“One day while hunting he saw a thrush behaving in a most peculiar manner under a bush. It was jumping up and down in one spot, feathers ruffled and fairly crying in a terrified manner. He crawled under the bush and there he saw one of these huge rattlers hypnotizing the bird. As soon as the snake saw him and turned his head towards him the bird flew away unharmed. He had his gun and shot from the hip, killing the snake. “Another experience he had that was interesting. A boy jumped down on to a ledge and failed to see a huge snake almost red in color that was coiled on rocks of the same color. A companion, afraid that he might hurt the boy, shot the snake near the tail. The snake writhed for some time and then, apparently realizing it could not move, turned and stung itself, dying within a few minutes.” XII. LIGHTNING Mrs. Stevenson records of the Queres people that the “lightning-people shoot their arrows to make it rain harder, the smaller flashes coming from the bows of the children. Thunder-people by making a great noise frighten the lightning and cloud-peoples to work harder.” The rainbow people were created to make the sky more beautiful for the earth people. XIII. THE SWASTIKA AND PRIMITIVE CROSS-SYMBOLS The swastika, a symbol in the form of a Greek Cross with the end of the arms bent at right angles all in the same direction, and each prolonged to the height of the parallel arm of the cross. Full discussion of the swastika is found in Mrs. Zelia Nuttall’s “Old and New World Civilizations.” She finds these symbols universally accompanied by vestiges of a certain set of cosmical concepts and a scheme of organization which can be traced back to an original pole-star worship. The calendar swastika or cross of ancient Mexico gives absolute proof of native association with ideas of rotary motion and progress of time, and furnishes an indication that it may have been used by primitive races as a sign for a year or a cycle. Cushing found almost precisely the same thing among the Zuñi priesthood. XIV. RELIGIOUS IMPORT OF THE DANCE “Not the epic song, but the dance, accompanied by a monotonous and often meaningless song constitutes everywhere the most primitive, and in spite of that primitiveness, the most highly developed art. Whether as a ritual dance, or as a purely emotional expression of the joy in rhythmic bodily movement, it rules the life of primitive man to such a degree that all other forms of art are subordinate to it.”—WUNDT, _Völker Psychologie_, 3rd ed. Bd. 1 Teil 1, p. 277. FOOTNOTES