The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration / With Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times

by Thomas Wilson

Fig. 254.
WATER JUG WITH FIGURE OF SWASTIKA.
Decoration, red on yellow ground. Poinsett County, Ark.
Cat. No. 91230, U. S. N. M.

Mounds in Arkansas.—A water jug in the collection of the U. S. National Museum ([fig. 254]) was obtained in 1883 by P. W. Norris, of the Bureau of Ethnology, from a mound in Poinsett County, Ark. It is of yellow ground, natural color of clay, and decorated with light red paint. The paint is represented in the cut by the darkened surfaces. The four quarters of the jug are decorated alike, one side of which is shown in the cut. The center of the design is the Swastika with the arm crossing at right angles, the ends turned to the right, the effect being produced by an enlargement on the right side of each arm until they all join the circle. A similar water jug with a Swastika mark of the same type as the foregoing decorates Major Powell’s desk in the Bureau of Ethnology.

Marquis Nadaillac[255] describes and figures a grooved ax from Pemberton, N. J., on which some persons have recognized a Swastika, but which the Marquis doubts, while Dr. Abbott[256] denounces the inscription as a fraud.

NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.

Fig. 255.
KANSA INDIAN WAR CHART.
Swastika sign for winds and
wind songs. J. Owen Dorsey,
American Naturalist, July,
1885, p. 670.

The Kansas.—The Rev. J. Owen Dorsey[257] describes the mourning customs of the Kansas Indians. In the course of his description he tells of a council of ceremony held among these Indians to decide if they should go on the warpath. Certain sacred songs were sung which had been arranged according to a chart, which Mr. Dorsey introduces as pl. 20, page 676. The outside edge of this chart bore twenty-seven ideographs, which suggest or determine the song or speech required. No. 1 was the sacred pipe; No. 2, the maker of all songs; No. 3, song of another old man who gives success to the hunters; No. 4 ([fig. 255] in the present paper) is the Swastika sign, consisting of two ogee lines intersecting each other, the ends curved to the left. Of it, Mr. Dorsey says only the following:

Fig. 4. Tadje wayun, wind songs. The winds are deities; they are Bazanta (at the pines), the east wind; Ak′a, the south wind; A′k′a jiñga or A′k′uya, the west wind; and Hnia (toward the cold), the north wind. The warriors used to remove the hearts of slain foes, putting them in the fire as a sacrifice to the winds.