473 



H. Stolpe in "Studier öfver amerikansk Ornamentik", discusses 

 these and other Eskimo ornaments at some length; he broaches a 

 hypothesis that this zig-zag pattern, and another, consisting of hnes 

 crossing one another, has arisen as an imitation (owing to 'expec- 

 tancy') of the cross wrapping of whale-bone cord with which the 

 stone blade in the original type of the ulo was fastened to the 

 wooden handle, viz, by holes pierced in its upper part. Later on 

 they found it sufficient to join the blade into a slit in the under 

 side of the handle, but retained for some time the whalebone cord 

 lashing on the upper back of the shaft merely as an ornament (cf. 

 iin\ Amd. 45). The last stage was that this veritable wrapping 

 was abandoned, but that the craftsman cannot help marking it in 

 its old place, thus producing the incised ornament of lines crossing 

 one another. — It is however hardly probable that the very widely 

 diffused zig-zag pattern on bone implements should have this same 

 special origin. 



[n each of the two fields of inv. Amd. 86 which are pro- 

 duced by the connection of the inward curving ornamental 

 lines at the point where they approach most closely to each 

 other, the craftsman has incised a cross, thus four crosses 

 in all. 



The cross ornament had, as we know, developed in Ame- 

 rica even before the time of Colombus, and is found in the 

 ornamentation of the Indians in various forms ^). On the other 

 hand, 1 find no traces of its naturalization in the ornamentation 

 of the Eskimo. In the illustrations on books I have only 

 found it in a few cases: as far as Alaska is concerned, on 

 a wooden spoon in Murdoch^), which is designated as new, 

 in a couple of ivory ear pendants, and on a wooden box 

 in Hoffman •''), who, however, expressly states with regard to 

 the latter that the cross on it must be ascribed to Russian 



M .See, e. g. Handbook of American Indians, article cross (liur. Am. Ethnol. 



Bulletin 30, p 365—367); Wilson: The Swastika; Stolpe: Amerikansk 



Ornamentik; Hein: Mäander, Kreuze etc. in Amerika. 

 -'. Murdoch I, 104, flg. 42, 

 ') HolTman 806, PI. 32 and 34. 



