[179]. George Copway, Traditional History of the Ojibway Nation, p. 134. It will be noted that in the sign for sunrise the straight line meets the curve at its left extremity, and for sunset at its right. This results from the superstitious preference of facing the south rather than the north.
[180]. The triplicate constitution of things is a prominent feature of the ancient Mexican philosophy, especially that of Tezcuco. The visible world was divided into three parts, the earth below, the heavens above, and man’s abode between them. The whole was represented by a circle divided into three parts, the upper part painted blue, the lower brown, the centre white (See Duran, Historia, Lam. 15a, for an example). Each of these three parts was subdivided into three parts, so that when the Tezcucan king built a tower as a symbol of the universe, he called it “The Tower of Nine Stories” (see my Ancient Nahuatl Poetry, Introduction, p. 36).
[181]. Mallery, Pictography of the North American Indians, in Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 239.
[182]. Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, pp. 359, 360.
[183]. Dr. Ferraz de Macedo, Essai Critique sur les Ages Prehistorique de Bresil, p. 38 (Lisbonne, 1887).
[184]. Op. cit., p. 38.
[185]. See Worsaae, Danish Arts, and Virchow, in various numbers of the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. The ring-cross is a common figure in American symbolism and decorative art. It frequently occurs on the shields depicted in the Bologna Codex, and the two codices of the Vatican (Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico, Vols. ii. and iii). Dr. Ferraz de Macedo says that the most common decorative design on both ancient and modern native Brazilian pottery is the ring-cross in the form of a double spiral, as in Fig. 19 (Essai Critique sur les Ages Prehistorique de Bresil, p. 40). A very similar form will be found in the Bologna Codex, pl. xviii, in Kingsborough’s Mexico, Vol. ii.
[186]. See Mallery, Pictography of the North American Indians, pp. 88, 89, 128, etc.
[187]. This name is given in Landa, Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, p. 313.
[188]. Historia de la Nueva España, Trat. III, cap. i.