The Bird-man in the Soyáluña
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.
PL. XXV
HOPI SUN SYMBOLISM
a, Common Hopi sun symbol. b, “Big-head,” a solar god. c, Kwátaka, bird with sun symbolism. d, Ahole.
Returning to the common symbol of the sun, or the disk with painted design and radiating peripheral eagle feathers, we find on comparing it with the symbolism of the head of a sun god ([plate XXV], b), a close similarity. Among the features common to both are the markings on the upper half of the face, the radiating feathers, and the cross extensions. The marks on the sun disk, indicating eyes, are here replaced by balls, but of greater importance in future comparison, the mouth or double triangle is represented by a curving beak. The reason for the substitution of this form of mouth is apparent in a comparison with the head of the doll of Kwátaka ([plate XXV], c), where a bird’s head, wings, and tail are all represented. The symbolic design on the body of this bird doll is strictly comparable with those on the two sun symbols previously mentioned. The radiating feathers are replaced by tail and wings, while the head is suggested by the curved beak of the second symbol. A comparison of these three figures leads to the belief that they are three different sun symbols.
The fact that the last is called Kwátaka, and that the Bird-man in Soyáluña was given the same name, supports the theory that the latter is a solar god. In his performance he does not, to be sure, wear a mask with solar symbols, but he imitates a bird in action and voice. He is a patron of warriors, like the sun; he is the first god to return, and the Soyáluña is a celebration to cause the sun to return. The eagle or a raptorial bird is the sun bird; the sun fertilizes the earth, and the ceremonial acts of the Bird-man at the Winter Solstice dramatize fertilization. In short, the conclusion to which studies of the ceremonial acts of the Bird-man, reinforced by those of comparative symbolism, have led me, is that the Bird-man personates the sun or a solar deity.