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Updated: June 12, 2025
A somewhat similar design is painted on the side of the helmets of some katcina dancers, where the bracts or petals are colored in sequence, with the pigments corresponding to the six directions north, west, south, east, above, and below. In the decoration on the ancient Sikyatki bowl we find seven peripheral bracts, one of which is speckled.
As in the case of the decoration of all similar sacred paraphernalia, there is a legend which accounts for the origin of the katcina with the imprint of the hand on its mask.
In the decoration of ancient pottery I find no trace of figures of the clown-priests, or tcukuwympkiya, who are so prominent in modern Tusayan katcina celebrations. Many handles of ladles made at Hano in late times are modeled in the form of the Paiakyamu, a glutton priesthood peculiar to that Tanoan pueblo.
None of these figures, however, have yet been found on ancient Tusayan ceramics. Taken in connection with facts adduced by Hodge indicative of a recent advent of this vigorous Athapascan tribe into Tusayan, it would seem that the use of the Tacab katcina pictures was of recent date, and is therefore not to be expected on the prehistoric pottery of the age of that found in Sikyatki.
Hence, the religious society to which the deceased belonged, and the members of the clan who survive, place in the mortuary bowls, or in the left hand of their friend, the paho or prayer emblem for rain; hence, also, in prayers at interment they address the breath body of the dead as a katcina, or rain god.
If, however, it should prove to be an ancient vessel it would carry back to the time of its manufacture the existence of the katcina cult in Tusayan, no actual proof of the existence of which, at a time when Sikyatki was in its prime, has yet been discovered.
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