The Katcina altars in Hopi worshipFewkes, Jesse Walter
Religion
The Katcina altars in Hopi worship
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Hopi Indians -- Religion; Hopi mythology
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Journ. Amer. Ethnol. and Archæol., Vol. II, No. 1. Sitcomovi and
Hano have no Niman Katcina, nor do they celebrate the Tusayan ritual
in its entirety. The word Katcina is used to designate both a dance
and a participant in a dance. Between July and January there are no
Katcina rites in Tusayan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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