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
drew from one corner of the cave a great sheet of cloud, which they
unrolled, and on it were painted the forms of the "yays" of the cultivated
plants.
[Illustration: PLATE 17. NAVAJO DRY PAINTING CONTAINING SWASTIKAS. Dr.
Washington Matthews, "The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony," Fifth Annual
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-84, Pl. XVII.]
In Dr. Matthews's memoir (marked third, but described on p. 447 as the
second picture), is a representation of the painting which the prophet was
believed to have seen at the home of the bears in the Carrizo Mountains.
This is here reproduced as pl. 17. In the center of the figure is a bowl
of water covered with black powder; the edge of the bowl is garnished with
sunbeams, while outside of it and forming a rectangle are the four
_ca'bitlol_ of sunbeam rafts on which seem to stand four gods, or "yays,"
with the plants under their special protection, which are painted the same
color as the gods to which they belong. These plants are represented on
their left hand, the hand being open and extended toward them. The body of
the eastern god is white, so is the stalk of corn at his left in the
southeast; the body of the southern god is blue, so is the beanstalk
beside him in the southwest; the body of the western god is yellow, so is
his pumpkin vine in the northwest; the body of the north god is black, so
is the tobacco plant in the northeast. Each of the sacred plants grows
from five white roots in the central waters and spreads outward to the
periphery of the picture. The figures of the gods form a cross, the arms
of which are directed to the four cardinal points; the plants form another
cross, having a common center with the first, the arms extending to the
intermediate points of the compass. The gods are shaped alike, but colored
differently; they lie with their feet to the center and heads extended
outward, one to each of the four cardinal points of the compass, the faces
look forward, the arms half extended on either side, the hands raised to a
level with the shoulders. They wear around their loins skirts of red
sunlight adorned with sunbeams. They have ear pendants, bracelets, and
armlets, blue and red, representing turquoise and coral, the prehistoric
and emblematic jewels of the Navajo Indians. Their forearms and legs are
black, showing in each a zigzag mark representing lightning on the black
rain clouds. In the north god these colors are, for artistic reasons,
reversed. The gods have, respectively, a rattle, a charm, and a basket,
each attached to his right hand by strings. This basket, represented by
concentric lines with a Greek cross in the center, all of the proper color
corresponding with the god to whom each belongs, has extending from each
of its quarters, arranged perpendicularly at right angles to each other,
in the form of a cross, four white plumes of equal length, which at equal
distances from the center are bent, all to the left, and all of the same
length.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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