Tusayan katcinas

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

My former publications on this subject have therefore been simply records of observations.[3] For various reasons it has seemed well to anticipate a final and general account and interpretation, with tentative efforts at a classification to serve as a stepping-stone to a more exhaustive and complete discussion of the relationship of these observances, which would naturally appear in an elaborate memoir necessitating a broader method of treatment than any yet adopted.

At the present stage of my researches it would be too early to write such an account of the ceremonial calendar of the Tusayan villagers, but it has been deemed well to put on record, with many new observations, this preliminary outline of what may be a portion of a general system, to aid other investigators in kindred fields of study. When I began my work, four years ago, the task of bringing order out of what appeared to be a hopeless confusion seemed well nigh impossible, but as one ceremony after another was studied it was found that the exactness of the ritual as exemplified in ceremonial presentations pertained even to details, and that there was a logical connection running throughout all the religious observances of the Tusayan Indians, the presentations of which were practically little influenced by white races with whom the people had been brought in contact. As these ceremonials were studied more sympathetically I discovered a unity throughout them which, whatever their origin may have been, placed them in marked contrast to those of the nomads by whom they were surrounded. They were found to belong to a type or ceremonial area in which the other Pueblos are embraced, the affinities of which carry us into different geographic regions of the American continent.

But while this type differs or differed in ancient times from those of Athapascan or Shoshonean aborigines, it bears evidence of a composite nature. It had become so by contributions from many sources, and had in turn left its impress on other areas, so that as a type the Pueblo culture was the only one of its kind in aboriginal America. With strong affinities on all sides it was unique, having nearest kinship with those of Mexico and Central America.

The geographic extension of the Pueblo type of culture was no doubt formerly much greater than it is at the present time. What its original boundaries were future investigation will no doubt help us to decide, but the problem at present before us is the determination of its characteristics as a survival in our times. When once this is satisfactorily known, and not until then, can we advance with confidence to wider generalizations as to its past distribution and offer theories regarding its affinities with other ceremonial areas of the American race.

It is doubtless true that we are not progressing beyond what can be claimed to be known when we say that all the Pueblo peoples belong to the same ceremonial type. I am sure that in prehistoric and historic times delegations from the Rio Grande country have settled among the Tusayan villagers, and that many families of the latter have migrated back to the Rio Grande again to make permanent homes in that section. The most western and the most eastern peoples of this Pueblo culture-stock have been repeatedly united in marriage, bringing about a consequent commingling of blood, and the legends of both tell of their common character. It is too early in research to inject into science the idea that the Pueblos are modified Indians of other stocks, and we outstrip our knowledge of facts if we ascribe to any one village or group of villages the implication involved in the expression, “Father of the Pueblos.” Part of the Pueblo culture is autochthonal, but its germ may have originated elsewhere, and no one existing Pueblo people is able satisfactorily to support the claim that it is ancestral outside of a very limited area.

In the present article I have tried to present a picture of one of the two great natural groups of ceremonials into which the Tusayan ritual is divided. I have sought also to lay a foundation for comparative studies of the same group as it exists in other pueblos, but have not found sufficient data in regard to these celebrations in other villages to carry this comparative research very far. Notwithstanding these dances occur in most of the pueblos, the published data about them is too meager for comparative uses. No connected description of these ceremonies in other pueblos has been published; of theoretical explanations we have more than are profitable. It is to be hoped that the ever-increasing interest in the ceremonials of the Pueblos of the southwest will lead to didactic, exoteric accounts of the rituals of all these peoples, for a great field for research in this direction is yet to be tilled.

In the use, throughout this article, of the words “gods,” “deities,” and “worship” we undoubtedly endow the subject with conceptions which do not exist in the Indian mind, but spring from philosophic ideas resulting from our higher culture. For the first two the more cumbersome term “supernatural beings”[4] is more expressive, and the word “spirit” is perhaps more convenient, except from the fact that it likewise has come to have a definite meaning unknown to the primitive mind.

Worship, as we understand it, is not a proper term to use in the description of the Indian’s methods of approaching his supernal beings. It involves much which is unknown to him, and implies the existence of that which is foreign to his conceptions. Still, until some better nomenclature, more exactly defining his methods, is suggested, these terms from their convenience will still continue in common use.

The dramatic element which is ascribed to the Katcina[5] ritual is more prominent in the elaborate than in the abbreviated presentations, as would naturally be the case, but even there it is believed to be less striking than in the second group or those in which the performers are without masks.

There exists in Hopi mythology many stories of the old times which form an accompanying body of tradition explaining much of the symbolism and some of the ritual, but nowhere have I found the sequence of the ceremonials to closely correspond with the episodes of the myth. In the Snake or the Flute dramatizations this coincidence of myth and ritual is more striking, but in them it has not gone so far as to be comparable with religious dramatizations of more cultured peoples. Among the Katcinas, however, it is more obscure or even very limited. While an abbreviated Katcina may be regarded as a reproduction of the celebrations recounted in legends of times when real supernatural beings visited the pueblos, and thus dramatizes semimythic stories, I fail to see aught else in them of the dramatic element.