Fig. 326.
MALTESE CROSS(?)
REPRESENTING
A WOMAN.
The figure in the
center is intended to
indicate the breath.
Fig. 327.
MALTESE AND SAINT
ANDREW’S CROSSES.
Emblems of maidenhood.
Moki Indians.
Maidenhood.—Concerning [fig. 327] Keam, in his manuscript, says the Maltese cross was the emblem of a virgin, and is still so recognized by the Moki. It is a conventional development of the common emblem of maidenhood, wherein the maidens wear their hair arranged as in a disk three or four inches in diameter on each side of the head ([fig. 327]b). This discoidal arrangement of the hair is typical of the emblem of fructification worn by the virgin in the Muingwa festival. Sometimes the hair, instead of being worn in the complete discoidal form, is dressed upon two curving twigs, and presents the form of two semicircles upon each side of the head. The partition of these is sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical. The combination of these styles ([fig. 327] a and b) present the forms from which the Maltese cross was conventionalized.[290]
Fig. 328.
CROSS WITH
BIFURCATED FOOT.
Used by the Innuits
to represent a
shaman or evil spirit.
Shaman’s spirit.—Among the Kiatéxamut and Innuit tribes, a cross placed on the head, as in [fig. 328], signified a shaman’s evil spirit or demon. This is an imaginary being under the control of the shaman to execute his wishes.[291]