“My means of communicating with these people were but limited, but on learning that the ceremonials they were performing were designed to celebrate the attainment to maturity, or womanhood, of a virgin, I had little difficulty in understanding the significance of the succession of these various hand symbols. I recognized in the ceremonial as a whole the dramatic epitomization, to state it briefly, of the four ages of a woman’s life. Thus the white hand (which I was told had been painted on the mask of the first day) symbolized her infancy and girlhood, the consummation of which was effected by the first day’s ceremonial performed by the medicine-man of the white hand.
“The red hand was obviously significant of this girl’s attainment to young womanhood, the color in this case symbolizing the blood of her perfected life. I imagine that the black hand painted on the mask as worn during the third day’s ceremonial was significant of not only the betrothal of the girl, which was said to have taken place during that day of the ceremonial, but also of her prospective maternity; the change of color, in the hand, from red to black, being naturally a symbolic representation of the change from red to black in blood that has been exposed to the sunlight and dried, and has thus become black, and is no longer virgin. Likewise the hand painted on the mask as worn during the fourth day’s ceremonial, which was wholly black, doubtless represented the fuller life of not only a matron but a grandmother. From this I would infer that the signs of the red and black hands found in the ruined pueblos like those of Pecos, and on the cliffs at the mouths of caves, or in the houses of the cliff villages, symbolized respectively virginity, and maternity or betrothal.
“What would seem to indicate the correctness of this conclusion is the fact that, as I have mentioned before, there were below the signs of the black hand of the last day’s ceremonial of the Jicarillas dots and dotted circles. It is well known that these dots and dotted circles represent, primarily, grains of corn, male and female; and, secondarily, children, male and female. Their occurrence, then, below the painted black hand or symbol of maternity, would indicate that in this case they represented the children and perhaps grandchildren, male and female, of the matron it was hoped this young girl might become.
“The hand symbol as occurring amongst the Zuñi, with whom, of course, I am much more familiar, has not only some such significances as these, but also many others,–the significance of a given symbol depending upon the ceremonial with which it is associated, and particularly upon the coloring which is given to it, the colors being as various as are the well-known seven sacramental colors employed to symbolize the seven regions of the world by the priesthood of these people.
“I will only add, that the hand symbol painted upon the walls of the estufas, or Kiva temples, or upon the little sacred sand mounds, which are made to symbolize mythic mountains of the six regions during the ceremonials of initiation performed once every four years over the new children of the pueblo, are designed to signify the various ritualistic precepts which are taught to the children according as they are held to pertain to one or another of these little sand mounds or so-called mountains of generation.
“In the case above described I was told, although I did not myself see it, that the symbol of the red hand was painted by the side of the entrance to the little tent in which the girl sat through the ceremonials, and that later the same symbol in black was added to the other side of the entrance to this tent. In the case of the Pueblos the position of the hand symbols depends, as, no doubt, you have already inferred, upon the sort of ceremonial which is being performed in connection with them.
“It would seem, however, that the placing of these symbols at the entrance of the cave villages would correspond to such usages as I have above described as pertaining to the Jicarilla ceremonial, and that the painting of them on the rafters of rooms in ancient pueblos had a like connection; for it must be remembered that in the older pueblos there were no doorways proper [hence no thresholds]. The rooms were entered by means of ladders through scuttles in the roof.”[[248]]
A hand-print is a signature. A hand-print in blood is a pledge of life in a sacred covenant. A hand-print in the blood of life is symbolic of a covenant of life with a view to the transmission of life. When a woman of Korea is married, she affixes her sign manual to the covenanting contract by placing her hand on the paper and having “the outline drawn round the fingers and wrist with a fine brush dipped in Chinese ink,” or again she employs “the simpler process of smearing her hand with black paint, and hitting the document with it.[[249]]
Formal documents have often been signed by a hand stamp, or a finger stamp, in blood or in ink. The monks of the convent of St. Catharine at Mt. Sinai, for instance, show a copy of the certificate of protection given to them by the Prophet of Islam, the signature to which is an impression of Muhammad’s open hand. A letter to Muhammad Issoof, from the king of Mysore, in 1754, was sealed with the king’s seal, “and on the back was stamped the print of a hand, a form equivalent, with the Mysoreans, to an oath.”[[250]]
The very term “sign manual,” employed for a veritable signature, may point to an origin in this custom. Indeed, may it not be that the large red seal attached to important documents, at the present time, is a survival of the signature and seal of the bloody hand?