_Divers significations._--The figure of the cross among the North American Indians, says Colonel Mallery,[292] has many differing significations. It appears "as the tribal sign for Cheyenne" (p. 383); "as Dakota lodges" (p. 582); "as a symbol for trade or exchange" (p. 613); "as a conventional sign for prisoners" (p. 227); "for personal exploits while elsewhere it is used in simple enumeration" (p. 348). Although this device is used for a variety of meanings when it is employed ceremonially or in elaborate pictographs of the Indians both of North and South America, it represents the four winds. This view long ago was suggested as being the signification of many Mexican crosses, and it is sustained by Prof. Cyrus Thomas in his "Notes on Mayan Mexican Manuscript,"[293] where strong confirmatory evidence is produced by the arms of the crosses having the appearance of conventionalized wings similar to some representations of the thunder bird of the northern tribes; yet the same author, in his paper on the study of the "Troano Manuscript,"[294] gives fig. 329 as a symbol for wood, thus further showing the manifold concepts attached to the general form of the cross. Bandelier thinks that the cross so frequently used by the aborigines of Mexico and Central America were merely ornaments and not objects of worship, while the so-called crucifixes, like that on the Palenque tablet, were only the symbol of the "new fire," or the close of the period of fifty-two years. He believes them to be representations of the fire drills more or less ornamented. Zamacois[295] says that the cross was used in the religion of various tribes of the peninsula of Yucatan, and that it represented the god of rain. [Illustration: Fig. 329. ST. ANDREW'S CROSSES, USED AS A SYMBOL FOR WOOD. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, fig. 1233.] It is a favorite theory with Major Powell, Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, that the cross was an original invention of the North American Indian, possibly a sign common to all savages; that it represented, first, the four cardinal points, north, south, east, and west; and afterwards by accretion, seven points, north, south, east, west, zenith, nadir, and here. Capt. John G. Bourke, in his paper on the "Medicine Men of the Apache"[296] discourses on their symbolism of the cross. He says it is related to the cardinal points, to the four winds, and is painted by warriors on their moccasins when going through a strange district to keep them from getting on a wrong trail. He notes how he saw, in October, 1884, a procession of Apache men and women bearing two crosses, 4 feet 10 inches long, appropriately decorated "in honor of Guzanutlí to induce her to send rain."