This Zuñi idol was sent to the Royal Ethnographical Museum at Berlin as part of a representative collection by Mr. Frank H. Cushing and has been figured and described in the publications of the Museum, with notes by Dr. E. Seler.(18) It represents the Zuñi god Ätchialätopa whose attributes are stone knives, who is the patron of the secret society, "Small fire" and who is identified with a great star. His fetish represents him as standing on the centre of a cross, formed of four beams placed vertically and perforated with step-like perforations. The ends are cut out like those of Xiuhtecuhtli's blue emblem. Two parallel bars, the upper one of which is painted blue, the color of heaven, and the lower painted green, the color of the earth, convey the ever-present native idea of the Above and Below. The arms of the cross are painted red with yellow ends which, according to Mr. Cushing, represent the light emanating, in four directions, from the star. The arms are distinctly associated with the cardinal points and each supports the effigies of a mountain lion and a bird--typifying, evidently, as in Mexico, the Above and Below. This cross, with the figure standing on its centre, is suspended from above and, during a certain ceremony, it is set into rapid gyratory motion, from left to right by the officiating high priest.
It is impossible not to see, in this fetish, a swastika in substantial form and in actual rotation; whilst the figure of the god, decorated with stone knives, moves as on a pivot in the centre, presenting exactly the same idea as in the Mexican image of the god held in the centre of a cross-symbol by the jaws of a tecpatl or flint knife. It is unnecessary to mention again here that the only star in the heaven, which could possibly have been regarded as a centre of rotation, is Polaris; but I should like to draw attention to the fact that bunches of feathers are attached to the extremities of the cross-beams and to the summit of the terraced head-dress of the fetish and recall the circumstance that, amongst the Mexicans and Mayas, the names for feather were almost identical with those for heaven or something celestial and divine.
As the Zuñi god is said to be standing on his red star (an mo-yätchun thlana) and figures as a centre of rotation, I look upon this fetish as affording most striking confirmation of my conclusions concerning the origin of the swastika and cross symbols. If it is certain that, at the present day, the Zuñis associate this star-god with Sirius and their cross symbol with the morning star, then it is quite obvious that they have lost the original meaning of the rotating-star fetish, which could never have been suggested by either of these or, indeed, by any other heavenly body but Polaris. I regret that space does not permit me to consider here, more fully, other close analogies between ancient Mexican and modern Zuñi religious ceremonies, etc., besides those which have been so well described by Dr. J. Walter Fewkes.