The Alósaka cult of the Hopi IndiansFewkes, Jesse Walter
Religion
The Alósaka cult of the Hopi Indians
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Hopi Indians -- Religion
3. The _Aaltû_ priesthood at Walpi, who personate _Alósakas_, perform
duties suggestive of those of warriors.
4. The intimate relationship of _Alósaka_ rites with those of the
Rain-cloud clans supports legends that they were at one time associated
and brought from southern Arizona by the Squash people who formerly
lived with or near the Rain-cloud people along Little Colorado river.
5. The _Alósaka_ cult is a highly modified form of animal totemism, and
the _Alósaka_ represents the mountain sheep.
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
FOOTNOTES:
[1] These studies were made under the auspices of the Bureau of
American Ethnology.
[2] The author has been told that they were deposited among the
foothills of the coffin-shaped mesa southwest of Awatobi.
[3] See _Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_,
plate CX.
[4] The mountain sheep or mountain “goat” was formerly abundant in the
mountains which form the watershed between Gila and Little Colorado
rivers, and Castañeda speaks of seeing and following them after
leaving Chichilticalli, probably in the White mountains. This animal
was no doubt well known to the clans who lived in the southern parts
of Arizona, before they migrated northward, and worship of it was the
original form of the _Alósaka_ cult.
[5] They also founded the pueblo of Tcukubi, the ruins of which are
still to be seen on the Middle Mesa.
[6] The two societies called the _Tataukyamû_ and _Wüwütcimtû_
are termed phallic because they wear on their breasts, arms, and
legs, figures of human phalli, and carry in their hands realistic
representations of the external female organ of generation cut out
of wood or watermelon rind. The former society was introduced from
Awatobi by Tapolo, the chief of the Tobacco clan; the latter by the
Squash clans, now extinct in Walpi. Both these clans originally came
from the banks of Little Colorado river near Winslow; the Tobacco
from Cakwabaiyaki, now in ruins at the mouth of Chevlon Fork. See
_Smithsonian Report_ for 1896.
[7] See _American Anthropologist_, vol. XI, p. 20; also _American
Anthropologist_, N. S., April, 1899.
[8] At Walpi he has a line of feathers tied along his arm.
[9] A similar method of smoking has previously been described in an
account of the sixteen songs sung by the Antelope priests in their kiva
on each day of the Snake dance at Walpi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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