516 



PUEBLO POTTERY AND ZUNI CULTURE-GROWTH. 



The circles .'ire made by the wind driving partly broken weed-stalks 

 around and around their places of attachment, until the fibers by which 

 they are anchored sever and the stalks are blown away. The volutes 

 are formed by the stems of red-top grass and of a round-topped variety 

 of the chenopodium, drifted onward by the whirlwind yet around and 

 around their bushy adhesive tops. The Pueblos, observing these marks, 

 especially that they are abundant after a wind storm., have wondered 

 at their similarity to the painted scrolls on the pottery of their ancestors. 

 Even to-day they believe the sand marks to be the tracks of the whirl 

 wind, which is a God in their mythology of such distinctive personality 



pirpfpnin^ 



Fig. 553 —The fret of basket decoration. 



Fir;. 554. — The fret of pottery decoration. 



Fig. 555.— Scroll as ovolved from fret in pottery decoration. 



that the circling eagle is supposed to be related to him. They have 

 naturally, therefore, explained the analogy above noted by the inference 

 that their ancestors, in painting the volute, had intended to symbolize 

 the whirlwind by representing his tracks. Thenceforward the scroll 

 was drawn on certain classes of pottery to represent the whirlwind, 

 modifications of it (for instance, by the color-sign belonging to any one 

 of the "six regions") to signify other personified winds. So, also, the 

 semicircle is classed as emblematic of the rainbow (a' mi to Ian me) ; the, 

 obtuse angle, as of the sky («' po yan we); the zigzag line as lightning 

 (ici' lo lo an ne); terraces as the sky horizons (a'wi thluia we), and modi- 



