Fig. 300.
ENGRAVED SHELL GORGET.
Greek cross with incised lines resembling a Swastika.
Union County, Ill.
Fig. 301.
ENGRAVED SHELL GORGET.
Greek cross. Charleston, Mo.
Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, pl. LI, fig. 2.
The National Museum possesses a large shell cross ([fig. 301]) which, while quite plain as a cross, has been much damaged, the rim that formerly encircled it, as in the foregoing figure, having been broken away and lost. The perforations are still in evidence. The specimen is much decayed and came to the National Museum with a skull from a grave at Charleston, Mo.; beyond this there is no record. The specimen shown in [fig. 302] is quoted as a “typical example of the cross of the mound-builder.” It was obtained from a mound on Lick Creek, Tennessee, and is in the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass. While an elaborate description is given of it and figures are mentioned as “devices probably significant,” and “elementary or unfinished,” and more of the same, yet nowhere is suggested any relationship to the Swastika, nor even the possibility of its existence in America.
Fig. 302.
SHELL GORGET WITH ENGRAVING OF GREEK
CROSS AND INCHOATE SWASTIKA.
Second Annual Report of the
Bureau of Ethnology, pl. LII, fig. 3.
