[Illustration: 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.
In the Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (p. 525) Mr.
Dorsey repeats this statement concerning the names of the winds, and shows
how, in their invocations, the Kansas began with the east wind and went
around to the right in the order here given. His fig. 195 illustrates
this, but the cross has straight arms. In response to my personal inquiry,
Mr. Dorsey says the war chart[258] was drawn for him, with the Swastika as
represented, by Pahanle-gaqle, the war captain, who had official charge
of it and who copied it from one he had inherited from his father and his
"father's fathers"; and Mr. Dorsey assured me that there can be no mistake
or misapprehension about this Indian's intention to make the sign as there
represented. Asked if the sign was common and to be seen in other cases or
places, Mr. Dorsey replied that the Osage have a similar chart with the
same and many other signs or pictographs--over a hundred--but except
these, he knows of no similar signs. They are not in common use, but the
chart and all it contains are sacred objects, the property of the two
Kansas gentes, Black Eagle and Chicken Hawk, and not to be talked of nor
shown outside of the gentes of the council lodge.[259]
[Illustration: PLATE 15. CEREMONIAL BEAD NECKLACE WITH SWASTIKA
ORNAMENTATION. Sac Indians, Cook County (Kansas) Reservation.]
_The Sac Indians._--Miss Mary A. Owen, of St. Joseph, Mo., sending some
specimens of beadwork of the Indians (pl. 15) from the Kansas Reservation,
two of which were garters and the third a necklace 13 inches long and 1
inch wide, in which the Swastikas represented are an inch square, writes,
February 2, 1895, as follows:
The Indians call it [the Swastika] the "luck," or "good luck." It is
used in necklaces and garters by the sun worshippers among the
Kickapoos, Sacs, Pottawatomies, Iowas, and (I have been told) by the
Winnebagoes. I have never seen it on a Winnebago. The women use the
real Swastika and the Greek key pattern, in the silk patchwork of
which they make sashes and skirt trimmings. As for their thinking it
an emblem of fire or deity, I do not believe they entertain any such
ideas, as some Swastika hunters have suggested to me. They call it
"luck," and say it is the same thing as two other patterns which I
send in the mail with this. They say they "always" made that pattern.
They must have made it for a long time, for you can not get such beads
as compose it, in the stores of a city or in the supplies of the
traders who import French beads for the red folk. Another thing.
Beadwork is very strong, and this is beginning to look tattered, a
sure sign that it has seen long service.
These sun worshippers--or, if you please, Swastika wearers--believe in
the Great Spirit, who lives in the sun, who creates all things, and is
the source of all power and beneficence. The ancestors are a sort of
company of animal saints, who intercede for the people. There are many
malicious little demons who thwart the ancestors and lead away the
people at times and fill them with diseases, but no head devil. Black
Wolf and certain ghosts of the unburied are the worst. Everybody has a
secret fetish or "medicine," besides such general "lucks" as
Swastikas, bear skins, and otter and squirrel tails.
Of the other cult of the peoples I have mentioned, those who worship
the sun as the deity and not the habitation, I know nothing. They are
secret, suspicious, and gloomy, and do not wear the "luck." I have
never seen old people wear the "luck."
Now, I have told you all I know, except that it [the Swastika] used in
ancient times to be made in quill embroidery on herb bags.
Miss Owen spoke of other garters with Swastikas on them, but she said they
were sacred, were used only during certain ceremonies, and she knew not if
she could be able to get or even see them. During the prolongation of the
preparation of this paper she wrote two or three times, telling of the
promises made to her by the two Sac women who were the owners of these
sacred garters, and how each time they had failed. Yet she did not give
up hope. Accordingly, in the winter of 1896, the little box containing the
sacred garters arrived. Miss Owen says the husbands of these two Sac women
are Pottawatomies on the Cook County (Kans.) Reservation. They are sun
worshippers. These garters have been sketched and figured in pl. 16.
_The Pueblos._--The Pueblo country in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and
Arizona, as is well known, is inhabited by various tribes of Indians
speaking different languages, separated from one another and from all
other tribes by differences of language, customs, and habit, but somewhat
akin to each other in culture, and many things different from other tribes
are peculiar to them. These have been called the "Pueblo Indians" because
they live in pueblos or towns. Their present country includes the regions
of the ancient cliff dwellers, of whom they are supposed to be the
descendants. In those manifestations of culture wherein they are peculiar
and different from other tribes they have come to be considered something
superior. Any search for the Swastika in America which omitted these
Indians would be fatally defective, and so here it is found. Without
speculating how the knowledge of the Swastika came to them, whether by
independent invention or brought from distant lands, it will be enough to
show its knowledge among and its use by the peoples of this country.
[Illustration: Fig. 256. DANCE RATTLE MADE OF A SMALL GOURD DECORATED IN
BLACK, WHITE, AND RED. Ogee Swastika on each side. Second Annual Report of
the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 526. Cat. No. 42042, U. S. N. M.]
In the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for the year 1880-81 (p.
394, fig. 562) is described a dance rattle made from a small gourd,
ornamented in black, white, and red (fig. 256). The gourd has a Swastika
on each side, with the ends bent, not square, but ogee (the tetraskelion).
The U. S. National Museum possesses a large number of these dance rattles
with Swastikas on their sides, obtained from the Pueblo Indians of New
Mexico and Arizona. Some of them have the natural neck for a handle, as
shown in the cut; others are without neck, and have a wooden stick
inserted and passed through for a handle. Beans, pebbles, or similar
objects are inside, and the shaking of the machine makes a rattling noise
which marks time for the dance.
The Museum possesses a large series of pottery from the various pueblos of
the Southwest; these are of the painted and decorated kind common to that
civilization and country. Some of these pieces bear the Swastika mark;
occasionally it is found outside, occasionally inside. It is more
frequently of the ogee form, similar to that on the rattle from the same
country (fig. 256). The larger proportion of these specimens comes from
the pueblos of Santa Clara and St. Ildefonso.
[Illustration: PLATE 16. CEREMONIAL BEAD GARTERS WITH SWASTIKAS. Sac
Indians, Cook County (Kansas) Reservation.]