38 [70] TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



called nepohualtzitzin . Instead of using strings, the Ecuador- 

 rians around Qiiito resorted to pebbles of different colors, which 

 they arrayed upon boards; nowadays, the Arizona Indians of the 

 Tinne and of the Yuma race use sand or wood of disparate shades 

 of color to construct their magic circles, each of these shades hav- 

 ing a symbolic meaning. In the wampum belts of the Iroquois^ 

 Huron and Algonkin tribes the white beads indicated benevo- 

 lence, peaceful relations, or the conclusion of a treaty ; red meant 

 war; black, death, danger, or warning; while by the brown and 

 dark purple beads, the most precious of all, things of vital im- 

 portance were indicated.* 



The Aztec pictographs, as represented in Lord Kingsbor- 

 ough's plates, are adorned with significative colors, and cannot 

 be fully understood without a study of the color symbolism em- 

 bodied in them. 



A curious instance of color selection, if not of color symbolism, 

 was noticed in 1882 by Dr. W. C. Hoffman among the Arikari 

 Indians at Fort Berthold, Dakota Territory. These natives plant 

 maize, the ears of which show different colors, as amber, dark 

 red (called black by them), dark yellow, light red, while some 

 ears look spotted because the grains are of different colors. Maize 

 of each of these colors is planted by specific fajuilies^ and, if in 

 their fields ears are found that are not of their own color, they 

 deliver them to one of the families owning that peculiar color. 

 More on the significance of certain colors, see in Fourth Report 

 of Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 53-57. 



Among American tribes, the color-shades most frequently ap- 

 pearing in a symbolic signification are blue^ -white^ red. We 

 give the following instructive examples, chieflly from Maskoki 

 folklore : 



Blue. — The bones of the istipapa or " man-eater" were, in the opin- 

 ion o'' the Creeks, red on one side and blue on the other; and these were 

 also the colors of their body-paint on many occasions.} Blue was the 

 color of the deep hole in which the snake yielding the tchilo yabi was liv- 

 ing; the large-sized bird preying upon the Creek people in the legend 

 was of blue color. The Cheroki had a gens called the blue gens, anisa- 

 hdkni. To the Omaha, Ponka and Sioux Indians blue is the symbolic 

 color for the winds, the moon, the water, the west (cf. Zuni, p. 41 j, the 



* Cf. the passage of Milfort on " Creek Memorial Beads," in Migr. Legend, vol. 1. 187^ 

 t Urlsperger, Nachricht, i. 860. 



