Fig. 45.—Anglo-Saxon urn from Shropham, Norfolk, ornamented by twenty small hand-made swastikas stamped into the clay. (British Museum.)
The history of the "Swastika" would be remarkable enough if it ended here with the disappearance of its use in Europe in prehistoric times and its continued use in the Far East and India. But the most curious fact about it is that we find it as a very common and favourite decoration and device among the native tribes in North America and Mexico, and exceptionally in Brazil. It is found in use among the Indians of Kansas and other tribes—as a device in pottery, in bead-work (Fig. 46), patch-work, quill-embroidery, and other decorative fabrics. The Indians called Sacs, Kickapoos, and Pottawottamies, who worship the sun (which is associated with the Swastika in China), call it by a native name signifying "the luck." It is also found as a decorative design in the most ancient remains of man in America, dating (so far as can be guessed) from a thousand years or more before Columbus (Fig. 47).
Fig. 46.—Piece of a ceremonial bead-worked garter, showing star and two swastikas made by the Sac Indians, Cook County, Kansas. (Modern.)
It is generally held that the Swastika must have been introduced into America in prehistoric times by early redskin immigrants from Asia. The question has been raised as to whether this introduction was before or after the worship of Buddha in Asia. It is only amongst Buddhists that the Swastika has a religious or sacred character. Elsewhere it seems to have been a mark or sign carrying "good luck." A representation of a sitting human figure incised on shell has been found in a prehistoric burial-mound in Tennessee, which has remarkable resemblance to the Asiatic statues of the Buddha. Shell ornaments have also been found here decorated with sharply-cut Swastikas, and in a mound in Ohio thin plates of copper were found cut into simple Swastika shapes like that of Fig. 38, four inches across. Modern Mexican Indians make brooches of gold and turquoise in the form of the Swastika, and it is a favourite device among the Indians of neighbouring territory. Swastikas occur as decorations or lucky marks on the small terra-cotta "fig-leaf," which was worn by the women of some of the aboriginal tribes of Brazil, and have also been found on native pottery from the Paraguay River.
Some students of this subject have held the opinion that the "Swastika" has been invented independently at different times in different parts of the world. It is a fairly simple device, it is true; but the view which is accepted at present is that it has spread from one centre—probably European in the late Stone period—through the Mykenæans, across Asia, and so with early immigrants across the Pacific into the American continent.