THE MUSEUM. 
19 
The nation which built these cities were the Mayas, and they were also the con¬ 
structors of that other wonderful series of edifices known as the city of Copan. 
There, too, a remarkable cross is found, sculptured on one of the massive stones fallen 
from a temple. It is, however, a Greek cross, the extremities of the arms curved and 
ornamented, and in the centre, at the point of junction of the four arms, is seated the 
ugly figure of a gigantic frog. The meaning of this is obvious when we learn from an 
ancient writer that in the symbolism of those nations the frog stood for the rains, and 
bodied forth the goddess of water. The Mayas, indeed, called the cross by a word 
which in their tongue means “the tree of rains.” 
Passing to Mexico, we find the cross to have been an almost universal religious 
symbol, and still with the meaning of the four winds and the rains which they bring. 
As such, the cloak worn by Quetzalcoatl, who in one of his aspects was the god of the 
winds, was ornamented with numerous crosses painted upon it or woven into it. Three 
of these Mexican crosses are represented in the following cuts: — 
IlillllliH 
THREE CROSSES, AZTEC. 
These also are from Charnay’s very beautifully illustrated volume, and are from 
specimens of ancient work which he himself found. 
Among the ruder tribes of the area of the United States many examples of the 
employment of this symbol could be given. The “ rain-maker” of the Lenape, when 
he would invoke the gods of the air to send the fertilizing showers down upon the 
crops, would begin his exorcisms by first drawing on the ground the figure of a cross; 
the Creeks of Georgia, at their green corn festivals, held in honor of the deities of 
fertility, placed four logs together, end to end, forming a Greek cross; and the traveller 
on our western prairies will occasionally come across the same figure, made by placing 
large stones in rows, the relics of the rites of the “great medicine lodge,” when 
the votaries have been summoning the divinities of the air and the guardians of 
the rains. 
These are but a few of the examples of the distribution of this widely venerated 
symbol in America. Its presence excited the earnest attention of the early explorers, 
especially those of the Roman Catholic faith, and several volumes have been written to 
show that it is a proof of early missionary voyages to this continent; but we may 
rest assured that it had no such meaning in American religions as is associated with it 
in Latin Christianity, and that its presence is only an example of that parallelism of 
art development referred to at the outset of this article. 
