A large number of food bowls are decorated with simple or elaborate
crosses, stars, and like patterns. Simple crosses with arms of equal
length appear on the vessels shown in plate CLIX, _c_, _d_. There are
many similar crosses, subordinate to the main design, in various
bowls, especially those decorated with figures of birds and sky
deities.
Plate CLX, _a_, exhibits a cruciform design, to the extremities of
three arms of which bird figures are attached. In this design there
are likewise two sunflower symbols. The modified cross figure in _b_
of the same plate, like that just mentioned, suggests a swastica, but
fails to be one, and unless the complicated design in figure _c_ may
be so interpreted, no swastica was found at Sikyatki or Awatobi. Plate
CLX, _d_, shows another form of cross, two arms of which are modified
into triangles.
On the opening of the great ceremony called _Powamû_ or
"Bean-planting," which occurs in February in the modern Tusayan
villages, there occurs a ceremony about a sand picture of the sun
which is called _Powalawû_. The object of this rite is the
fructification of all seeds known to the Hopi. The sand picture of the
sun which is made at that time is in its essentials identical with the
design on the food bowl illustrated in plate CLXI, _c_; consequently
it is possible that this star emblem represents the sun, and the
occurrence of the eight triangles in the rim, replaced in the modern
altar by four concentric bands of differently colored sands, adds
weight to this conclusion. The twin triangles outside the main figure
are identical with those in the mouth of modern sun emblems. These
same twin triangles are arranged in lines which cross at right angles
in plate CLXI, _d_, but from their resemblance to figure _b_ they
possibly have a different meaning.
The most complicated of all the star-shape figures, like the simplest,
takes us to sun emblems, and it seems probable that there is a
relationship between the two. Plate CLXI, _f_, represents four bundles
of feathers arranged in quadrants about a rectangular center. These
feathers vary in form and arrangement, and the angles between them are
occupied by horn-shape bodies, two of which have highly complicated
extremities recalling conventionalized birds.
[Illustration: BUREAU Of AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY