1/4 natural size.]

There were also found sixty-six copper hatchets, ranging from 1-1/2 to 22-1/2 inches in length; twenty-three copper plates and fragments; one copper eagle; eleven semicircles, bars, etc.; two spool-shaped objects; four comb-shaped effigies; one wheel with peculiar circles and bars of copper; three long plates of copper; pearl and sh.e.l.l beads and teeth; a lot of extra fine pearls; a lot of wood, beads, and an unknown metal; a lot of bones; a human jaw, very large; a fragmentary fish resembling a sucker (fig. 248); one stool of copper with two legs; broken copper plates; one broken sh.e.l.l; bear and panther tusks; mica plates; forty fragmentary and entire copper stencils of squares, circles, diamonds, hearts, etc.; copper objects, saw-shaped; twenty ceremonial objects, rusted or oxidized copper; two diamond-shaped stencils, copper (fig. 249); four peculiar spool-shaped copper ornaments, perforated, showing repousse work (fig. 250).

I made sketches of two or three of the bone carvings, for the purpose of showing the art of the people who constructed this monument, so that by comparison with that of other known peoples some knowledge may be obtained, or theory advanced, concerning the race or tribe to which they belonged and the epoch in which they lived. Fig. 251 shows an exquisite bone carving of a paroquet which belongs much farther south and not found in that locality in modern times. The design shown in fig. 252 suggests a Mississippi Kite, but the zoologists of the Museum, while unable to determine with exact.i.tude its intended representation, chiefly from the mutilated condition of the fragment, report it more likely to be the head of the "leather-back" turtle. Fig. 253 probably represents an otter with a fish in his mouth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 13. HUMAN SKULL WITH COPPER-COVERED HORNS. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. Moorehead, "Primitive Man in Ohio,"

frontispiece.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 14. PREHISTORIC ALTAR. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. Found near the copper Swastika shown in fig. 244. Moorehead, "Primitive Man in Ohio," Fig. x.x.xVII. Cat. No. 148662, U. S. N. M.]

In trench No. 3, 15 skeletons (numbered 264 to 278, inclusive), were found on the base line, all extended. Objects of coal, bone, sh.e.l.l, or stone, had been placed with nearly all of them. Nos. 265 and 266 were laid on blocks of burnt earth 3 inches higher than the base of the mound. One of the skeletons in this mound (No. 248) is shown in pl. 13. It was a most remarkable specimen, and forms the frontispiece of Prof. W. K. Moorehead's volume "Primitive Man in Ohio," where it is described (p. 195) as follows:

At his head were imitation elk horns, neatly made of wood and covered with sheet copper rolled into cylindrical forms over the p.r.o.ngs. The antlers were 22 inches high and 19 inches across from p.r.o.ng to p.r.o.ng.

They fitted into a crown of copper bent to fit the head from occipital to upper jaw. Copper plates were upon the breast and stomach, also on the back. The copper preserved the bones and a few of the sinews. It also preserved traces of cloth similar to coffee sacking in texture, interwoven among the threads of which were 900 beautiful pearl beads, bear teeth split and cut, and hundreds of other beads, both pearl and sh.e.l.l. Copper spool-shaped objects and other implements covered the remains. A pipe of granite and a spearhead of agate were near the right shoulder. The pipe was of very fine workmanship and highly polished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 250. SPOOL-SHAPED OBJECT OF COPPER. Repousse and intaglio decoration. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. Natural size.]

While digging out skeletons 280 to 284, Professor Moorehead says they touched the edge of an altar (pl. 14). It was on the base line and 15 feet north of the copper find before described. On the 5th of January, 1892, the altar was uncovered, and the earth, charcoal, and objects within it put into five soap boxes and transported to headquarters, where the material was a.s.sorted in my presence and with my aid. The ma.s.s on the altar had been charred throughout. It contained, in part, mica ornaments, beads, spool-shaped objects, whale, bear, and panther teeth, flint knives, carved effigies of bone and stone, some of which were broken, while others were whole. There were stone tablets, slate ornaments, copper b.a.l.l.s, fragments of cloth, rings of chlorite, quartz crystals perforated and grooved, and a few pieces of flint and obsidian, with several thousand pearls drilled for suspension. These objects were heaped in the cavity of the altar without any regularity. All were affected by heat, the copper being fused in many cases. The teeth and tusks were charred, split, and calcined. There were no ashes. All the fuel was charcoal, and from the appearance of the debris, especially the wood, earth, and bone, one might suppose that after the fire had started it had not been allowed to burn to ashes as if in the open air, but had been covered with earth, and so had smoldered out as in a charcoal pit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 251. FRAGMENT OF ENGRAVED BONE REPRESENTING A PAROQUET. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. Natural size.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 252. FRAGMENT OF ENGRAVED BONE PROBABLY REPRESENTING A MISSISSIPPI KITE OR LEATHER-BACK TURTLE. Hopewell Mound, Ross County, Ohio. Natural size.]

Evidence was found of an extended commerce with distant localities, so that if the Swastika existed in America it might be expected here. The princ.i.p.al objects were as follows: A number of large seash.e.l.ls (_Fulgur_) native to the southern Atlantic Coast 600 miles distant, many of them carved; several thousand pieces of mica from the mountains of Virginia or North Carolina, 200 or more miles distant; a thousand large blades of beautifully chipped objects in obsidian, which could not have been found nearer than the Rocky Mountains, 1,000 or 1,200 miles distant; four hundred pieces of wrought copper, believed to be from the Lake Superior region, 150 miles distant; fifty-three skeletons, the copper headdress (pl. 13) made in semblance of elk horns, 16 inches high, and other wonderful things. Those not described have no relation to the Swastika.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 253. FRAGMENT OF ENGRAVED BONE PROBABLY REPRESENTING AN OTTER WITH A FISH IN ITS MOUTH. Natural size.]

These objects were all prehistoric. None of them bore the slightest evidence of contact with white civilization. The commoner objects would compare favorably with those found in other mounds by the same and other investigators. Much of it may be undetermined. It is strange to find so many objects brought such long distances, and we may not be able to explain the problem presented; but there is no authority for injecting any modern or European influence into it. By what people were these made? In what epoch? For what purpose? What did they represent? How did this ancient, curious, and widespread sign, a recognized symbol of religion of the Orient, find its way to the bottom of one of the mounds of antiquity in the Scioto Valley? These are questions easy to ask but difficult to answer. They form some of the riddles of the science of prehistoric anthropology.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 254. WATER JUG WITH FIGURE OF SWASTIKA. Decoration, red on yellow ground. Poinsett County, Ark. Cat. No. 91230, U. S. N. M.]

_Mounds in Arkansas._--A water jug in the collection of the U. S. National Museum (fig. 254) was obtained in 1883 by P. W. Norris, of the Bureau of Ethnology, from a mound in Poinsett County, Ark. It is of yellow ground, natural color of clay, and decorated with light red paint. The paint is represented in the cut by the darkened surfaces. The four quarters of the jug are decorated alike, one side of which is shown in the cut. The center of the design is the Swastika with the arm crossing at right angles, the ends turned to the right, the effect being produced by an enlargement on the right side of each arm until they all join the circle. A similar water jug with a Swastika mark of the same type as the foregoing decorates Major Powell's desk in the Bureau of Ethnology.

Marquis Nadaillac[255] describes and figures a grooved ax from Pemberton, N. J., on which some persons have recognized a Swastika, but which the Marquis doubts, while Dr. Abbott[256] denounces the inscription as a fraud.

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 255. KANSA INDIAN WAR CHART. Swastika sign for winds and wind songs. J. Owen Dorsey, American Naturalist, July, 1885, p. 670.]

_The Kansas._--The Rev. J. Owen Dorsey[257] describes the mourning customs of the Kansas Indians. In the course of his description he tells of a council of ceremony held among these Indians to decide if they should go on the warpath. Certain sacred songs were sung which had been arranged according to a chart, which Mr. Dorsey introduces as pl. 20, page 676. The outside edge of this chart bore twenty-seven ideographs, which suggest or determine the song or speech required. No. 1 was the sacred pipe; No. 2, the maker of all songs; No. 3, song of another old man who gives success to the hunters; No. 4 (fig. 255 in the present paper) is the Swastika sign, consisting of two ogee lines intersecting each other, the ends curved to the left. Of it, Mr. Dorsey says only the following:

Fig. 4. Tadje wayun, wind songs. The winds are deities; they are Bazanta (at the pines), the east wind; Ak'a, the south wind; A'k'a jinga or A'k'uya, the west wind; and Hnia (toward the cold), the north wind. The warriors used to remove the hearts of slain foes, putting them in the fire as a sacrifice to the winds.

In the Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (p. 525) Mr.

Dorsey repeats this statement concerning the names of the winds, and shows how, in their invocations, the Kansas began with the east wind and went around to the right in the order here given. His fig. 195 ill.u.s.trates this, but the cross has straight arms. In response to my personal inquiry, Mr. Dorsey says the war chart[258] was drawn for him, with the Swastika as represented, by Pahanle-gaqle, the war captain, who had official charge of it and who copied it from one he had inherited from his father and his "father's fathers"; and Mr. Dorsey a.s.sured me that there can be no mistake or misapprehension about this Indian's intention to make the sign as there represented. Asked if the sign was common and to be seen in other cases or places, Mr. Dorsey replied that the Osage have a similar chart with the same and many other signs or pictographs--over a hundred--but except these, he knows of no similar signs. They are not in common use, but the chart and all it contains are sacred objects, the property of the two Kansas gentes, Black Eagle and Chicken Hawk, and not to be talked of nor shown outside of the gentes of the council lodge.[259]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 15. CEREMONIAL BEAD NECKLACE WITH SWASTIKA ORNAMENTATION. Sac Indians, Cook County (Kansas) Reservation.]

_The Sac Indians._--Miss Mary A. Owen, of St. Joseph, Mo., sending some specimens of beadwork of the Indians (pl. 15) from the Kansas Reservation, two of which were garters and the third a necklace 13 inches long and 1 inch wide, in which the Swastikas represented are an inch square, writes, February 2, 1895, as follows:

The Indians call it [the Swastika] the "luck," or "good luck." It is used in necklaces and garters by the sun worshippers among the Kickapoos, Sacs, Pottawatomies, Iowas, and (I have been told) by the Winnebagoes. I have never seen it on a Winnebago. The women use the real Swastika and the Greek key pattern, in the silk patchwork of which they make sashes and skirt tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. As for their thinking it an emblem of fire or deity, I do not believe they entertain any such ideas, as some Swastika hunters have suggested to me. They call it "luck," and say it is the same thing as two other patterns which I send in the mail with this. They say they "always" made that pattern.

They must have made it for a long time, for you can not get such beads as compose it, in the stores of a city or in the supplies of the traders who import French beads for the red folk. Another thing.

Beadwork is very strong, and this is beginning to look tattered, a sure sign that it has seen long service.

These sun worshippers--or, if you please, Swastika wearers--believe in the Great Spirit, who lives in the sun, who creates all things, and is the source of all power and beneficence. The ancestors are a sort of company of animal saints, who intercede for the people. There are many malicious little demons who thwart the ancestors and lead away the people at times and fill them with diseases, but no head devil. Black Wolf and certain ghosts of the unburied are the worst. Everybody has a secret fetish or "medicine," besides such general "lucks" as Swastikas, bear skins, and otter and squirrel tails.