The Swastika: The Earliest Known Symbol & its Migrations
The Cross Among The American Indians
Page 108
s much decayed and came to the National Museum with a skull from a grave at Charleston, Mo.; beyond this there is no record. The specimen shown in fig. 302 is quoted as a "typical example of the cross of the mound-builder." It was obtained from a mound on Lick Creek, Tennessee, and is in the Peabody Museum,
Cambridge, Mass. While an
elaborate description is given of it and figures are mentioned as "devices
probably significant," and "elementary or unfinished,"
and more of the same yet nowhere is suggested any relationship to the
Swastika, nor even the possibility of its existence in America.
A large copper disk from an Ohio mound is represented in fig. 303. It is in the Natural History Museum of New York. It is eight inches in diameter, is very thing, and had suffered greatly from corrosion. A symmetrical cross, the arms of which are five inches in length, has been cut out of the center. Two concentric lines have been impressed in the plate, one near the margin and the other touching the ends of of the cross. Fig. 304 shows a shell gorget from a mound on Lick Creek, Tennessee. It is much corroded and broken, yet it shows the cross plainly. There are sundry pits or dots made irregularly over the surface, some of which have perforated the shell. Pl. 19 represents a recapitulation of specimens of crosses, thirteen in number, "most of which have been obtained from the mounds or from ancient graves within the district occupied by the mound-builders. Eight are engraved upon shell gorgets, one is cut in stone, three are painted upon pottery,