Guide to Hopi Kachina (katsina) Dolls

  Guide to Hopi Kachina (katsina) Dolls   Hopi, (literally translated) means a person who behaves in a polite or peaceful way. The Hopi are a communal farming people who reside on and near three mesas in northeastern Arizona. More than nine thousand Hopi live on a 1.5 million-acre reservation that encompasses a dozen villages. The word kachina (kah-chee-nah) has long been used by outsiders to refer to any of the hundreds of spiritual beings central to Hopi religious life as well as to the dolls that depict them. However, according to the Hopi, katsina (kahts-ee-nah) is more correct and preferred. In English, the plural of kachina is kachinas, but in the Hopi language the plural of katsina is katsinam. The first known kachina dolls were obtained by traders in 1857. From then on others were picked up sporadically until about the end of the 19th century. Little is known about these except that they were basically simple in style, with slightly detailed masks and simplified bodies...

The Hopi Kachina Cult The land of the American Southwest is known for its searing desert and towering peaks, but between these extremes are areas suitable for human habitation. The majority of Southwestern Indian tribes are found in the uplands, on the flanks of the high mountains among pinyon pines and juniper. Here, access is easy to both the game of the highlands and to the protein-rich seeds of the desert plants. The Southwestern tribes represent two modes of adaptation: the sedentary people occupying small villages and raising crops; and the nomadic groups that depend on hunting and more recently on the raising of livestock. Often the two occupy the same land, though using it for different purposes. It is the sedentary Indians of Arizona and New Mexico; those dwelling in small communities of tightly packed houses that the Spanish Conquistadors called "pueblos." Farmers in any part of the world have always been dependent on the weather for successful crops, and the Pueblo...