We are justified in regarding the Katcinas as spirits of the dead, or
divinized ancestors, shades or breath-bodies of those who once lived,
as mortuary prayers clearly indicate. The theory of ancestor worship
gives us a ready explanation for the fact that ancestral spirits
are represented by masked persons, and as a corollary, a suggestion
regarding the significance of the different symbolism of those masks.
The Hopi, like many people, look back to mythic times when they
believe their ancestors lived in a “paradise,” or state or place
where food (corn) was plenty and rains abundant, a world of perpetual
summer and flowers. Their legends recount how, when corn failed or
rain ceased, cultus heroes have sought these imaginary or ideal
ancestral homes to learn the “medicine,” songs, prayers, fetishes,
and charms efficacious to influence or control supernaturals, which
blessed these happy lands. Each sacerdotal society tells the story
of its own hero bringing from that land a bride, who transmitted to
her son the knowledge of the altars, songs, and prayers, which forced
the crops to grow and the rains to fall in her native country. To
become thoroughly conversant with the rites he is said to marry the
maid; otherwise at his death they would be lost, since knowledge
of the “medicine” is believed to be transmitted, not through his
clan, but that of his wife. So the Snake hero brought the Snake-Maid
(corn-rain girl) from the underworld; the Flute hero, her sister,
the Flute-Maid; the Little War God, the Lakonemana and other
supernaturals.
A Katcina hero in the old times, “on a rabbit hunt came to a region
where there was no snow. There he saw other Katcina people dancing
amidst beautiful gardens. He received melons from them and carrying
them home told a strange story of the people who inhabited a country
where there were flowering plants in midwinter. The hero and a
comrade were sent back, and they stayed with their people, returning
home loaded with fruit in February. They had learned the songs of
those with whom they had lived, and taught them in the kiva of their
own people.”[39]
In the ceremonies with unmasked personifications, or those celebrated
yearly between July and January which are not Katcinas, an attempt is
made to reproduce rites which legends declare the cultus or ancestral
heroes saw in the lands they visited, which lands are reputed to
be variously situated, but generally in the underworld, to augment
the efficacy of the ceremonies. In the ceremonies between January
and August, or those called Katcinas, the same feeling is dominant.
Each performance is an endeavor to reproduce a traditional ancestral
Katcina celebration. The performers are masked because, according to
their stories, the participants in those ancient rites are reputed
to have had zoomorphic, or at least only partially anthropomorphic
forms. The symbolism of the mask portrays the totems of those
legendary participants, and those of corn, rain, water-loving
animals, lightning and the like, therefore predominate.
I have shown in preceding papers that both the symbols and
figurines on Katcina altars refer to the sun, rain clouds, and the
fertilization, growth and maturation of corn. It has likewise been
made evident that the ceremonial acts of the priests are employed to
affect the supernaturals who control these elements or produce these
necessities.
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.