Many Helping Spirits - Hopi Katsinas

Sa´lakwmana - Sa´lakwtaqa
A maiden Katsina and her Brother
Rainmakers From the Gods - Hopi Katsinam

Getting back to the Hopi and their Katsinas, the Katsina represent all manner of different spirits and are represented in dance and in carved dolls. Hopi have practiced Katsina religion at least since A.D.1300 when Pueblo culture Katsina figures start showing up painted on pottery. Hopi, Pueblo and Zuni all practice Katsina rituals.

Representing different aspects of the natural world from rain to watermelon, celestal bodies or animals like deer mouse or crow, katsinas intercede on behalf of the people. Pictured above, Sa'lakwmama is a maiden katsina. Her headdress represents the clouds. She and her brother, Sa'lakwtaqa, dance at midsummer.

Eventually, westerners started collecting katsina dolls as art pieces. The Hopi, who keep much of their sacred traditions secret, create altered versions of their sacred objects to sell as art. Georgia O'Keffee the great American painter who lived in and loved New Mexico painted the katsina doll below.

Kachina - Georgia O'Keffee

Kachina Dance

Hopi Kachina Dance, watercolor, 1921
The black-and-white figures are Kosharis, or Hopi clowns.
Philbrook Museum of Art

Disruption and reorganization followed the collapse of Chaco Canyon culture until eventually the people of the Southwest settled into the tribal affinities that we know today. Katsinas (or Kachinas) remain an important part of their spiritual lives. The Katsinas represent mostly benevolent spirits who, in somewhat human form, intercede between the people and the deities who bring rain and all the rest of life’s blessings. Katsinas are impersonated during seasonal celebrations where they perform dances and are fed sacred corn with the understanding that they will relay to the Gods the worthiness of the people to receive continued blessings.

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

Hopi Katsina Ewoto
Chief of Katsinas Controls the Seasons

Rainmakers From the Gods - Hopi Katsinam

The Hopi word Koyaanisqatsi means, “crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living.”

It seems likely this is what happened to the Anasazi. After a millennium in the social, political and spiritual center of the entire San Juan Basin the great houses of Chaco Canyon were abandoned. No one knows what really happened but consider what we do know.

First, sophisticated architectural plans that took generations to construct in consistent precision alignment to the cardinal directions and seasonal rotations of the sun would have required both a high level of oversight and a large labor force. The great houses served as ceremonial centers to the entire region making it likely that a priestly class oversaw building construction, food production and seasonal rituals.

Then, a high arid desert culture dependent on agriculture was also dependent on rainfall and mountain snow. If the seasonal rituals were performed to induce rain for a century they worked. Then, around 1100 AD. A period of drought set in. Within fifty years the whole system collapsed, the great houses were abandoned and the people dispersed.

Undoubtedly drought would have caused the people to be discouraged and hungry. Did some form of human activity effect climate change? When the rituals performed to induce rain failed did the priests lose credibility and power? Did a state of Koyaanisqatsi cause the people to seek simpler lifestyles of greater harmony? It would seem so to me.

Earthenware Seed Jar, Anasazi Culture, 1100-1300 CE.

Grain of the Gods

Hopi Woman Grinding Corn, Adam Clark Vroman

gelatin silver print, 1897,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

One thing ice age hunting magic and later agricultural fertility rituals have in common is the central importance of food. Hunters relied on the shaman’s uncanny perception to secure a successful hunt. In the corn grower’s world the grain itself is considered sacred.

Corn as we know it today was slowly domesticated in the Valley of Mexico between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago. The name of its wild ancestral variety, teosinte, literally means “grain of the Gods”. As corn became domesticated it lost its ability to survive as a wild plant but also became a more palatable and a more valuable food source. From a tiny ear a few inches long with only a few kernels encased in hard shells it was selected over time to produce the plump juicy ears of corn we know today. 1

Corn remains influential in the spiritual traditions of the American Southwest. The Hopi prepare prayer-meal called Hooma from coarsely ground white maize. It is rubbed on the hands before handling sacred objects and is sprinkled on altars and shrines. The substance is considered sacred and is used for purification and as a vehicle to carry spiritual intentions. 2

1. Nicolle Ranger Fuller, National Science Foundation

2. Hopi Indian Altar Iconography by Armin W. Geertz

Teisinte - Modern Corn