United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This is shared by both Indians and whites, and the former generally makes his totem on the rock surface, or adds that of his gods, the sun, rain-cloud, or katcinas. Inscriptions recording events are less common, as they are more difficult to indicate with exactitude in this system of pictography.
The ruin was spoken of in the ceremony as the Sipapüni, the abode of the dead who had become katcinas, to whom the prayers said in the circuits were addressed. The two conical mounds on the mesa above Sikyatki are often referred to that ancient pueblo, but from their style of architecture and from other considerations I am led to connect them with other phratries of Tusayan.
As a child she receives much attention and toys galore, as the parents are very fond of their children and devote much time to their amusement. They make dolls of their Katcinas which are given to the children to play with. A Katcina is the emblem of a deity that is represented either in the form of a doll carved out of wood, woven into a plaque or basket, or painted on tiles and pottery.
These katcinas, as divinized ancestors, are supposed to return to the villages and receive prayers for rain. In strict accord with this conception the rain-cloud symbol is placed, in some instances, on the slab of rock in the graves of the dead at Sikyatki.
Two of these giants, under another name, but with the same symbolism, are depicted on the altars of the katcinas at Walpi and Mishoñinovi, where they represent the sun. A chief personifying the same supernatural flogs children when they are initiated into the knowledge of the katcinas.
While we were taking from their ancient resting places the slabs of stone which formed this Awatobi shrine, the workmen reminded me how closely it resembled the pahoki used by the katcinas, and when, a month later, I witnessed the Nimán-katcina ceremony at Walpi, and accompanied the chief, Intiwa, when he deposited the prayer-sticks in that shrine, I was again impressed by the similarity of the two, one in a ruin deserted two centuries ago, the other still used in the performance of ancient rites, no doubt much older than the overthrow of the great pueblo of Antelope mesa.
The associates of the katcinas are the so-called "mud-heads" or clowns, an order of priests as widely distributed as the Pueblo area. In Tusayan villages they are called the Tcukuwympkia, and are variously personated.
A crook in the form of a staff to which an ear of corn and several feathers are attached is borne by katcinas or masked participants in certain rain dances. It is held in the hand by a personage who flogs the children when they are initiated into certain religious societies. Many other instances might be mentioned in which this crozier-like object is carried by important personages.
This fact, like so many others drawn from a study of the Tusayan ritual, indicates that the cult of the Corn-maids is more vigorous today than it was when Sikyatki was in its prime. Many pictures of masks on modern Tusayan bowls are identified as Tacab or Navaho katcinas. Their symbolism is well characterized by chevrons on the cheeks or curved markings for eyes.
This simple ornament, called the friendship sign, is commonly used in the decoration of the bodies of katcinas, and has been likened to the interlocking of fingers or hands of the participants in certain dances, the fingers half retracted with inner surfaces approximated, the palms of the hands facing in opposite directions and the wrists at opposite points.
Word Of The Day