Miss Owen spoke of other garters with Swastikas on them, but she said they were sacred, were used only during certain ceremonies, and she knew not if she could be able to get or even see them. During the prolongation of the preparation of this paper she wrote two or three times, telling of the promises made to her by the two Sac women who were the owners of these sacred garters, and how each time they had failed. Yet she did not give up hope. Accordingly, in the winter of 1896, the little box containing the sacred garters arrived. Miss Owen says the husbands of these two Sac women are Pottawatomies on the Cook County (Kans.) Reservation. They are sun worshippers. These garters have been sketched and figured in pl. 16.

The Pueblos.—The Pueblo country in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona, as is well known, is inhabited by various tribes of Indians speaking different languages, separated from one another and from all other tribes by differences of language, customs, and habit, but somewhat akin to each other in culture, and many things different from other tribes are peculiar to them. These have been called the “Pueblo Indians” because they live in pueblos or towns. Their present country includes the regions of the ancient cliff dwellers, of whom they are supposed to be the descendants. In those manifestations of culture wherein they are peculiar and different from other tribes they have come to be considered something superior. Any search for the Swastika in America which omitted these Indians would be fatally defective, and so here it is found. Without speculating how the knowledge of the Swastika came to them, whether by independent invention or brought from distant lands, it will be enough to show its knowledge among and its use by the peoples of this country.

In the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology for the year 1880-81 (p. 394, fig. 562) is described a dance rattle made from a small gourd, ornamented in black, white, and red (fig. 256). The gourd has a Swastika on each side, with the ends bent, not square, but ogee (the tetraskelion). The U. S. National Museum possesses a large number of these dance rattles with Swastikas on their sides, obtained from the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona. Some of them have the natural neck for a handle, as shown in the cut; others are without neck, and have a wooden stick inserted and passed through for a handle. Beans, pebbles, or similar objects are inside, and the shaking of the machine makes a rattling noise which marks time for the dance.

The Museum possesses a large series of pottery from the various pueblos of the Southwest; these are of the painted and decorated kind common to that civilization and country. Some of these pieces bear the Swastika mark; occasionally it is found outside, occasionally inside. It is more frequently of the ogee form, similar to that on the rattle from the same country (fig. 256). The larger proportion of these specimens comes from the pueblos of Santa Clara and St. Ildefonso.

Dr. Schliemann reports:[260]

We also see a Swastika (turned to the left) scratched on two terra cotta bowls of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, preserved in the ethnological section of the Royal Museum at Berlin.

G. Nordenskiöld,[261] in the report of his excavations among the ruined pueblos of the Mesa Verde, made in southwestern Colorado during the summer of 1891, tells of the finding of numerous specimens of the Swastika. In pl. 23, fig. 1, he represents a large, shallow bowl in the refuse heap at the “Step House.” It was 50 centimeters in diameter, of rough execution, gray in color, and different in form and design from other vessels from the cliff houses. The Swastika sign (to the right) was in its center, and made by lines of small dots. His pl. 27, fig. 6, represents a bowl found in a grave (g on the plan) at “Step House.” Its decoration inside was of the usual type, but the only decoration on the outside consisted of a Swastika, with arms crossing at right angles and ends bent at the right, similar to fig. 9. His pl. 18, fig. 1, represented a large bowl found in Mug House. Its decoration consisted in part of a Swastika similar in form and style to the Etruscan gold “bulla,” fig. 188 in this paper. Certain specimens of pottery from the pueblos of Santa Clara and St. Ildefonso, deposited in the U. S. National Museum (Department of Ethnology), bear Swastika marks, chiefly of the ogee form.[262]

The Navajoes.—Dr. Washington Matthews, U. S. A., than whom no one has done better, more original, nor more accurate anthropologic work in America, whether historic or prehistoric, has kindly referred me to his memoir in the Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, comprising 82 pages, with 9 plates and 9 figures, entitled “The Mountain Chant; a Navajo ceremony.” It is descriptive of one of a number of ceremonies practiced by the shamans or medicine men of the Navajo Indians, New Mexico. The ceremony is public, although it takes place during the night. It lasts for nine days and is called by the Indians “dsilyídje qaçàl”—literally, “chant toward (a place) within the mountains.” The word “dsilyi” may allude to mountains in general, to the Carrizo Mountains in particular, to the place in the mountains where the prophet (originator of these ceremonies) dwelt, or to his name, or to all of these combined. “Qaçàl” means a sacred song or a collection of sacred songs. Dr. Matthews describes at length the myth which is the foundation of this ceremony, which must be read to be appreciated, but may be summarized thus: An Indian family, consisting of father, mother, two sons, and two daughters, dwelt in ancient times near the Carrizo Mountains. They lived by hunting and trapping; but the place was desert, game scarce, and they moved up the river farther into the mountains. The father made incantations to enable his two sons to capture and kill game; he sent them hunting each day, directing them to go to the east, west, or north, but with the injunction not to the south. The elder son disobeyed this injunction, went to the south, was captured by a war party of Utes and taken to their home far to the south. He escaped by the aid of Yàybichy (Qastcèëlçi) and divers supernatural beings. His adventures in returning home form the body of the ceremony wherein these adventures are, in some degree, reproduced. Extensive preparations are made for the performance of the ceremony. Lodges are built and corrals made for the use of the performers and the convenience of their audience. The fête being organized, stories are told, speeches made, and sacred songs are sung (the latter are given by Dr. Matthews as “songs of sequence,” because they must be sung in a progressive series on four certain days of the ceremony). Mythological charts of dry sand of divers colors are made on the earth within the corrals after the manner of the Navajo and Pueblo Indians. These dry sand paintings are made after a given formula and intended to be repeated from year to year, although no copy is preserved, the artists depending only upon the memory of their shaman. One of these pictures or charts represents the fugitive’s escape from the Utes, his captors, down a precipice into a den or cave in which burnt a fire “on which was no wood.” Four pebbles lay on the ground together—a black pebble in the east, a blue one in the south, a yellow one in the west, and a white one in the north. From these flames issued. Around the fire lay four bears, colored and placed to correspond with the pebbles. When the strangers (Qastcèëlçi and the Navajo) approached the fire the bears asked them for tobacco, and when they replied they had none, the bears became angry and thrice more demanded it. When the Navajo fled from the Ute camp, he had furtively helped himself from one of the four bags of tobacco which the council was using. These, with a pipe, he had tied up in his skin robe; so when the fourth demand was made he filled the pipe and lighted it at the fire. He handed the pipe to the black bear, who, taking but one whiff, passed it to the blue bear and immediately fell senseless. The blue bear took two whiffs and passed the pipe, when he too fell over unconscious. The yellow bear succumbed after the third whiff, and the white bear in the north after the fourth whiff. Now the Navajo knocked the ashes and tobacco out of his pipe and rubbed the latter on the feet, legs, abdomen, chest, shoulders, forehead, and mouth of each of the bears in turn, and they were at once resuscitated. He replaced the pipe in the corner of his robe. When the bears recovered, they assigned to the Navajo a place on the east side of the fire where he might lie all night, and they brought out their stores of corn meal, tciltcin, and other berries, offering them to him to eat; but Qastcèëlçi warned him not to touch the food, and disappeared. So, hungry as he was, the Indian lay down supperless to sleep. When he awoke in the morning, the bears again offered food, which he again declined, saying he was not hungry. Then they showed him how to make the bear kethàwns, or sticks, to be sacrificed to the bear gods, and they 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.

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. Thus are formed in this chart four specimens of the Swastika, with the cross and circle at the intersection of the arms. The plumes have a small black spot at the tip end of each.

Dr. Matthews informs me that he has no knowledge of any peculiar meaning attributed by these Indians to this Swastika symbol, and we now not whether it is intended as a religious symbol, a charm of blessing, or good luck, or whether it is only an ornament. We do not know whether it has any hidden, mysterious, or symbolic meaning; but there it is, a prehistoric or Oriental Swastika in all its purity and simplicity, appearing in one of the mystic ceremonies of the aborigines in the great American desert in the interior of the North American Continent.

The Pimas.—The U. S. National Museum possesses a shield (Cat. No. 27829) of bull hide, made by the Pima Indians. It is about 20 inches in diameter, and bears upon its face an ogee Swastika (tetraskelion), the ends bent to the right. The body and each arm is divided longitudinally into three stripes or bands indicated by colors, blue, red, and white, arranged alternately. The exterior part of the shield has a white ground, while the interior or center has a blue ground. This shield (fig. 257) is almost an exact reproduction of the Swastika from Mycenæ (fig. 161), from Ireland (fig. 216), and from Scandinavia (figs. 209 and 210). Fig. 258 shows another Pima shield of the same type. Its Swastika is, however, painted with a single color or possibly a mixture of two, red and white. It is ogee, and the ends bend to the left. This shield is the property of Mr. F. W. Hodge, of the Bureau of Ethnology. He obtained it from a Pima Indian in Arizona, who assured him that the hole at the end of the lower arm of the Swastika was made by an arrow shot at him by an Indian enemy.

COLONIAL PATCHWORK.

In Scribner’s Magazine for September, 1894, under the title of “Tapestry in the New World,” one of our popular writers has described, with many illustrations, the bedquilt patterns of our grandmothers’ time. One of these she interprets as the Swastika. This is, however, believed to be forced. The pattern in question is made of patches in the form of rhomboids and right-angled triangles sewed and grouped somewhat in the form of the Swastika (fig. 259). It is an invented combination of patchwork which formed a new pattern, and while it bears a slight resemblance to the Swastika, lacks its essential elements. It was not a symbol, and represents no idea beyond that of a pretty pattern. It stood for nothing sacred, nor for benediction, blessing, nor good luck. It was but an ornamental pattern which fortuitously had the resemblance of Swastika. It was not even in the form of a cross. The difference between it and the Swastika is about the same there would be between the idle and thoughtless boy who sporadically draws the cross on his slate, meaning nothing by it, or at most only to make an ornament, and the devout Christian who makes the same sign on entering the church, or the Indian who thus represents the four winds of heaven. He who made the Swastika recognizes an occult power for good and against evil, and he thereby invokes the power to secure prosperity. She who made the quilt pattern apparently knew nothing of the old-time Swastika, and was not endeavoring to reproduce it or anything like it. She only sought to make such an arrangement of rhomboidal and triangular quilt patches as would produce a new ornamental pattern.

CENTRAL AMERICA.

NICARAGUA.

The specimen shown in fig. 260 (Cat. No. 23726, U. S. N. M.) is a fragment, the foot of a large stone metate from Zapatero, Granada, Nicaragua. The metate was chiseled or pecked out of the solid. A sunken panel is surrounded by moldings, in the center of which appears, from its outline, also by raised moldings, a figure, the outline of which is a Greek cross, but whose exterior is a Swastika. Its form as such is perfect, except that one bent arm is separated from its stem by a shallow groove.

“The Cross, Ancient and Modern,” by W. W. Blake, shows, in its fig. 57, a Swastika pure and simple, and is cited by its author as representing a cross found by Squier in Central America. The Mexican enthusiast, Orozco y Perra, claims at first glance that it shows Buddhist origin, but I have not been able as yet to verify the quotation.

YUCATAN.

Dr. Schliemann reports, in the Ethnological Museum at Berlin, a pottery bowl from Yucatan ornamented with a Swastika, the two main arms crossing at right angles, and he adds,[263] citing Le Plongeon, “Fouilles au Yucatan,” that “during the last excavations in Yucatan this sign was found several times on ancient pottery.”

Le Plongeon discovered a fragment of a stone slab in the ancient Maya city of Mayapan, of which he published a description in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society. It contains an ogee Swastika (tetraskelion), with ends curved to the left and an inverted U with a wheel (fig. 261). Le Plongeon believed it to be an Egyptian inscription, which he translated thus: The character, inverted U, stood for Ch or K; the wheel for the sun, Aa or Ra, and the Swastika for Ch or K, making the whole to be Chach or Kak, which, he says, is the word fire in the Maya language.[264]

COSTA RICA.

A fragment of a metate (Cat. No. 9693, U. S. N. M.) found on Lempa River, Costa Rica, by Capt. J. M. Dow, has on its bottom a Swastika similar to that on the metate from Nicaragua. Specimen No. 59182, U. S. M. N., is a fragment of a pottery vase from Las Huacas, Costa Rica, collected by Dr. J. F. Bransford. It is natural maroon body color, decorated with black paint. A band two inches wide is around the belly of the vase divided into panels of solid black alternated with fanciful geometric figures, crosses, circles, etc. One of these panels contains a partial Swastika figure. The two main arms cross at right angles in Greek form. It is a partial Swastika in that, while the two perpendicular arms bend at right angles, turning six times to the right; the two horizontal arms are solid black in color, as though the lines and spaces had run together.

SOUTH AMERICA.

BRAZIL.

The leaden idol (fig. 125) (Artemis Nana[265] of Chaldea, Sayce; statuettes of the Cyclades, Lenormant) found by Dr. Schliemann in the third, the burnt city of Hissarlik, Troy, was described (p. 829) with its Swastika on the triangular shield covering the pudendum, with the statement that it would be recalled in the chapter on Brazil.

The aboriginal women of Brazil wore a triangular shield or plaque over their private parts. These shields are made of terra cotta, quite thin, the edges rounded, and the whole piece rubbed smooth and polished. It is supported in place by cords around the body, which are attached by small holes in each angle of the triangle. The U. S. National Museum possesses several of these plaques from Brazil, and several were shown at the Chicago Exposition.

The consideration of the leaden idol of Hissarlik, with a Swastika, as though for good luck, recalled to the author similar plaques in his department from Brazil. Some are of common yellow ware, others were finer, were colored red and rubbed smooth and hard, but were without decoration. The specimen shown in pl. 18 (upper figure) was from Marajo, Brazil, collected by Mr. E. M. Brigham. It is of light gray, slip washed, and decorated with pale red or yellow paint in bands, lines, parallels, geometric figures. The specimen shown in the lower figure of the same plate, from the Caneotires River, Brazil, was collected by Prof. J. B. Steere. The body color, clay, and the decoration paint are much the same as the former. The ornamentation is principally by two light lines laid parallel and close so as to form a single line, and is of the same geometric character as the incised decoration ornament on other pieces from Marajo Island. Midway from top to bottom, near the outside edges, are two Swastikas. They are about five-eighths of an inch in size, are turned at right angles, one to the right and the other to the left. These may have been a charm signifying good fortune in bearing children. (See pp. 830-832.)

These specimens were submitted by the author to the Brazilian minister, Señor Mendonça, himself an archæologist and philologist of no small capacity, who recognized these objects as in use in ancient times among the aborigines of his country. The name by which they are known in the aboriginal language is Tambeao or Tamatiatang, according to the dialects of different provinces. The later dialect name for apron is reported as tunga, and the minister makes two remarks having a possible bearing on the migration of the race: (1) The similarity of tunga with the last syllable of the longer word, atang, and (2) that tunga is essentially an African word from the west coast. Whether this piece of dress so thoroughly savage, with a possible ceremonial meaning relating to sex or condition, with its wonderful similarity of names, might not have migrated in time of antiquity from the west coast of Africa to the promontory of Brazil on the east coast of America where the passage is narrowest, is one of those conundrums which the prehistoric anthropologist is constantly encountering and which he is usually unable to solve.

The purpose of these objects, beyond covering the private parts of the female sex, is not known. They may have been ceremonial, relating, under certain circumstances, to particular conditions of the sex, or they may have been only variations of the somewhat similar covers used by the male aborigine. They bear some resemblance to the Ceintures de Chasteté, specimens of which are privately shown at the Musée de Cluny at Paris. These are said to have been invented by Françoise de Carara, viguier imperial (provost) of Padua, Italy, near the end of the fourteenth century. He applied it to all the women of his seraglio. He was beheaded A. D. 1405, by a decree of the Senate of Venice, for his many acts of cruelty. The palace of St. Mark contained for a long time a box or case of these ceintures with their locks attached, which were represented as des pieces de conviction of this monster.[266] Voltaire describes his hero “qui tient sous la clef, la vertu de sa femme.”

Map showing Distribution of the Swastika.

PARAGUAY.

Dr. Schliemann reports that a traveler of the Berlin Ethnological Museum obtained a pumpkin bottle from the tribe of Lenguas in Paraguay which bore the imprint of the Swastika scratched upon its surface, and that he had recently sent it to the Royal Museum at Berlin.

III.—Forms Allied to the Swastika.

There are certain forms related to the normal Swastika and greatly resembling it—meanders, ogees, the triskelion, tetraskelion, and five and six armed spirals or volutes. This has been mentioned above (page 768), and some of the varieties are shown in fig. 13. These related forms have been found in considerable numbers in America, and this investigation would be incomplete if they were omitted. It has been argued (p. 839) that the Swastika was not evolved from the meander, and this need not be reargued.

The cross with the arms bent or twisted in a spiral is one of these related forms. It is certain that in ancient, if not prehistoric, times the cross with extended spiral arms was frequently employed. This form appeared in intimate association with the square Swastikas which were turned indifferently to the right and left. This association of different yet related forms was so intimate, and they were used so indiscriminately as to justify the contention that the maker or designer recognized or admitted no perceptible or substantial difference between the square and spiral forms, whether they turned to the right or left, or whether they made a single or many turns, and that he classed them as the same sign or its equivalent. A Greek vase (fig. 174) shows five Swastikas, four of which are of different form (fig. 262). Curiously enough, the design of this Greek vase is painted maroon on a yellow ground, the style generally adopted in the vases from the mounds of Missouri and Arkansas, which mostly represent the spiral Swastika.

In Ireland a standing stone (fig. 215) has two forms of Swastika side by side. In one the arms are bent square at the corners, the other has curved or spiral arms, both turned to the right. These examples are so numerous that they would seem convincing in the absence of any other evidence (figs. 166 to 176).

ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ENGRAVINGS AND PAINTINGS.

These allied forms of Swastika appear on prehistoric objects from mounds and Indian graves in different parts of the country and in times of high antiquity as well as among modern tribes. This paper contains the results of the investigations in this direction.

DESIGNS ON SHELL.

The Department of Prehistoric Anthropology in the U. S. National Museum, contains a considerable number of large shells of aboriginal workmanship. The shell most employed was that of the genus Fulgur, a marine shell found on the coast from Florida to the capes. The Unio was employed, as well as others. These marine shells were transported long distances inland. They have been found in mounds and Indian graves a thousand miles from their original habitat. They served as utensils as well as ornaments. In many specimens the whorl was cut out, the shells otherwise left entire, and they served as vessels for holding or carrying liquids. When intended for ornaments, they were cut into the desired form and engraved with the design; if to be used as gorgets, holes were drilled for suspension. Frequently they were smoothed on the outside and the design engraved thereon. The preference of the aborigines for the Fulgur shell may have been by reason of its larger size. Among the patterns employed for the decoration of these shells, the Swastika, in the form of spirals, volutes, or otherwise, appeared, although many others, such as the rattlesnake, birds, spiders, and human masks were employed. No detailed description of the patterns of this shellwork will be attempted, because figures will be required to give the needed information for the interpretation of the Swastika. Many of the cuts and some of the descriptions are taken from the annual reports of the Bureau of Ethnology and, so far as relates to shell, mostly from Mr. Holmes’s paper on “Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans.” I desire to express my thanks for all cuts obtained from the Bureau publications.

Ivory-billed woodpecker.—A series of gorgets in shell have been found ornamented with designs resembling the Swastika, which should be noticed. They combine the square and the cross, while the head and bill of the bird form the gamma indicative of the Swastika. Fig. 263, taken from the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1880-81 (pl. 58), shows one of these shell gorgets from Mississippi, which “was, in all probability, obtained from one of the multitude of ancient sepulchres that abound in the State of Mississippi.” The design is engraved on the convex side, the perforations are placed near the margin, and show much wear by the cord of suspension. In the center is a nearly symmetrical Greek cross inclosed in a circle of 1¼ inches. The spaces between the arms are emblazoned with radiating lines. Outside this circle are twelve small pointed or pyramidal rays. A square framework of four continuous parallel lines looped at the corners incloses this symbol; projecting from the center of each side of this square, opposite the arms of the cross, are four heads of birds representing the ivory-billed woodpecker, the heron, or the swan. The long, slender, and straight mandibles give the Swastika form to the object. Mr. Holmes says (p. 282) that he has been able to find six of these specimens, all of the type described, varying only in detail, workmanship, and finish.

Figs. 264, 265, and 266,[267] represent three of these shell gorgets. The first was obtained by Professor Putnam from a stone grave, Cumberland River, Tennessee. It is about 2½ inches in diameter and, like the former, it has a Greek cross in the center. The second was obtained by Mr. Cross from a stone grave near Nashville, Tenn. The third is from a stone grave near Oldtown, Tenn. All these have been drilled for suspension and are much worn.

The triskele, triskelion, or triquetrum.—These are Greek and Latin terms for the spiral volute with three branches or arms. The coins of Lycia were in this form, made originally by the junction of three cocks’ heads and necks. The armorial bearings of the island of Sicily, in ancient times, consisted of three human legs joined at the thigh and flexed, sometimes booted and spurred (p. 873).

Aboriginal shell gorgets have been found in the mounds of Tennessee and the adjoining country, which were engraved with this design, though always in spiral form. There seems to have been no distinction in the direction of the volutes, they turning indifferently to the right or to the left. Because of their possible relation to the Swastika it has been deemed proper to introduce them.

Fig. 267[268] shows a Fulgur shell specimen obtained by Major Powell from a mound near Nashville, Tenn. It was found near the head of a skeleton. Its substance is well preserved; the surface was once highly polished, but now is pitted by erosion and discolored by age. The design is engraved on the concave surface as usual, and the lines are accurately drawn and clearly cut. The central circle is three-eighths of an inch in diameter and is surrounded by a zone one-half an inch in width, which contains a triskelion or triquetrum of three voluted lines beginning near the center of the shell on the circumference of the inner circle of three small equidistant perforations, and sweeping outward spirally to the left as shown in the figure, making upward of half a revolution. These lines are somewhat wider and more deeply engraved than the other lines of the design. In some specimens they are so deeply cut as to penetrate the disk, producing crescent-shaped perforations. Two medium-sized perforations for suspension have been made near the inner margin of one of the bosses next the dotted zone; these show abrasion by the cord of suspension. These perforations, as well as the three near the center, have been bored mainly from the convex side of the disk.

Fig. 268[269] represents a well-preserved disk with four volute arms forming the tetraskelion, and thus allied to the Swastika. The volutes (to the right) are deeply cut and for about one-third their length penetrate the shell, producing four crescent-shaped perforations which show on the opposite side. This specimen is from a stone grave near Nashville, Tenn., and the original is in the Peabody Museum. Fig. 269[270] shows a specimen from the Brakebill mound, near Knoxville, Tenn. It has a dot in the center, with a circle five-eighths of an inch in diameter. There are four volute arms which start from the opposite sides of this circle, and in their spiral form extend to the right across the field, increasing in size as they approach the periphery. This is an interesting specimen of the tetraskelion or spiral Swastika, in that it is unfinished, the outline having been cut in the shell sufficient to indicate the form, but not perfected. Figs. 270 and 271 show obverse and reverse sides of the same shell. It comes from one of the stone graves of Tennessee, and is thus described by Dr. Joseph Jones, of New Orleans,[271] as a specimen of the deposit and original condition of these objects:

In a carefully constructed stone sarcophagus in which the face of the skeleton was looking toward the setting sun, a beautiful shell ornament was found resting upon the breastbone of the skeleton. This shell ornament is 4.4 inches in diameter, and it is ornamented on its concave surface with a small circle in the center and four concentric bands, differently figured, in relief. The first band is filled up by a triple volute; the second is plain, while the third is dotted and has nine small round bosses carved at unequal distances upon it. The outer band is made up of fourteen small elliptical bosses, the outer edges of which give to the object a scalloped rim. This ornament, on its concave figured surface, has been covered with red paint, much of which is still visible. The convex smooth surface is highly polished and plain, with the exception of the three concentric marks. The material out of which it is formed was evidently derived from a large flat seashell. * * * The form of the circles or “suns” carved upon the concave surface is similar to that of the paintings on the high rocky cliffs on the banks of the Cumberland and Harpeth rivers. * * * This ornament when found lay upon the breastbone with the concave surface uppermost, as if it had been worn in this position suspended around the neck, as the two holes for the thong or string were in that portion of the border which pointed directly to the chin or central portion of the jaw of the skeleton. The marks of the thong by which it was suspended are manifest upon both the anterior and posterior surfaces, and, in addition to this, the paint is worn off from the circular space bounded below by the two holes.