Ceremony with the Alósaka Shield
In the Walpi variant of the Soyáluña or Winter Solstice ceremony, we have not as yet observed a ceremony with the Alósaka figure comparable with that with the screen just described; but there is a shield upon which is painted an almost identical figure of Alósaka.[15] The nature of the rites in which this shield is used is imperfectly known, and the character of the Alósaka worship in the pueblos of the Middle Mesa is yet to be investigated.
Pictures of Alósaka
The symbolism of Alósaka is shown in a rude drawing made by one of the Hopi to illustrate a legend, and it represents this being on a rainbow, on which he is said to have traveled from his home in the San Francisco mountains to meet an Awatobi maid. Above the figure of Alósaka is represented the sun, which is drawn also on the screen above described, for Alósaka is intimately associated with the sun, as are all the other horned gods, Ahole, Calako, Tuñwup, and the Natackas. An interesting detail of the symbolism of this picture of the sun is the crescents under the eyes, which are found also on dolls representing the mother of the gods, Hahaiwüqti, an Earth-goddess of first importance. The personators of Alósaka paint a white crescent under the left eye.
There is good authority for the belief that the conventional symbol of Alósaka is a profile view of a budding squash-blossom—a central bud and two lateral leaves. When this symbol becomes highly conventionalized, or made of rectangular instead of curved lines, it consists of a straight line with a triangle on each side, and is then the same symbol of generation that is painted with red iron oxide on the breast, arms, and thighs of the two phallic societies in the public New-fire ceremony.
As an idea of the nature of Alósaka may be discovered from morphological symbolism, let us examine the figures of a few of the horned “gods” in the Hopi Olympus.
The first group of horn-headed gods to which reference may be made are the pictures found on altars in the ceremonies called Nimán and Powamû. At Walpi these pictures are said to represent Tuñwupkatcina,[16] a name which may be of Tanoan origin. Figures of Tuñwup have two lateral horns on the head, to the tips of which representations of feathers are sometimes appended. On the top of the head, between these two horns, there is represented a crest of radiating feathers, and on the forehead a broadheaded arrow which is sometimes modified to resemble the symbolism on the face of the figures of the sun painted on disks.
The Tuñwup type of horned gods includes the Calako-taka, Natacka, and one or two others. The mask of Ahole, who flogs the children during the Powamû celebration, has the same two lateral horns and representation of radiating feathers over the crown of the head, but instead of sagittaform marks on the forehead there is a colored band from ear to ear across the face, as shown in [plate XXVI], d.
It is probable that these horned gods have close kinship and are possibly identical, Ahole being simply a name of the personification by a masked man, and Tuñwup that of the picture of the same on the altar. The horned Alósaka does not belong to this type of horned “gods,” although it has two horns on the head both in graven images and in pictures.