Professor Holmes is, in the judgment of the author, correct when he
insists upon the aboriginal character of the cross in America. We all
understand how it is stated that the Spanish missionaries sought to deny
this and to connect the apparition of St. Thomas with the appearance of
the cross. Professor Holmes[301] says:
The first explorers were accompanied by Christian zealots who spared
no effort to root out the native superstition and introduce a foreign
religion of which the cross was the all-important symbol. This emblem
was generally accepted by the savages as the only tangible feature of
a new system of belief that was filled with subtleties too profound
for their comprehension. As a result, the cross was at once introduced
into the regalia of the natives, at first probably in a European form
and material, attached to a string of beads in precisely the manner
they had been accustomed to suspend their own trinkets and gorgets;
but soon, no doubt, delineated or carved by their own hands upon
tablets of stone and copper and shell in the place of their own
peculiar conceptions.
There is sufficient evidence, and to spare, of the aboriginal use of the
cross in some of its forms, without resorting to the uncertain and forced
explanation of its introduction by Christian missionaries. It is possible
that the priests and explorers were, like Colonel Mallery's missionary,
mistaken as to the interpretation given to the cross by the Indians. Dr.
Hoffman, in his paper on the "Mide'wiwin or Grand Medicine Society of the
Ojibwa,"[302] states the myth of the re-creation of the world "as thrown
together in a mangled form by Hennepin." Dr. Hoffman observes:
It is evident that the narrator has sufficiently distorted the
traditions to make them conform as much as practicable to the Biblical
story of the birth of Christ.
And on the same page he quotes from Pêre Marquette, who says:
"I was very glad to see a great cross set up in the middle of the
village, adorned with several white skins, red girdles, bows, and
arrows, which that good people offered to the Great Manitou to return
him their thanks for the care he had taken of them during the winter,
and that he had granted them a prosperous hunting."
Marquette [comments Dr. Hoffman] was, without doubt, ignorant of the
fact that the cross is the sacred post, and the symbol of the fourth
degree of the Mide'wiwin, as is fully explained in connection with
that grade of society. The erroneous conclusion that the cross was
erected as an evidence of the adoption of Christianity and, possibly
as a compliment to the visitor was a natural one on the part of the
priest, but this same symbol of the Mide' society had probably been
erected and bedecked with barbaric emblems and weapons months before
anything was known of him.
Most aboriginal objects bearing crosses are from localities along the Ohio
River and through Kentucky and Tennessee, a locality which the early
Christian missionaries never visited, and where the cross of Christ was
rarely, if ever, displayed until after that territory became part of the
United States. Per contra, the localities among the Indians in which the
early missionaries most conducted their labors--that is to say, along the
Great Lakes and throughout northern Illinois--produce the fewest number
of aboriginal crosses. This was the country explored by Fathers Marquette,
Lasalle, and Hennepin, and it was the scene of most of the Catholic
missionary labors. Professor Holmes seems to have recognized this fact,
for he says:[303]
The cross was undoubtedly used as a symbol by the prehistoric nations
of the South, and, consequently, that it was probably also known in
the North. A great majority of the relics associated with it in the
ancient mounds and burial places are undoubtedly aboriginal. In the
case of the shell gorgets, the tablets themselves belong to an
American type, and are highly characteristic of the art of the
Mississippi Valley. A majority of the designs engraved upon them are
also characteristic of the same district.
The author agrees heartily with Professor Holmes's argument in this
matter, and his conclusion, when he says of these objects (p. 270):
The workmanship is purely aboriginal. I have not seen a single example
of engraving upon shell that suggested a foreign hand or a design,
with the exception of one (cross), that could claim a European
derivation.
There have been numerous European or Catholic crosses, as well as many
other objects of European manufacture or objects of civilized types, found
among the Indians. There have been silver crosses found with images of the
Virgin thereon, with Latin inscriptions, or of Roman letters; there have
been glass beads, iron arrowheads, and divers other objects found in
Indian graves which bore indubitable evidence of contact with the whites,
and no one with any archæological experience need be deceived into the
belief that these were aboriginal or pre-Columbian manufacture. As a
general rule, the line of demarkation between objects of Indian
manufacture and those made by the whites is definite, and no practiced eye
will mistake the one for the other. There may be exceptions, as where the
Indian has lived with the whites or a white man with the Indians, or where
an object is made with intent to deceive. In such cases one may have more
trouble in determining the origin of the object.
There were many Indians who died and were buried within a century past,
whose graves might contain many objects of white man's work. Black Hawk
and Red Jacket are examples, and, possibly, King Philip. Indian graves
have been opened in New England and New York containing the gun or
firelock of the occupant of the grave buried with him, and that this was
evidence of European contact there can be no doubt. So there have been
hundreds, possibly thousands, of Indians buried since the Columbian
discovery down to within the last decade whose graves contain white man's
tools or implements. But no person with any archæological experience need
be deceived by these things. The theory that the Latin or Greek crosses or
Swastikas shown on these gorgets, disks, and pottery furnish evidence of
contact by the aborigines with Europeans in post-Columbian times is
without foundation and inadmissible.