The Museum 
Vol. I. PHILADELPHIA, JUNE, 1885. No. 2. 
For The Museum. 
THE SYMBOL OF THE CROSS IN AMERICA. 
BY DR. DANIEL G. BRINTON. 
Philosophers tell us much about the uniformity of nature; how in the realm of 
inorganic existence like causes are at work producing like effects. So it also seems to 
be in the realm of mind. Go where we will over the world, seek as we please in the 
records of the past, we find man actuated by the same motives, cheered by the same 
hopes, betraying the same fears, and bodying forth his half-formed ideas under the 
same material symbols. 
The time was when such similarities were supposed to indicate that nations widely 
remote must yet have borrowed at some distant date their knowledge one from the 
other. There are still some who favor this view, or who have been so impressed by 
these strange parallelisms of culture that they attribute them to an ancient revelation 
whose teachings had never been forgotten. 
One of the most .striking of these widespread symbols in early art is the cross. 
It is found in the culture of every race, and on the ancient monuments of every 
continent. More than this, it seems to have been closely bound up with the deepest 
mysteries of religion, and to represent in some way the strongest emotions of the human 
heart, and this in the most diverse mythologies and forms of worship. I need not 
speak here of its sacredness in the Old World, from the period when it was adopted as 
the symbol of fertility by the ancient Egyptians, down to the present day, when it is 
regarded as the most sacred of all figures by the majority of Christian worshipers. 
I shall only speak of it as a holy form among the aboriginal tribes of America. 
The cross is, in its elements, an extremely simple figure. These elements are 
merely one straight line crossing another. From it, however, an extraordinary variety 
of modifications have been evolved. In mediaeval heraldry there were represented not 
less than 227 different crosses. The most familiar base forms are the Greek and the 
Latin crosses. In the former the four arms are equal in length, in the latter one is 
prolonged to form the upright which supports the others. Both of these forms were 
found among the religious symbols of the ancient Americans. One of the most perfect 
examples of the Latin cross is that inscribed on the famous tablet of Palenque, an 
