Both green and yellow were esteemed fortunate colors by the Cakchiquels, the former as that of the flourishing plant, the latter as that of the ripe and golden ears of maize. Hence, says Coto, they were also used to mean prosperity.
The color white, zak, had, however, by far the widest metaphorical uses. As the hue of light, it was associated with day, dawn, brightness, etc.
Marshall (b) gives as the explanation why certain gracious official documents are sealed with green that the color expresses youth, honor, beauty, and especially liberty.
H. M. Stanley (a) gives the following use of white as a sign of innocence: “Qualla drew a piece of pipeclay and marked a broad white band running from the wrist to the shoulder along each arm of Ngalyema, as a sign to all men present that he was guiltless.”
H. Clay Trumbull (a) says:
The Egyptian amulet of blood friendship was red, as representing the blood of the gods. The Egyptian word for “red” sometimes stood for “blood.” The sacred directions in the Book of the Dead were written in red; hence follows our word “rubrics.” The rabbis say that, when persecution forbade the wearing of the phylacteries with safety, a red thread might be substituted for this token of the covenant with the Lord. It was a red thread which Joshua gave to Rahab as a token of her covenant relations with the people of the Lord. The red thread, in China, to-day, binds the double cup, from which the bride and bridegroom drink their covenant draught of “wedding wine,” as if in symbolism of the covenant of blood. And it is a red thread which, in India, to-day, is used to bind a sacred amulet around the arm or the neck. * * * Upon the shrines in India the color red shows that worship is still living there; red continues to stand for blood.
Mr. Mooney, in the Seventh Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, shows that to the Cherokee the color blue signifies grief or depression of spirits, a curious parallel to the colloquial English phrase “has the blues” and wholly opposite to the poetical symbol of blue for hope.
The notes above collected on the general topic of color symbolism might be indefinitely extended. Those presented, however, are typical and perhaps sufficient for the scope of the present work. In regarding ideography of colors the first object is to expunge from consideration all merely arbitrary or fanciful decorations, which is by no means easy, as ancient customs, even in their decadence or merely traditional, preserve a long influence. But as a generalization it seems that all common colors have been used in historic times for nearly all varieties of ideographic expression by the several divisions of men, and that they have differed fundamentally in the application of those colors. Yet there was an intelligent origin in each one of those applications of color. With regard to mourning the color black is now considered to be that of gloom. It was still earlier expressed by casting ashes or earth over the head and frame, and possibly the somber paint was adopted for cleanliness, the concept being preserved and indeed intensified by durable blackness instead of the mere transient dinginess of dirt, although the actual defilement by the latter is thereby only symbolized. This gloom is the expression of the misery of the survivors, perhaps of their despair as not expecting any happiness to the dead or any hope of a meeting in another world. Other lines of thought are shown by blue, considered as the supposed sky or heavenly home of the future, and by green, as suggesting renewal or resurrection, and those concepts determine the mourning color of some peoples. Red or yellow may only refer to the conceptions of the colors of flames, and therefore might simply be an objective representation of the disposition of the corpse, which very often was by cremation. But sometimes these colors are employed as decoration and display to proclaim that the dead go to glory. White, used as frequently by the populations of the world as other funeral colors, may have been only to assert the purity and innocence of the departed, an anticipation of the flattering obituary notices or epitaphs now conventional in civilized lands.
With regard to the color red, it may be admitted that it originally represents blood; but it may be, and in fact is, used for the contradictory concepts of war and peace. It is used for war as suggesting the blood of the enemy, for peace and friendship to signify the blood relation or blood covenant, the strongest tie of love and friendship.
So it would seem that, while colors have been used ideographically, the ideas which determined them were very diverse and sometimes their application has become wholly conventional and arbitrary. A modern military example may be in point which has no connection with the well-known squib of an English humorist. One of the officers of the U. S. Army of the last generation when traveling in Europe was much disgusted to observe that a green uniform was used in some of the armies for the corps of engineers and for branches of the service other than rifles or tirailleurs. He insisted that the color naturally and necessarily belongs to the Rifles, because the soldiers of that arm when clad with that color were most useful as skirmishers in wooded regions. This reason for the selection of green for the riflemen who composed a part of the early army of the United States is correct, but in the necessity for the distinction of special uniforms for the several component parts of a military establishment, whether in Europe or America, the original and often obsolete application of color was wholly disregarded and colors were selected simply because they were not then appropriated by other branches of the service. So in the late formation of the signal corps of the U. S. Army, the color of orange, which had belonged to the old dragoons, was adopted simply because it was a good color no longer appropriated.