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.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Journ. Amer. Ethnol. and Archæol., Vol. II, No. 1. Sitcomovi and Hano have no Niman Katcina, nor do they celebrate the Tusayan ritual in its entirety. The word Katcina is used to designate both a dance and a participant in a dance. Between July and January there are no Katcina rites in Tusayan.