662 



SWETETI SYMBOLISM 



[B. A. E. 



and hygienic — a number of individuals 

 entered the sweat-house together, appa- 

 rently actuated only by social instinct and 

 appreciation of the luxury of a steam 

 bath. Boiler says that the Sioux, after 

 severe exertions on a hunt, resorted to the 

 steam bath as a means of invigorating 

 their tired bodies. This practice seems 

 to have been very common among the 

 Plains tri])es. Mooney states that among 

 the Kiowa, Arapaho, and Cheyenne 

 sweating was an almost daily custom, 

 frequently having no other purpose than 

 to give pleasure. It is possible that this 

 practice is modern and that the sweat- 

 bath has lost some of its primitive impor- 

 tance and sacredness. (h. w. h. ) 



Sweteti {Swe-tH-t). A Chumashan vil- 

 lage formerly near Santa Barbara, Cal., 

 in the locality later called La Salina. — 

 Henshaw, Buenaventura MS. vocab., 

 B. A. E., 1884. 



Swiat (SwVat). A Squawmish village 

 community on the w. side of Howe sd., 

 Brit. Col.— Hill-Tout in Rep. Brit. A. A. S. , 

 474, 1900. 



Swift Bird. The half- Indian son of 

 Chapelle, a trader of note on the Missouri, 

 whose wife was a Teton Sioux; born at 

 Chappelle cr., Hughes co., S. Dak., about 

 1842. He lived the Indian life with his 

 mother's people, and was a member of 

 the noted " Fool Soldier Band" that res- 

 cued the Shetak captives from White 

 Lodge in Nov. 1862. Swift Bird was an 

 intelligent, peace-loving man, a sub-chief 

 and a recognized authority on the his- 

 torical happenings about old Ft Pierre. 

 He died in 1905. (d. e.) 



Swino ( Swi^-no). A Chumashan village 

 formerly in Ventura co. , Cal. , at a locality 

 now called Punta de la Loma. — Henshaw, 

 Buenaventura MS. vocab., B. A. E., 1884. 



Swinomisli. Said to be a subdivision of 

 the Skagit, formerly on Whidbey id., 

 N. w. Wash., now under the Tulalip school 

 superintendency. The Skagit and Swi- 

 nomish together numbered 268 in 1909. 

 Sba-lush.— Mallet in Ind. Aff. Rep., 198, 1877 



Swords. A term sometimes applied to 

 certain long blades of flaked stone made 

 and used by the aborigines. Such are 

 the wonderful blades of chalcedony and 

 obsidian employed ceremonially by cer- 

 tain California tribes, and the equally re- 

 markableflintbladesof themiddle Missis- 

 sippi Valley region. As none of thesestone 

 blades are so specialized as fully to war- 

 rant the use of the term "sword" in de- 

 scribing them, all are therefore classed as 

 knives (q. v.). In early colonial litera- 

 ture frequent mention is made of the 

 wooden swords of the tribes; but these 

 weapons appear to have had nothing in 

 their shape or manner of use to distin- 

 guish them from the flattish-bladed clubs 

 intended to break or bruise rather than 



to cut or pierce. The term tomahawk 

 is sometimes used as synonymous with 

 sword, as in the words of Strachey, who, 

 referring to the weapons of the Virginia 

 Indians, says: "Their swordes be made 

 of a kind of heavy wood which they have, 

 much like such wooden instruments as 

 our English women swingle their flax 

 withall, and which they call monococks, 

 as the salvadges in Bariena, in the West 

 Indies, call their (s) macanas, and be 

 alike made; but oftentymes they use for 

 swordes the home of a deare put through 

 a piece of wood in forme of a pickaxe. 

 Some use a long stone sharpened at both 

 ends, thrust through a handle of wood in 

 the same manner, and these last they 

 were wont to use instead of hatchetts to 

 fell a tree, or cut any massy thing in 

 sonder; but now, by trucking with us, 

 they have thowsands of our iron hatch- 

 etts, such as thev be" (Strachey, Virginia, 

 Hakluyt Soc. Pub., vi, 106, 1849). See 

 Daggers, Knives, Obsidian. (w. h. h. ) 



Syilalkoabsh {S' i/i-lal-ko-absh). A Sa- 

 lish band, said to be subordinate to the 

 Skopamish of Green r., w. Wash. (Mallet 

 in Ind. Aff. Rep., 198, 1887). They are 

 now with the Muckleshoot under the 

 Tulalip school superintendency, but their 

 number is not separately rejiorted. 



Symbolism. A symbol is an object or 

 an action which conveys a meaning dis- 

 tinct from the actual concept correspond- 

 ing to the object or to the action. By 

 symbolism is meant either the quality of 

 an object or action of having a symbolic 

 meaning besides its proper meaning, or 

 the tendency to connect symbolic mean- 

 ings with objects or actions. 



The symbolic tendencies of the North 

 American Indians are very highly de- 

 veloped. They are strongest among the 

 Indians of the S. W. , of the Plains, and 

 of the N. W. coast, and, on the whole, 

 decrease in intensity toward the western 

 plateaus and the N. Symbolism is found 

 particularly in art, ritual, and mythology. 

 One of the most characteiistic asjiects of 

 primitive symbolism is found in decora- 

 tive art, which at times serves purely 

 decorative ends, but frequently is sym- 

 bolic. The degree of symbolism varies 

 considerably in different areas. In the 

 semirealistic art of the n. Pacific coast, 

 characteristic parts of animals are utilized 

 as symbols of the whole animal — the 

 beaver's incisors for the beaver, the 

 killer-whale's fin for the killer-whale. 

 Cases in which remoter associations pre- 

 vail are few and uncertain. The joint, 

 represented by the "eye " pattern, stands 

 sometimes for the idea "power of mo- 

 tion." In California and in the interior 

 of British Columbia, where highly de- 

 veloped geometrical decoration of bas- 

 ketry occurs, the symbolic significance is 



