The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration: With Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric TimesWilson, Thomas
Religion
The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration: With Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times
Wilson, Thomas
Industries, Primitive; Swastikas; Symbolism
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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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