The Katcina Altars in Hopi Worship

The Walpi Katcina is next in simplicity to that of Cipaulovi. It has instead of a meal picture, however, a reredos upon which are depicted rain and rain cloud symbols, and the two supplementary uprights, with pictures of Tunwup referred to in the Oraibi altar. There are zigzag slats, symbols of lightning, and rounded sticks with emblematic corn designs, neither of which, however, is as complicated as at Oraibi.

The Katcina tiponi is prominent, but there are no images on the altar, no basket with seeds and feathered sticks, and no crook with attached handle. While, therefore, the altar of the Walpi Niman Katcina is more complicated than at Cipaulovi, it is not as rich in accessories as that at Oraibi.[11]

The Katcina altar in this, the most populous village at the Middle Mesa, is simpler than at Oraibi, but more complicated than the Walpi representative. It has, in addition to the objects found on the Walpi altar, two idols or images, one on each side. The zigzag sticks are lacking, but stone implements similar to those on the far simpler Cipaulovi altar are present. There are two emblems of maize, as at Walpi, and numerous sticks, representing growing corn, recalling the same symbols of the Cipaulovi equivalent.

It will be seen, therefore, that while it is the nearest of all to the Oraibi altar, an additional idol, the “Mother” or basket of seeds, etc., the crook (naluchoya), and the picture of Ho’katcina are unrepresented at Miconinovi.

The two images of the Miconinovi altar are apparently the Little War God and the Germ Maid. There may be a doubt of the accuracy in identification of the latter, but she has the symbols of rain clouds on the head and in the hand. The other image has the parallel marks on the body, symbols of Puukonhoya, but it must be confessed that the same marks are found on the Cotokinungwu idol although the latter image has the characteristic cone on the head which is not present in the Miconinovi image. The evidence would thus favor the conclusion that the right hand figurine of the Miconinovi altar represents Puukonhoya rather than Cotokinungwu, and as far as known Oraibi is the sole pueblo which has an idol of Cotokinungwu on the flute altars, of which those of four pueblos are known.[12]

A comparative study of the symbolism, simple and elaborate, of the Katcina altars leads me to the conclusion that the most complicated altar, that at Oraibi, is the result simply of elaboration of the less developed altars, of the introduction of new elements. Analysis reduces this composite symbolism to rain clouds, fertilization, growth, and maturity of corn, the elements which dominate the whole Hopi ritual.

A somewhat more detailed statement of this point is perhaps desirable. In the Hopi ritual three methods of representing supernatural personages are adopted. First, personifications by men, women, and children. Second, representations by images or idols. Third, representations by pictures, conventionalized objects, or symbols. These three methods may coexist; they are interchangeable, and may be phylogenetically connected in the development of rituals. In the public ceremonials the first method is almost invariably adopted, but in secret rites all three are employed.[13] The representations on the Katcina altars at Cipaulovi and Walpi are limited to the third method; those at Miconinovi and Oraibi include likewise the second.

There is no need of going into detail regarding the meanings of the symbols of the third method of representation as used on Katcina altars. The simplicity of this method, here applied, is apparent, and the symbols are those of rain clouds, lightning, and corn in various stages of growth.

A discussion of the second method, or representation by images and what they mean when used on Katcina altars, will bring out several points of interest. These images, commonly called idols,[14] occur on the Katcina altars of Oraibi and Miconinovi and represent the same conceptions as the symbols. The idol with the raincloud coronet is a representation of a corn-rain supernatural personage who has many names and appears in ceremonials both public and secret of many different priesthoods. In the ceremony called the Lalakontu she is either personated by women in the public dance or represented by images on the altar and is called Lakonemana (Lakone Maid). In the October ceremony, called Mamzrauti, she is likewise represented by the first and second methods,[15] and is called Mamzraumana.[16] The same is true of the Owakulti, still performed at Oraibi, although extinct at Walpi, where she is known as Owakulmana.

During the dramatization in the Antelope kiva of the Snake Ceremonials at Walpi she is personated by a maid called the Tcuamana[17] (Snake Maid) and no effigy of her is employed in this archaic ceremony. The Flute Society represent her in their rites in both the first and second ways, with two girls in the public dance, and images on the altars in the secret observances, where she is called Lenyamana (Flute Maid).[18] In Palülükonti[19] she is personated by the first method, and is called Calakomana. The most elaborate images of this being, also called Calakomanas, are secular in character, and are used as dolls. All her different names, and some others which might be mentioned, are aliases, sacerdotal society names of the same mythological conception, which may more accurately be called Muiyinwu, the Germ Goddess, who is likewise associated with rain.

The symbolism of images on the left side of the Katcina altars of Miconinovi and of Oraibi is highly conventionalized, but clearly enough developed to show that the images represent the same Rain-Germ Goddess who, in some ceremonials, is personified by a girl; in others by a similar image. This image is called the Rain-Germ (Corn)[20] Maid because in the most elaborate representations of her this bifid nature is strongly indicated by symbolism. Her idol on the Miconinovi Flute altar has four symbols of corn on the body, and bears three rain cloud tablets on the head. In numerous dolls[21] she has a symbol of an ear of corn on the forehead and an elaborate raincloud tablet with a rainbow on the head.

The other idol, likewise known in various ceremonials by tutelary sacerdotal aliases, is the male cultus hero, the fructifying principle symbolized by lightning and personified according to the society, by such supernaturals as Cotokinungwu, Puukonhoya, Tcuatiyo, Lentiyo, and the like.

In this totem-pole-like doll we have Hehea, the male, with two Calakos, females, as their symbolism clearly indicates. The Hopi have a legend that the Calako maids brought the first corn to their ancestors, and in that legend it is said that Calakotaka, or the male Calako, a sun god, initiated the youth into the Katcinas by flogging them, as Tunwup still functions in Powamu.

The etymology of the word Calako is unknown to me, and it may have been derived from the same source as the Zuñi word. A corn husk, and by derivation a cigarette paper, is called by the Hopi a calakabu.

The symbolism of the male Calako is identical with that of Tunwup and resembles that of the Zuñi Shalako. The Hopi celebrate their sun-prayer-stick making in July, the Zuñi in December, or at different solstices. The Hopi say that they derived their celebration from the Zuñi (see Fifteenth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethnol.). When this interesting ceremonial is performed at Sitcomovi the Calako maids do not appear, and the four giants with avian symbolism apparently personate a sun drama, but as a derivative from Zuñi we must await an interpretation of the original for conclusive evidence of its meaning.

The images of the altars as well as symbolic designs depicted upon them show us that fructification, growth and maturing of corn, and rain clouds are predominant in representations on Niman Katcina altars.

I have not offered a suggestion in regard to the identity of the strange being, Tunwup, nor am I quite sure that he can be interpreted, but I strongly suspect that he is none other than the Sun, a worship of whom pervades the whole Katcina ritual.[22]

The element which predominates in the worship at the Powamu ceremony is the fructification of germs; and as beans figure so conspicuously in it as symbols, it’s popularly called the “Bean Planting,” while a ceremony following it is Palülükonti,[23] in which corn is sprouted, is called the “Corn Planting.” As in Hopi conceptions the Sun is father of all life, a ceremony called the Powalawu, appropriate to the object or aim of Powamu, precedes the planting of beans in the kivas. The ceremony is strictly a part of Powamu, showing it is a form of direct sun worship. In it a special sun altar is made of a sand mosaic upon which, during ceremonial songs, a tray of meal composed of all kinds of seeds used by the Hopi is copiously sprinkled on the picture of the sun; medicine water is then thrown upon the same to typify the rains which under the sun’s action causes these seeds to germinate and grow.

My comparative study of the Hopi Katcina altars has therefore led me to the following conclusions: Their symbolism, whether in pictures, rites, or of images, refer to two elements, or supernaturals, which control rain and growth of corn. The latter are male and female, representing the sky god and the earth goddess, the father and the mother, the lightning and the earth, the two sexes without whose union life is impossible.[24]

The ceremonials performed about the Katcina altars admit of the same interpretation, and it remains for me to indicate their nature and bearing on the above conclusions.

A sand picture of the great paternal deity, Tawa, the Sun, has never been reported from any Tusayan altar except Oraibi. Such a picture is made in Powalawu, the opening ceremony of Powamu and described by Mr. Voth.

The altar is made on the floor of the kiva, and is placed on a layer of valley sand on which are made four concentric zones of different colored sands surrounding a middle circle of white sand on which is drawn a stellate figure of the sun. These different concentric zones are yellow, green, red, and white, beginning with the smallest, and ending with a peripheral in white. They are separated by black lines, and a quartz crystal[25] to which a string, with attached feather, is tied, is placed in the middle of the picture of the sun. A quadrant apart on the periphery of the picture, beyond the white zone, there are four arrow-shaped projections, colored yellow, green, red, and white, following a circuit with the center of the whole sand painting on the left hand. These, like the zones, are made of differently colored sands and are rimmed with black. Across the yellow arrow-headed figure extend several parallel red lines of sand; across the green, white; across the red, yellow; and across the white, green.

On the supposition that the inner figure represents the sun, the four peripheral arrow-shaped appendages are supposed to represent heads of the lightning snakes of the four cardinal points, north, west, south, and east, as their colors indicate.[26]

The accessories used in the celebration of the Powalawu are arranged on the floor radially about this sand picture, and fall into two groups, one on lines in continuation of the rays of the central figure, the others on intermediary lines. There are, therefore, four sets of both groups alternating with each other.

The objects which form a single group of the former in this quaternary arrangement are as follows: A yellow reed, a paho-stand, and a ball made of powdered pikumi.[27] Intermediate between these, also with a quaternary arrangement, there is a ball made of clay painted black in which a feather is attached, a blackened reed, and a stone arrow point. The paho-stand with these objects consists of a cubical block in which the following objects are inserted in line: A small crook, a green double paho, several sticks (called civapi, howapki, honyi, masiswapi), a black eagle feather with four nakwakwocis tied to it and a ring with netted cord, and finally a paho of a color corresponding to the cardinal direction in which the paho-stand is placed.

The details of the Powalawu ceremony have been described by Voth, from whose account I will mention a few generalities.

The celebrants gathered at the altar at about noon and sang many songs with accompanying events which were performed by Siima, the chief, now dead.

1. White earth, roots, and honey added to the medicine bowl.

2. Meal made of watermelon, melon, squash, bean, and corn seeds, sprinkled carefully over the sand picture.

3. Charm liquid stirred and sprinkled on sand altar.

4. Priest ascended ladder of the kiva and blew a yellow feather through a reed from the north paho-stand out of the hatch toward the north, after which he blew a whistle pointing it the same way. This was done in sequence to the west, south, and east, taking objects from the altar each time.

5. Priest ascended ladder with a black reed from north cluster, and blew from it, toward the north, a small feather. He then blew a feather in sequence from the four stones, ascending the ladder each time.[28] He licked honey from the stones and spat to the four cardinal points.

6. Couriers carried the clay balls to distant shrines, and four priests bore the four paho-stands, reeds, and yellow balls to other shrines, also at cardinal points.

While the above events were transpiring songs were sung by the assembled priests, and at the close the quartz crystal on the Sun picture was raised from the stand and handled by each priest, who sucked it, and pressed it to his heart.

7. Ceremonial smoke.

8. Prayers.

9. The sand gathered up and carried outside the kiva.

10. Feast.

The aim of the ceremony appears clear. Meal of all kinds of seed sprinkled on the Sun typifies fructification of all Hopi food plants. Water is poured on the meal as symbolic of the rains which the celebrants hope will increase their crops.

The details of the nine days’ ceremonials of the Powamu at Oraibi need not be described here, but it may be well to indicate their general character.[29]

Beans were planted in boxes in all the kivas on the day after Powalawu (February 5, 1894) and were forced to germinate in the heated rooms, where they grew for 16 days. From February 13 (the first day of the nine days’ ceremony) until the 17th, Siima, the chief, visited all these kivas, and when not so employed passed his time in one of the rooms fasting, or making prayer objects.

I am indebted to Mr. Voth for my knowledge of the secret rites of the Powamu at Oraibi. They supplement that which I have published elsewhere on the Walpi representation, from which, however, it differs very considerably. (See Fifteenth Ann. Rept., Bur. Amer. Ethnol.; also Amer. Anthrop., Vol. VII, No. 1, 1894, and Int. Archiv für Ethnog., Band VIII, 1895.)

The Powamu altar was erected on February 17, and from that day until the ninth (February 21) daily songs of interesting character were sung about it.

Many dolls, bows and arrows[30] for children are likewise made in the kivas, and the chiefs prepared prayer emblems and other ceremonial objects.

The culmination of Powamu, when we should expect the acme of the series of rites, occurred on the afternoon of the ninth day (February 21), when the sprouting beans were pulled up, and distributed with dolls and other presents, and when certain personages of supernatural character brought significant gifts to the priests. It is the last event to which I wish especially to call the reader’s attention.

This episode, which seems to me to bring out clearly the aim of the Powamu ceremony, may be called the advent and departure of Hahaiwuqti[31] followed by the Eototo and other supernaturals. The main events of this episode were as follows: The man who personified the “Old Woman” (Hahaiwuqti) having masked and otherwise arrayed himself at a shrine[32] outside the pueblo, began to howl vigorously. Siima the chief of Powamu, made offerings at this shrine and drew on the ground, with sacred meal, several figures of rain clouds about 20 yards nearer the village. Hahaiwuqti, as if tolled along by this mystic sign, moved to it and again began to howl. Siima made another set of rain cloud figures, again about 20 yards nearer the village, and the howling Hahaiwuqti advanced to the second meal figures. Halting thus at intervals, and howling as she went, the “Old Woman” at last stood in the public plaza of Oraibi, and in answer to her cries people came to her, sprinkled her with pinches of meal and took objects from the basket she bore.

She then sought the entrance to the kiva in which the priests were engaged in ceremonial smoking and singing. She stood like a statue at the hatch, howling as if to announce her coming to the priests within the room below. They soon responded, and came out of the kiva headed by Siima with a bowl of medicine and an aspergill, followed by a second priest with a reed cigarette and a coal of fire, and others with bags of sacred meal. Hahaiwuqti was asperged, smoked upon and sprinkled with meal, and presented with a paho accompanied with a prayer, after which the priests returned to their room and the “Old Woman” went away to the west. A few minutes later men disguised as Eototo and Ahul approached the kiva hatch near which some unknown Katcina had made in meal on the ground a cross and rain cloud. Eototo rubbed meal on each of the four sides of the kiva hatchway[33] and poured water into the kiva entrance from the sides, as I have described in my accounts of the Walpi and Cipaulovi Niman Katcina. Ahul followed his example, whereupon the priests again emerged from the kiva and treated these two visitors in the same way they had used Hahaiwuqti. They received corn in return, after which the visitors retired, following the “Old Woman.”

After their departure, two “mudheads” (Koyimse) and three Katcinas, two men wearing Humis, Jemes, Katcina masks and one the maskette and apparel of the female Humis, approached the kiva entrance.[34] Then came personifications of Ana, Hehea, and two Tacab Katcinas. Following these were three lame Howaik Katcinas, masked as their predecessors, and clearly designated by appropriate symbolism.

At each new arrival the priests in the kiva responded, emerged from their room, and treated these visitors as they had their leader, Hahaiwuqti.

As the masked personages left the village they passed westward.[35]

When the priests had retired to their kiva for the last time they smoked on the presents left by their strange visitors, and the chief divided the gift Eototo had brought into 10 bundles, and gave one package to each Powamu priest. Then followed minor events, as taking down the altar, which do not now concern us. The departure of Hahaiwuqti and her band closed the main ceremony.[36]

It certainly seems legitimate to conclude that this acme of the Powamu is a dramatic representation embodying the aim of the whole ceremony. It is a visit of Hahaiwuqti in her disguise as known to Katcinas, followed by her children bringing gifts and receiving prayers. What other prayers are more appropriate to Hahaiwuqti than petitions for abundant crops, or what gifts more desirable than those Eototo[37] gave in a symbolic way, viz: water and sprouting vegetation? The rejuvenescence of nature is always to a primitive mind akin to sorcery, and believed to be brought about by the sorcerer’s arts, and hence this ceremony takes place in the Powako-muyamuh, or Wizard Moon, which gives it its name by syncopation, Powamu.[38]

We are justified in regarding the Katcinas as spirits of the dead, or divinized ancestors, shades or breath-bodies of those who once lived, as mortuary prayers clearly indicate. The theory of ancestor worship gives us a ready explanation for the fact that ancestral spirits are represented by masked persons, and as a corollary, a suggestion regarding the significance of the different symbolism of those masks.

The Hopi, like many people, look back to mythic times when they believe their ancestors lived in a “paradise,” or state or place where food (corn) was plenty and rains abundant, a world of perpetual summer and flowers. Their legends recount how, when corn failed or rain ceased, cultus heroes have sought these imaginary or ideal ancestral homes to learn the “medicine,” songs, prayers, fetishes, and charms efficacious to influence or control supernaturals, which blessed these happy lands. Each sacerdotal society tells the story of its own hero bringing from that land a bride, who transmitted to her son the knowledge of the altars, songs, and prayers, which forced the crops to grow and the rains to fall in her native country. To become thoroughly conversant with the rites he is said to marry the maid; otherwise at his death they would be lost, since knowledge of the “medicine” is believed to be transmitted, not through his clan, but that of his wife. So the Snake hero brought the Snake-Maid (corn-rain girl) from the underworld; the Flute hero, her sister, the Flute-Maid; the Little War God, the Lakonemana and other supernaturals.

A Katcina hero in the old times, “on a rabbit hunt came to a region where there was no snow. There he saw other Katcina people dancing amidst beautiful gardens. He received melons from them and carrying them home told a strange story of the people who inhabited a country where there were flowering plants in midwinter. The hero and a comrade were sent back, and they stayed with their people, returning home loaded with fruit in February. They had learned the songs of those with whom they had lived, and taught them in the kiva of their own people.”[39]

In the ceremonies with unmasked personifications, or those celebrated yearly between July and January which are not Katcinas, an attempt is made to reproduce rites which legends declare the cultus or ancestral heroes saw in the lands they visited, which lands are reputed to be variously situated, but generally in the underworld, to augment the efficacy of the ceremonies. In the ceremonies between January and August, or those called Katcinas, the same feeling is dominant. Each performance is an endeavor to reproduce a traditional ancestral Katcina celebration. The performers are masked because, according to their stories, the participants in those ancient rites are reputed to have had zoomorphic, or at least only partially anthropomorphic forms. The symbolism of the mask portrays the totems of those legendary participants, and those of corn, rain, water-loving animals, lightning and the like, therefore predominate.

I have shown in preceding papers that both the symbols and figurines on Katcina altars refer to the sun, rain clouds, and the fertilization, growth and maturation of corn. It has likewise been made evident that the ceremonial acts of the priests are employed to affect the supernaturals who control these elements or produce these necessities.

The priests strive to reproduce traditional ceremonials without innovations, and are guided in their presentation by current legends. Masked personations of ancestral spirits are, therefore, introduced that the performance may be more realistic, or closer to the reputed ancestral ceremony. This feeling is at base the reason why the priests, unable to explain why they perform certain rites in certain ways, respond, “we make our altars, sing our songs, and say our prayers in this way because our old people did so, and surely they knew how to make the corn grow and the rains fall.”

It appears from what is written above that the cosmic supernaturals which appear on the Hopi Katcina altars are the same as pointed out in the previous article, the Sun, the Sky, Earth, Fire, Ancestors, and that idols are likewise prominent. The Hopi, like all the pueblos, are commonly called sun worshippers, but the relations of the altars of the Katcina cult to Sky God (Sun) worship is very instructive.

In conclusion it should be said that, although the ceremonial practices of the Hopi Katcinas appear very complicated, they are in reality simpler than the literature of them would seem to indicate. In the first place, we must bear in mind that in the Hopi religion the association of religion and ethics is very weak, the duty of the priest being to perform his part of the ceremony as nearly as possible in the traditional way it was inherited from his ancestors. Secondly, the rite and ceremony show that the main object desired is a material not a spiritual one, primarily to fertilize Indian corn, his national food, and incidentally to protect his own life and that of his family. The objects of his worship form together a complex composed of closely allied elements in which the supernatural powers that control the food are preemiment.

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