One of the most striking features of the rites of the Winter Solstice
ceremony in the chief kiva is the personation, before an altar, of
a Bird-man who is thought to represent a solar god. This episode at
Walpi has been elsewhere described,[7] but as at Oraibi it immediately
precedes certain rites directly related to the _Alósaka_ cult, a few
notes on the personation of the Bird-man in the latter pueblo will be
introduced.
About 10 P.M. on the day called _Tótokya_, the chief day of all great
ceremonies, this man, preceded by two others, passed into the kiva,
his entrance being announced by balls of meal thrown through the
hatchway upon the floor, falling near the fireplace. The two men seated
themselves, one on each side of the ladder, which was grasped in one
arm. The Bird-man who followed had his face painted white, and in his
mouth was a whistle with which he continually imitated the call of a
bird, probably the eagle. He first stood on the upraise in the floor,
called the spectators’ part, then squatted on the floor near the right
pole of the ladder. He carried feathers in his hands,[8] and, moving
his arms up and down, imitated the motion of wings, as if flapping them
like a bird.
While he was performing these avian movements, the spectators sang
a stirring song and the Bird-man slowly advanced to the middle of
the room, imitating the gait of a bird and crouching in a squatting
attitude. The motion of the wings and the bird-cries continued, the
personator now and then raising his arms and letting them fall with a
quivering motion. Once in the middle of the room he laid the feathers
on the floor and remained there for a short time without moving. He
then arose and danced for a long time, accompanied by a woman who held
in one hand an ear of corn which she gracefully waved back and forth.
She followed the Bird-man as he moved from place to place, and at the
close of the dance took her seat near the right wall of the kiva where
she sat before the Bird-man entered the room.
After the woman had taken her seat, the Bird-man continued the wing
movements with his arms, stretching them at full length and then
drawing them back to his body. He then proceeded to a pile of sand
in a corner near the upraise; taking pointed sticks or reeds in his
hand and halting before this mound of sand, he threw first one, then
another, of the sticks into the sand, all the time imitating a bird in
the movements of his body and simulating the bird-calls with a whistle.
He then went to the _Soyáluña_ woman who had danced with him; squatting
before her, he uttered the strange bird-calls, and, making a pass,
raised the small sticks which he carried from her feet to her head
several times. He then returned to the mound of sand and again shot the
sticks into it, after which he returned to the woman. This was repeated
several times. The bird personator then returned to the middle of the
kiva, before the altar, and, taking a bow and some arrows, danced for
some time, while all the assembled priests sang in chorus. As the
Bird-man danced, he raised the bow, fitted an arrow to it, faced the
north, and drew the bowstring as if to shoot. This was repeated six
times, the performer pointing the arrow to the cardinal directions in
prescribed sinistral sequence.
At the close of this part of the performance the songs ceased and the
Bird-man took a seat before the altar, while a priest at his right
lit a conical pipe and blew through it, on the body of the Bird-man,
clouds of tobacco smoke. This smoke was not taken into the mouth, but
the smoker placed the larger end between his lips, and blew through
the tube, causing the smoke to issue from a small hole at the pointed
end.[9] After prayers by one or more of the priests, the Bird-man again
danced before the altar, at the same time imitating the movements of
wings with his arms and bird-calls with a whistle in his mouth. He then
left the room and the calls could be heard as he went outside.
This proceeding is interpreted as a symbolic dramatization or
representation of the fertilization of the earth, and is an example of
highly complicated sympathetic magic by which nature powers of sky and
earth are supposed to be influenced.[10] The Bird-man, called _Kwátaka_
or _Kwátoka_,[11] is an old war-god, and possibly a sun god, the return
of whom the Winter Solstice ceremony commemorates.
The evidence that the Bird-man personates a sun or sky god is derived
mainly from morphological symbolism, and in support of the theory there
are here introduced a figure of the most common Hopi sun symbol, also
representations of dolls of a sun god, and _Kwátaka_ whom the Bird-man
personates.
The common sun emblem (plate XXV, _a_) is a round disk with a woven
corn-husk margin in which are inserted feathers of the eagle radiating
at all angles. From the four quadrants project sticks—the ends of an
equal-armed cross. This disk has the following design painted upon
it: The upper part is separated from the lower by a horizontal line,
and the space above is divided into two parts by a perpendicular
line, while the mouth is represented in the lower space by an
hourglass-shaped figure. Two marks represent eyes. This disk is worn
on the backs of men personating the sun, in many rites, and is found
painted on the screens used in the _Palülükoñti_ ceremony. It is the
ordinary sun symbol in Hopi pictography.
Many conventional modifications of this symbol are common. The painted
design is often omitted and the disk reduced to a circle, while
the feathers are dropped, or concentrated in clusters in the four
quadrants. In the sand picture of _Powalawû_[12] the sun symbol is
made of concentric zones of sand of different colors with arrow-shaped
extensions in the four quadrants. Again, the circle may be absent, when
the four extensions in its quadrants remain, forming a cross called a
_tokpela_. This highly conventionalized form of the sun is often found
depicted on shields as a warrior’s symbol.
Thus, while the equal-armed cross sometimes becomes a sun symbol, this
by no means implies that the cross may not also have other meanings.
The signification of symbols depends on association, and the simple
emblem described may have an entirely different meaning in other
associations. There is no more constant decoration used in the
ornamentation of ancient Hopi pottery than the cross, yet to interpret
this simple figure as invariably a sun symbol would be absurd, for it
may mean the sky, the four world-quarters, the four winds, the sun, or
a star; or it may be employed simply as an insignificant decorative
motive. Such simple designs as the cross, the circle, or the triangle,
in primitive symbolism, may often be regarded as simply qualitative
and are so used in pictography, their true meaning in specific
cases depending on their association with other figures. In certain
associations a circle is a sun symbol, in others an earth symbol;
an equal-armed cross with a figure of a rapacious bird sometimes
represents the sun, in other instances the four cardinal points, which,
with the Hopi, are purely terrestrial directions or positions on the
horizon.
[Illustration: PL. XXV