Under the term of “physicomorph”[49] I propose to describe any
representation of an object or operation in the physical world. The
heavens and all the powers therein have been depicted in every age and
by diverse peoples—usually, but not invariably, with some mystical or
religious significance.
[49] φυσικός—of or concerning the order of external nature;
natural, physical.
Chief of the dreaded powers of the air were the thunder-storm, with
its concomitants, the thunder and lightning. These have impressed
themselves upon the imagination of man, not only on account of their
majesty, but also because of man’s impotence. The thunder is the voice
of the god, the lightning his destructive and blasting energy.
The most obvious sign for lightning, a zigzag line, is practically
ubiquitous. Similarly the sun is variously depicted as a star with few
or many rays; as a circle, with a cross or star inscribed within it, or
with rays projecting from its periphery. A plain disc, or more often a
crescent, stands for the moon.
As the heavenly powers are so generally associated with the heavens,
the celestial phenomena and bodies come to represent these cosmical
deities, and symbolism is born. In the following pages I touch upon
some of the symbolism of physicomorphs in America; later, in dealing
with religion and its symbolism, I shall discuss similar symbols in the
Old World.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.—Modern Moki rain symbol; after Holmes.]
[Illustration: FIG. 63.—Decorative detail from an ancient Pueblo
medicine-jar; after Holmes.]
The symbolism of their autocthones has been, and is still actively and
sympathetically studied by American anthropologists, as in a valuable
paper[50] by F. H. Cushing, who remarks:—“The semi-circle is classed as
emblematic of the rainbow; the obtuse angle as of the sky; the zigzag
as lightning; terraces as the sky horizons, and modifications of the
latter as the mythic ‘ancient sacred place of the spaces,’” and so on.
[50] _A Study of Pueblo Pottery_, etc., 1886.
By combining several of these elementary symbols in a single device,
sometimes a mythic idea was beautifully expressed. For example, Fig. 62
is the totem-badge Major J. W. Powell received from the Moki Pueblos
of Arizona as a token of his induction into the rain gens of that
people. An earlier and simpler form of this occurs on a very ancient
sacred medicine jar. (Fig. 63.) The sky (A), the ancient place of the
spaces—region of the sky gods—(B), the cloud-lines (C), and the
falling rain (D), are combined, and depicted to symbolise the storm,
which was the objective of the exhortations, rituals, and ceremonials
to which the jar was an appurtenance.
[Illustration: FIG. 64.—Rain-cloud tile of the South House in a Tusayan
ceremony; after Fewkes.]
Dr. J. Walter Fewkes, in a more recent paper entitled “A few Summer
Ceremonials at the Tusayan Pueblos,”[51] gives an interesting account
of the Flute Ceremony. Several ancient rain-cloud tiles are described;
one of them (Fig. 64) was in the room of the South House, which
contained the altar. “Like its fellow, this tile had an _O’-mow-uh_
[cloud] symbol, with falling rain and the two lightning snakes depicted
upon it. There were also fourteen broad black parallel lines on a white
ground representing falling rain. Three rain-cloud semi-circles were
outlined by a broad black band above the falling rain. The field of
the clouds was brown, and the middle cloud, which was the largest, had
a conventionalised half-ear of corn,[52] consisting of two parallel
rows of rectangular kernels, each with a dot in the middle. A field
of green occupied the whole face of the tile above the figures of the
rain-clouds. On this region, rising from the depression which separates
the lateral from the medial rain-cloud, one on each side, there was a
brown zigzag lightning figure outlined in black. Each of these bore a
simple terraced _nā’k-tci_ [a terraced tablet placed on the head of
certain figures] on the head” (p. 121).
[51] “A few Summer Ceremonials at the Tusayan Pueblos,”
_Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology_, ii., 1892.
[52] Maize or Indian corn.
[Illustration: FIG. 65.—Zuñi prayer-meal-bowl; after Cushing.]
Mr. Cushing[53] has drawn attention to a bowl of which the form as well
as its decoration is symbolic. He says, “Thus, upon all sacred vessels,
from the drums of the esoteric medicine societies of the priesthood
and all vases pertaining to them, to the keramic appurtenances of
the sacred dance or _Kâ’kâ_, all decorations were intentionally
emblematic. Of this numerous class of vessels I will choose but one
for illustration—the prayer-meal-bowl of the _Kâ’kâ_. (Fig. 65.) In
this both form and ornamentation are significant. In explaining how
the form of this vessel is held to be symbolic, I will quote a passage
from the ‘creation myth,’ as I rendered it in an article on the origin
of corn, belonging to a series on ‘Zuñi Bread-stuff,’ published this
year [?1882] in the _Millstone_ of Indianapolis, Indiana. ‘Is not the
bowl the emblem of the earth our mother? For from her we draw both food
and drink, as a babe draws nourishment from the breast of its mother;
and round, as is the rim of a bowl, so is the horizon, terraced with
mountains, whence rise the clouds.’ This alludes to a medicine bowl,
not to one of the handled kind, but I will apply it as far as it goes
to the latter. The two terraces on either side of the handle are in
representation of the ‘ancient sacred place of the spaces,’ the handle
being the line of the sky, and sometimes painted with the rainbow
figure. Now the decorations are a trifle more complex. We may readily
perceive that they represent tadpoles, dragon-flies, with also the frog
or toad. All this is of easy interpretation. As the tadpole frequents
the pools of springtime he has been adopted as the symbol of spring
rains; the dragon-fly hovers over pools in summer, hence typifies the
rains of summer; and the frog, maturing in them later, symbolises the
rains of the later seasons; for all these pools are due to rainfall.
When, sometimes, the figure of the sacred butterfly replaces that of
the dragon-fly, or alternates with it, it symbolises the beneficence of
summer; since, by a reverse order of reasoning, the Zuñis think that
the butterflies and migratory birds bring the warm season from the
‘Land of everlasting summer.’
[53] _Loc. cit._, p. 517.
“Upon vessels of special function, like these we have just noticed,
peculiar figures may be regarded as emblematic. On other classes, no
matter how evidently conventional and expressive decorations may seem
(excepting always totemic designs), it is wise to use great caution in
their interpretation as intentional and not merely imitative.”
The study of symbols is a peculiarly difficult one, and there is no
branch of our subject which contains so many pitfalls for the unwary.
The two following paragraphs, respectively by Messrs. Holmes and
Cushing,[54] afford a useful warning:—
[54] _Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology_, iv.
“There are those who, seeing these forms already endowed with
symbolism, begin at what I conceive to be the wrong end of the process.
They derive the form of the symbol directly from the thing symbolised.
Thus the current scroll is, with many races, found to be a symbol of
water, and its origin is attributed to a literal rendering of the sweep
and curl of the waves. It is more probable that the scroll became the
symbol of the sea long after its development through agencies similar
to those described above, and that the association resulted from the
observation of incidental resemblances. This same figure, in use by
the Indians of the interior of the continent, is regarded as symbolic
of the whirlwind, and it is probable that any symbol-using people will
find in the features and phenomena of their environment, whatever it
may be, sufficient resemblance to any of their decorative devices to
lead to a symbolic association” (p. 460).
“To both the scroll or volute and the fret, and modifications of them
ages later, the Pueblo has attached meanings. Those who have visited
the South-west and ridden over the wide, barren plains during late
autumn or early spring have been astonished to find traced on the sand,
by no visible agency, perfect concentric circles and scrolls or volutes
yards long, and as regular as though drawn by a skilled artist. The
circles are made by the wind driving partly broken weed-stalks around
and around their places of attachment until the fibres by which they
are anchored sever and the stalks are blown away. The volutes are
formed by the stems of red-top grass and of a round-topped variety
of the Chenopodium drifted onward by the whirlwind, yet around and
around their bushy adhesive tops. The Pueblos, observing these marks,
especially that they are abundant after a wind storm, have wondered
at their similarity to the printed scrolls on the pottery of their
ancestors. Even to-day they believe the sand marks to be the tracks of
the whirlwind, which is a god in their mythology of such distinctive
personality that the circling eagle is supposed to be related to
him. They have naturally, therefore, explained the analogy above
noted by the inference that their ancestors, in painting the volute,
had intended to symbolise the whirlwind by representing his tracks.
Thenceforward the scroll was drawn on certain classes of pottery to
represent the whirlwind and modifications of it (for instance, by the
colour-sign belonging to any one of the ‘six regions’) to signify other
personified winds” (p. 515).
It is interesting to note that colours are often symbolic. Thus in a
footnote to p. 111, _loc. cit._, Dr. Fewkes says:—“Red is the colour
of the south, yellow of the north, blue of the west, and white of
the east. For the west the available pigment used has, however, a
green colour, although blue is the colour corresponding to west.”
A correspondence on the colours of the winds was carried on in the
_Academy_ in 1883. Dr. Whitley Stokes points out (p. 114) that among
the Mayas of Yucatan red was associated with the east, white with the
north, black with the west, and yellow with the south. (Cf. Brinton,
_Folk-Lore Journal_, i. p. 246.) In Ireland, east was purple; south,
white; north, black; and west, dun; the sub-winds between S. and E.
were red and yellow respectively; between S. and W., green and blue;
between N. and W., grey and dark brown; between N. and E., dark grey
and speckled. Professor Max Müller (p. 302) notes that among the
Navajos E. is dark; S., blue; W., yellow; N., white (cf. Mathews,
_Amer. Anth._, April 1883); and in the Veda E. was red; S., white; W.,
dark or dark blue; and N., very dark. Lastly, Mr. Hilderic Friend (p.
318) says that in China and ancient Java there were five deities or
rules—(1) black, water, N.; (2) red, fire, S.; (3) green, wood, E.; (4)
white, metal, W.; (5) yellow, earth, middle. Colonel Garrick Mallery
has also some notes on this subject, _Fourth Ann. Rep. Bureau Ethnol._,
Washington, p. 53, and _Tenth Ann. Rep._, p. 618.
It is very rarely that landscapes are drawn by savages purely for
decorative purposes. Maps or plans, or diagrams which are virtually a
kind of elevation section, or even a sort of bird’s-eye view, may be
limned for mnemonic or directive purposes (p. 209); but pictorial views
are so rare that it is worth while giving an illustration of one (Fig.
66) which I found etched on a bamboo tobacco-pipe, from Torres Straits,
in the Museum für Völkerkunde, in Berlin.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.—Tracing of a landscape etched on a bamboo
tobacco-pipe, in Berlin; three-eighths natural size.]
I have little doubt that the island of Mer is here intended, on account
of the shape of the hill and the presence of dome-shaped structures,
which I take to be the beehive huts which characterise the eastern
tribe of Torres Straits. I add for comparison a rough sketch (Fig. 67)
I took of this island, as seen from the south-west by west.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.—Sketch of Mer (Murray Island), by the author,
from the south-west-by-west, showing the hill Gelam.]
The natives have a legend that this hill, “Gelam,” was originally
a dugong; and I believe the eye-mark in the native’s drawing is
intended for the eye of Gelam, “Gelam dan,” and the projection to the
extreme left to indicate Gelam’s nose, “Gelam pit,” a small jutting
rocky escarpment at the head end of the island, which is enormously
exaggerated in the drawing. I take it that the break in the ground
of Fig. 66, below the first bird, indicates the hill “Korkor,” which
forms the tail of the dugong in my sketch, and which is one end of the
horse-shoe shaped crater of a volcano. The part extending beyond this
is the lava-flow which forms the north-eastern half of the island.[55]
The vegetation is suggested in a very perfunctory manner. I do not know
what the lines that stream from the apex of the hill are intended for.
I should add that to make it approximately topographically accurate,
the native picture should be reversed,[56] assuming my identification
to be correct. What I imagine to have occurred is as follows:—The
artist intended to represent Mer (Murray Island), and he drew the
peak of the principal hill, Gelam, from a very characteristic point
of view (I have sketches of my own similar to this); in order to give
a realistic touch he inserted the eye, which is a prominent block of
volcanic ash, and added the nose. The view is suggestive, but it is an
impossible one, and it appears to me that this is characteristic of a
great deal of the pictorial art of savages.
[55] Cf. map by author in a paper “On the Geology of Torres
Straits,” by Professors A. C. Haddon, W. J. Sollas, and G. A.
J. Cole. _Trans. Roy. Irish Acad._, xxx., 1894, pp. 419-470.
[56] An interesting example of reversal is found on a bamboo
tobacco-pipe which I obtained on the island of Mabuiag in
Torres Straits, and which I have given to the National Museum
at Washington, U.S.A. On one side of the pipe was cut =ᑎAЯIЯ=,
and on the other =MÖRAP=; the latter is the name for a bamboo
pipe, and the former I understood was the name of the place in
Daudai where the owner had cut the bamboo from which he made
the pipe; possibly it was his own name. It will be observed
that this name, which is really =RIRAU=, is printed backwards,
and the final =U= is upside down. I suspect that the occasional
reversal of words is due to the method of counting on the
fingers which these people employ. They always begin with the
little finger of the left hand, and pass from the thumb of the
left hand to that of the right. If a man was spelling out a
word letter by letter as if he were counting he might readily
fall into the error of putting down the first letter in a place
corresponding to the little finger of the left hand, and so on.
If the man who carved the pipe began with =RIRAU=, that word
would utilise all the digits of the left hand, and so =MÖRAP=
would come right end foremost on the right hand.