Turning now to the development of this class of figures in primitive American art, I give first the simplest representations of the sun, such as those painted on buffalo skins by the Indians of the Plains, and scratched on the surface of rocks. The examples are selected from many of the kind published by Col. Garrick Mallery.[181]
The design is merely a rude device of the human face, with four rays proceeding from it at right angles. These four rays represent, according to the unanimous interpretation of the Indians, the four directions defined by the apparent motions of the sun, the East and West, the North and South. By these directions all travel and all alignments of buildings, corpses, etc., were defined; and hence the earth was regarded as four-sided or four-cornered; or, when it was expressed as a circle, in accordance with the appearance of the visible horizon, the four radia were drawn as impinging on its four sides:
Fig. 15 is a design on a vase from Maraja, Brazil, and is of common occurrence on the pottery of that region.[182] Fig. 16 represents the circle of the visible horizon, or the earth-plain, with the four winds rushing into it when summoned by a magician. It is a figure from the Meday Magic of the Ojibways.[183] Dr. Ferraz de Macedo has claimed that such devices as Fig. 16 “show Chinese or Egyptian inspiration.”[184] It is certainly unnecessary to accept this alternative when both the origin and significance of the symbol are so plain in native American art.
When the symbol of the sun and the four directions was inscribed within the circle of the visible horizon, we obtain the figure representing the motions pf the sun with reference to the earth, as in:
This is what German archæologists call the wheel-cross, _Radkreuz_, distinguished, as Worsaae pointed out, by the presence of the central boss, cup or nave, from the ring-cross, _Ringkreuz_, Fig. 18:
in which, also, the arms of the cross do not reach to the circumference of the wheel. Worsaae very justly laid much stress on the presence of the central boss or cup, and correctly explained it as indicative of the sun; but both he and Virchow, who followed him in this explanation, are, I think, in error in supposing that the circle or wheel represents the rolling sun, _die rollende Sonne_. My proof of this is that this same figure was a familiar symbol, with the signification stated, in tribes who did not know the mechanical device of the wheel, and could have had, therefore, no notion of such an analogy as the rolling wheel of the sun.[185]
