In the Word Carrier of November, 1890, published by A. L. Riggs, at Santee Agency, Nebr., is an article on page 30, from Mary C. Collins, who is evidently one of the mission workers. She says: “I went into the sacred tent and talked with Sitting Bull. He sat * * * opposite the tent door. Hands and wrists were painted yellow and green; face painted red, green, and white.” (Did the four colors refer to the elements?) “As I started toward him he said, ‘Winona,[305] approach me on the left side and shake my left hand with your left hand.’” (Does the gens of Sitting Bull camp on the left side of the tribal circle, occasioning the use of the left in all ceremonies, as among the Tsiɔu gentes of the Osage? Or is the left the war side among the people of Sitting Bull, as among the Kansa? See §§ 33 and 368.)
§ 380. The following are the symbolic colors of the North Carolina Cherokee, the Ojibwa, the Navajo, the Apache, the Zuñi, and the Aztec:
| Quarter, etc. | Cherokee. (a) | Ojibwa. | Navajo. | Apache. | Zuñi. (h) | Aztec. (i) | |||
| (b) | (c) | (d) | (e) | (f) | (g) | ||||
| East. | Red, 1. | White. | Red. | White, 1. | Yellow. | Black. | Yellow. | White, 4. | Yellow. |
| South. | White, 4. | Green. | Green. | Blue, 2. | Red. | White. | Green or Blue. | Red, 3. | White. |
| West. | Black, 8. | Red. | White. | Yellow, 3. | Blue. | Yellow. | Black. | Blue, 2. | Blue. |
| North. | Blue, 2. | Black. | Black. | Black, 4. | White. | Blue. | White. | Yellow, 1. | Red. |
| Upperworld. | ................. | ............ | ............ | Blue. | ............. | ............. | ................ | All colors, 5. | |
| Lowerworld. | ................. | ............ | ............ | White and black in spots. | ............. | ............. | ................ | Black, 6. | |
| Sunlight | ................. | ............ | ............ | Red. | ............. | ............. | ................ | .................. | |
a Mooney, in Jour. Am. Folklore, Vol. III, No. 8, Jan.-Mar., 1890, pp. 49, 50.
b Hoffman, in Am. Anthropologist, July, 1889, pp. 217, 218; from Sicosige, a second-degree Mide of White Earth, Minn.
c Hoffman, in ibid., p. 218; from Ojibwa, a fourth-degree Mide, from another locality.
d Matthews, in 5th An. Rept. Bur. Eth., p. 449.
e Mallery, from Thos. V. Keam’s catalogue of relics of the ancient buildings of the southwest table-lands—quoted in Trans. Anthrop. Soc. of Washington, Vol. III, 141, 1885.
f Gatschet, on Chiricahua Apache sun circle, in Trans. Anthrop. Soc. of Washington, Vol. III, 147, 1885.
g Capt. J. G. Bourke, in a letter to the author, Dec. 4, 1890. In Nov., 1885, he obtained from a San Carlos (Pinal) Apache green as the color for the north.
h Mrs. M. C. Stevenson, in 5th An. Rept. Bur. Eth., p. 548. According to Dr. J. Walter Fowkes the Hopi or Moki have a similar order of colors, the west having green (or blue).
i Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, Vol. VII (fide Capt. J. G. Bourke).
According to Gatschet the Chiricahua Apache call the sun, when in the east, “the black sun,” and a tornado or gust of wind also is called “black.” (See § 378.)
Matthews says that in rare cases white is assigned to the north and black to the east, and that black represents the male and blue the female among the Navajo. (See § 105 of this paper.)
§ 381. The author calls special attention to the colors of the four sacred stones of the Omaha Wolf gens, red, black, yellow, and blue i. e., E., S., W., N.; (see § 369), and to those on the tent of an Omaha Black Bear man (see § 373, and PL. XLIV, E, where the colors are given in the order N., E., S., W.). He has not yet gained the colors for the upper and lower worlds, though the Omaha offer the pipe to the “venerable man sitting above” and to the “venerable man below lying on his back.” (§ 27.)
In the tradition of the Tiɔu wactaʞe gens of the Osage there is an account of the finding of four kinds of rocks, black, blue or green, red, and white. And from the left hind legs of four buffalo bulls there dropped to the ground four ears of corn and four pumpkins.[306] The corn and pumpkin from the first buffalo were red, those from the second were spotted, those from the third were ca[p]e, i.e., dark or distant-black, and those from the fourth were white.
Green, black, white, and gray are the traditional colors of the ancestral wolves, according to the Wolf people of the Winnebago, though for “green” we may substitute “blue,” as the corresponding name for the first son in that gens is Blue Sky. Among the personal names in the Thunder-being subgens of the Winnebago are the four color names, Green Thunder-being, Black Thunder-being, White Thunder-being, and Yellow Thunder-being (instead of Gray). James Alexander, a member of the Wolf gens, said that these four Thunder-being names did not refer to the four quarters. This seems probable, unless white be the Winnebago color for the east and gray or yellow that for the west.
In November, 1893, more than two years after the preceding sentence was written, a Winnebago told the author that among his people white was associated with the north, red with the west, and green with the south. Of these he was certain. He thought that blue was the color for the east, but he was not positive about it.