| Dakota god. | Element. | Quarter. | Color. |
| Tunkan | Earth | North | Blue |
| Wakinyan | Fire | East | Red |
| Takuśkanśkan | Wind-makers | South | Black |
| Unkteḣi | Water | West | Yellow |
NOTE.—The names of the Dakota gods are given because we have more information about them, and the exact Omaha equivalent for Takuśkanśkan has not been obtained.
§ 379. Miss Fletcher gave, in 1884, a list of symbolic colors, which differs somewhat from that which the author has suggested in the preceding section. She said:
White, blue, red, and yellow possess different meaning, yet are not very clearly determined by all tribes.[300] Among the Dakotas the following interpretation prevails: White is seldom used artificially; when it occurs in nature, as the white buffalo, deer, rabbit, etc., and on the plumage of birds, it indicates consecration. The sacred feathers and down are always white,[301] the former being taken from the underpart of the eagle’s wing and are soft and downy. This meaning of white holds good with the Omahas, Poncas, etc., and seems to have a wide application among the Indians. Blue represents the winds, the west, the moon, the water, the thunder, and sometimes the lightning. * * * Red indicates the sun, the stone, the forms of animal and vegetable life, the procreative force. Yellow represents sunlight as distinguished from the fructifying power of the sun.[302]
The author has never observed this use of white as a symbolic color. In speaking of albino animals, we infer that to the Siouan mind they are consecrated because they are rare. In fact, Miss Fletcher says:
The white buffalo is rare and generally remains near the center of the herd, which makes it difficult of approach. It is therefore considered as the chief or sacred one of the herd; and it is consequently greatly prized by the Indians.[303]
While the author is convinced of the great value of Miss Fletcher’s investigations, he inquires concerning the veracity of her interpreters. He would like to see more detailed evidence before he accepts as the Dakota classification one which puts in the same category not only the winds and thunder, but also the water, the west, and the moon. He also asks why should the moon be separated from the sun (see § 138), and why should the west be the only quarter symbolized by a color? Besides, the Dakota shamans say that the Thunder-beings are of four colors, black, yellow, scarlet, and blue (see § 116).
In response to the wish of the author, Miss Fletcher has kindly furnished him with the following letter of explanation, received after the rest of the paper had been written:
Consecration as applied to the color white in the article you have quoted needs a few words of explanation.
The almost universal appropriation of white animals to religious ceremonies is unquestionable; whether this selection rests wholly upon the rarity of this color is a little doubtful. The unusual is generally wakan; this feeling, however, is not confined to a color, and although the white buffalo and the white deer are not often met with, other white animals, as the rabbit, are not uncommon, nor are white feathers. It is true these white feathers are often colored for ceremonial uses, but the added colors have their particular meanings, and these do not seem to override the primal signification that the feathers selected to bear these symbolic colors are white. The natural suggestion that a white ground would best serve to set off the added lines may have been in the distant past the simple reason why white feathers were chosen; and this choice adhered to for generations would at last become clothed with a mysterious significance. If this were ever true, this reason for choosing white feathers is not recognized to-day. I have been frequently told, the feathers must be white.
While I should now hesitate to say that white symbolizes consecration, still, after continued study, I find the idea clinging about the color, which, as I said then, is seldom artificially used.
Various symbolic colors are not infrequently placed upon one object, so that the combining of symbols,[304] or even their occasional exchange, does not seem discordant to the Indian mind; this fact among others renders it difficult to draw a hard and fast line about any one color or symbol.
Further research has shown me that green and blue and black are related and that to a degree green and blue are interchangeable. Blue is regarded as a darkened green; that is, green removed from the light, not deepened in hue. Blue, therefore, stands intermediate between green which has the light on it; and blue shaded into black, which has no light on it. In some ceremonies green typifies the earth; in others blue is the symbol. The sky is sometimes represented by green, and again blue is used, while blue darkened to black stands for the destructive elements of the air. I have found a subtle connection between the elements of earth and air that answers somewhat to the blending of the symbolic colors just spoken of. This connection is revealed in the reciprocal or complementary functions of gentes belonging to these two great divisions represented in the tribal structure, as well as in the reactionary character of the elements themselves as portrayed in the myths and typified in some ceremonies. For instance, the eagle mythically belongs to the air, and is allied to the destructive powers of the element and to wars upon the earth, yet the Eagle gens, although connected with the air division of the gentes, is in some tribes a peace gens. An enemy escaping to the tent of an Eagle man is safe and cannot be molested. In symbols eagle feathers are not only the pride and emblem of the warrior but they are essential in certain ceremonies of amity and peace-making.
A study of the position of gentes belonging to the divisions of earth and air, their tribal and ceremonial duties, together with their mythological significance, shows lines connecting the gentes of the earth with the gentes of the air which are vertical, so to speak, and might be represented as running north and south on the tribal circle, and indicating mediating offices as between contending or opposite forces.
It would occupy too much space to fully set forth my reasons for thinking blue-black to be the symbol of the thunder rather than red and yellow. Although thunder is allied to the four quarters, to the four elemental divisions and partakes of their symbolism, still a study of thunder myths, thunder-names, and the tribal offices of thunder gentes seems to me, at my present understanding of them, to indicate the blue-black as the persistent symbol.
I would not at this date make any unqualified statement giving green, blue, or black as the symbol of the west, the water, or the moon; and although in some instances these colors occur in connection with these objects of reverence, I am now inclined to class these as incidental rather than as representative of the color symbols.
One word regarding red and yellow. Red not only represents the sun and the procreative forces (yet black is sometimes used in the latter), but the color carries with it the idea of hope, the continuation of life. The dawn of the day, the east, is almost without exception in these tribes denoted by red. This red line, forceful, aggressive, yet life giving and hope-inspiring, starts from a war division of the tribal circle and fades into yellow as it passes into an opposite peace division in the west. Red and yellow bear to each other a relation somewhat resembling that of blue and black, only reversed; the red loses its intensity in yellow, the aggressive force symbolized in the red is not expressed in the yellow. If the Indian’s world were arched with his symbolic colors, we should see a brilliant band of red start from the east and fade to yellow in the west; while the green-blue line from the north would deepen to the black of the south. In the first the intense color would rush from war into the mild light of peace; the second bright hue would spring from peace to be lost in the darkness of war. Thus the two hold the tribe within the opposing yet complementary forces which constitute the mystery of the relation between life and death.
I will not go further into this interesting subject nor revert to the revolution of these symbolic colors as throwing light on tribal migrations and history.
Thanking you for this opportunity to modify some of my statements written nine years ago,
I remain, cordially yours,
ALICE C. FLETCHER.
PEABODY MUSEUM,
Cambridge, Mass., January 3, 1891.