The Alósaka cult of the Hopi Indians

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

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.