Fig. 1229.—Cross. Tulare valley, California.
At Tulare Indian agency, Tulare valley, California, is an immense bowlder of granite which has become broken in such a manner that one of the lower quarters has moved away from the larger mass sufficiently to leave a passageway 6 feet wide and nearly 10 feet high. The interior walls are well covered with large, painted figures, while upon the ceiling are numerous forms of animals, birds, and insects. Among this latter group is a white cross measuring about 18 inches in length, Fig. 1229, presenting a unique appearance, for the reason that white coloring matter applied to petroglyphs is, with this single exception, entirely absent in that region.
One of the most interesting series of rock sculpturings in groups is that in Owens valley, south of Benton, California. Among these various forms of crosses occur, and circles containing crosses of various simple and complex types, as shown in Pls. [I] to [XI] and in Mojave desert, California, illustrated in Fig. [19], but the examples of most interest in the present connection are the two shown herewith in Fig. 1230, a and b.
Fig. 1230.—Crosses. Owens valley, California
The larger one, a, occurs upon a large bowlder of trachyte, blackened by exposure, located 16 miles south of Benton, at a locality known as the Chalk Grade. The circle is a depression about 1 inch in depth, the cross being in high relief within. Another smaller cross, b, found 3 miles north of the one above-mentioned, is almost identical, each of the arms of the cross, however, extending to the rim of the circle.
In this locality occurs also the form of the cross c, in the same figure, and some examples having more than two cross arms. Other simple forms clearly represent the human form, but by erosion the arms and body have become partially obliterated so as to lose all trace of resemblance to humanity.
In the same figure, d, from a rock in the neighborhood, exhibits the outline of the human form, while in e parts of the extremities have been removed by erosion so that the resemblance is less striking; in f a simple cross occurs, which may also have been intended to represent the same, but through disintegration the extremities have been so greatly changed or erased that their original forms can not be determined.
Rev. John McLean (a) says: “On the sacred pole of the sun lodge of the Blood Indians two bundles of small brushwood taken from the birch tree were placed in the form of a cross. This was an ancient symbol evidently referring to the four winds.”
Among the Kiatéxamut, an Innuit tribe, a cross placed on the head, as in Fig. 1231, signifies a Shaman’s evil spirit or demon. This is an imaginary being under control of the Shaman to execute the wishes of the latter.