Divers significations.—The figure of the cross among the North American Indians, says Colonel Mallery,[292] has many differing significations. It appears “as the tribal sign for Cheyenne” (p. 383); “as Dakota lodges” (p. 582); “as a symbol for trade or exchange” (p. 613); “as a conventional sign for prisoners” (p. 227); “for personal exploits while elsewhere it is used in simple enumeration” (p. 348). Although this device is used for a variety of meanings when it is employed ceremonially or in elaborate pictographs of the Indians both of North and South America, it represents the four winds. This view long ago was suggested as being the signification of many Mexican crosses, and it is sustained by Prof. Cyrus Thomas in his “Notes on Mayan Mexican Manuscript,”[293] where strong confirmatory evidence is produced by the arms of the crosses having the appearance of conventionalized wings similar to some representations of the thunder bird of the northern tribes; yet the same author, in his paper on the study of the “Troano Manuscript,”[294] gives [fig. 329] as a symbol for wood, thus further showing the manifold concepts attached to the general form of the cross. Bandelier thinks that the cross so frequently used by the aborigines of Mexico and Central America were merely ornaments and not objects of worship, while the so-called crucifixes, like that on the Palenque tablet, were only the symbol of the “new fire,” or the close of the period of fifty-two years. He believes them to be representations of the fire drills more or less ornamented. Zamacois[295] says that the cross was used in the religion of various tribes of the peninsula of Yucatan, and that it represented the god of rain.
Fig. 329.
ST. ANDREW’S
CROSSES, USED
AS A SYMBOL
FOR WOOD.
Tenth Annual
Report of the
Bureau of
Ethnology,
fig. 1233.
It is a favorite theory with Major Powell, Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, that the cross was an original invention of the North American Indian, possibly a sign common to all savages; that it represented, first, the four cardinal points, north, south, east, and west; and afterwards by accretion, seven points, north, south, east, west, zenith, nadir, and here.
Capt. John G. Bourke, in his paper on the “Medicine Men of the Apache”[296] discourses on their symbolism of the cross. He says it is related to the cardinal points, to the four winds, and is painted by warriors on their moccasins when going through a strange district to keep them from getting on a wrong trail. He notes how he saw, in October, 1884, a procession of Apache men and women bearing two crosses, 4 feet 10 inches long, appropriately decorated “in honor of Guzanutlí to induce her to send rain.”
Dr. Brinton[297] tells of the rain maker of the Lenni Lenape who first drew on the earth the figure of a cross. Captain Bourke quotes from Father Le Clerq[298] as to the veneration in which the cross was held by the Gaspesian Indians, also from Herrara to the same effect. Professor Holmes[299] makes some pertinent observations with regard to the meanings of the cross given by the American Indians:
Some very ingenious theories have been elaborated in attempting to account for the cross among American symbols. Brinton believes that the great importance attached to the points of the compass—the four quarters of the heavens—by savage peoples, has given rise to the sign of the cross. With others, the cross is a phallic symbol derived, by some obscure process of evolution, from the veneration accorded to the procreative principle in nature. It is also frequently associated with sun worship, and is recognized as a symbol of the sun—the four arms being remaining rays after a gradual process of elimination. Whatever is finally determined in reference to the origin of the cross as a religious symbol in America will probably result from exhaustive study of the history, language, and art of the ancient peoples, combined with a thorough knowledge of the religious conceptions of modern tribes, and when these sources of information are all exhausted it is probable that the writer who asserts more than a probability will overreach his proofs. * * * A study of the designs associated with the cross in these gorgets [[figs. 302-304]] is instructive, but does not lead to any definite result; in one case the cross is inscribed on the back of a great spider [[figs. 275-278]]; in another it is surrounded by a rectangular framework of lines, looped at the corners and guarded by four mysterious birds [[figs. 263-266]], while in others it is without attendant characters, but the workmanship is purely aboriginal. I have not seen a single example of engraving upon the shell that suggested a foreign hand, or a design, with the exception of this one 