Looking over the entire prehistoric world, we find the Swastika used on small and comparatively insignificant objects, those in common use, such as vases, pots, jugs, implements, tools, household goods and utensils, objects of the toilet, ornaments, etc., and infrequently on statues, altars, and the like. In Armenia it was found on bronze pins and buttons; in the Trojan cities on spindle-whorls; in Greece on pottery, on gold and bronze ornaments, and fibulæ. In the Bronze Age in western Europe, including Etruria, it is found on the common objects of life, such as pottery, the bronze fibulæ, ceintures, spindle-whorls, etc.
In addition to the foregoing, there were peculiar uses of the Swastika in certain localities: In Italy on the hut urns in which the ashes of the dead are buried; in the Swiss lakes stamped in the pottery; in Scandinavia on the weapons, swords, etc., and in Scotland and Ireland on the brooches and pins; in America on the metates for grinding corn; the Brazilian women wore it on the pottery fig leaf; the Pueblo Indian painted it on his dance rattle, while the North American Indian, at the epoch of the mound building in Arkansas and Missouri, painted it in spiral form on his pottery; in Tennessee he engraved it on the shell, and in Ohio cut it in its plainest normal form out of sheets of copper. So also among the modern Indians we find it employed on occasions of ceremony, as in the mountain chant by the Navajoes, and the war chant of the Kansas, on the necklace and ceremonial garters of the Sac woman, and on the war shields of the Pimas.
As we do not find it represented in America on aboriginal religious monuments, on ancient gods, idols, or other sacred or holy objects, we are justified in claiming that it was not here used as a religious symbol; while, as it is found only on trinkets, shells, copper plaques, spindle-whorls, metates, pottery bowls, jugs, bottles, or vases; as we find it sometimes square, sometimes spiral, now outside, now inside, of bowls and jars, etc.; at one time a small rectangular figure and at another of extensive convolutions covering the side of the vase; as we find it on the tools of the workmen, the objects in everyday use, whether in the house or the shop, used indiscriminately by men and women, or on gaming implements or dance rattles, the contention seems justifiable that it was used as an ornament or as a charm for good luck and not as a religious symbol. Yet we know it was used on certain ceremonial occasions which may themselves have had more or less a sacred character.
Thus, after the fullest examination, we find the Swastika was confined to the commoner uses, implements, household utensils, and objects for the toilet and personal decoration. The specimens of this kind number a hundred to one of a sacred kind. With this preponderance in favor of the common use, it would seem that, except among the Buddhists and early Christians, and the more or less sacred ceremonies of the North American Indians, all pretense of the holy or sacred character of the Swastika should be given up, and it should (still with these exceptions) be considered as a charm, amulet, token of good luck or good fortune, or as an ornament and for decoration.
VI.—The Migration of Symbols.
MIGRATION OF THE SWASTIKA.
The question of the migration of the Swastika and of the objects on which it was marked, which furnished its only means of transportation, remains to be considered. It is proposed to examine, in a cursory manner perhaps, not only the migration of the Swastika itself, but some of these objects, spindle whorls especially, with a view to discover by similarity or peculiarity of form or decoration any relationship they may have had with each other when found in distant countries and used by different peoples. Thus, we may be able to open the way to a consideration of the question whether this similarity of Swastikas or other decorations, or of the objects on which they were placed, resulted from the migration of or contact or communication between distant peoples, or was it accidental and the result of independent discoveries and duplicate inventions—an evidence of the parallelism of human thought?
Dr. Brinton, in a communication before the American Philosophical Society,[307] starts out with a polemical discussion upon the subject of the migration of the Swastika and its possible American migration, as follows:
My intention is to combat the opinion of those writers who, like Dr. Hamy, M. Beauvois, and many others, assert that because certain well-known Oriental symbols, as the Ta Ki, the Triskeles, the Svastika, and the cross, are found among the American aborigines, they are evidence of Mongolian, Buddhistic, Christian, or Aryan immigrations previous to the discovery by Columbus, and I shall also try to show that the position is erroneous of those who, like William H. Holmes, of the Bureau of Ethnology, maintain “that it is impossible to give a satisfactory explanation of the religious significance of the cross as a religious symbol in America.”