Kachina Doll
I first saw Kachina Dolls at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, which is renowned for its exceptional collection of fabulous Kachina dolls. I guess many of you who have seen the collection, like me, wondered about the centuries of passion and skill that each individual doll represents. In fact, my research on Kachina dolls tells me that they were made as fertility symbols and passed down through many generations among the Hopi Indians, from ancient times.
Today, the best and most authentic Kachina dolls are still made by Hopi Indian craftsmen. Unfortunately, though, their origins remain shrouded in mystery since we don’t know the source of the craftsmen’s inspiration, neither do we clearly understand what the dolls represent, because the Hopis don’t have a written language and hence never codified their myths and beliefs. However, we can always speculate, and most theories about the origins of Kachina dolls point to a mythological source.
A brief history
The ancestors of the Hopi Indians were the Anasazi, who founded a sophisticated civilization that thrived in parts of Northern Arizona and New Mexico more than 1,000 years ago. It is thought that the Kachina culture is a legacy of theirs, practiced among some of their descendants. When the Spaniards arrived in America in the mid-1500s, the Hopi (which means ‘peaceful‘) peoples were settled on three mesas between the San Francisco Hills and the Painted Desert. When they eventually reached Hopi territory, the Spanish missionaries encountered stiff resistance and failed to obliterate the legacy of the ancients, as they successfully did with some other Indian tribes.
So the Kachina culture survived, to be handed down orally through generations. However, the Hopis’ spoken language is not readily translatable, and so scholars continue to disagree on what the rituals mean.
Who Are Kachinas?
Kachinas are spirits who inhabit the San Francisco Hills and come visiting in late winter to help with the growing season. There are spirits for the earth, sky, sun, clouds, birds, animals and many other aspects of existence, though the number of Kachinas is uncertain. The major areas in which Kachinas are involved are rain, fertility, a good harvest, health, long life, and balance and harmony in nature. Some scholars say dead ancestors are also part of the Kachina world. Whether this is indeed fact, the arrival of the Kachinas is cause for celebration.
Making of Kachina dolls
Hopi artisans carve Kachina dolls either as representations of the spirits, or as gifts for children. However, they are more educational materials than toys. This is because a true Kachina doll is a high-quality work of art. The artist has to first find the right kind of cottonwood, season it with clay, apply paints made of earth pigments and adorn the dolls with ornaments. The process is painstaking and laborious and though modern technology can help in such areas as the manufacture of paints, many craftsmen prefer traditional methods.
All this makes Kachina dolls highly prized as collectibles, and the increasing demand has led to the creation of ‘commercial’ Kachina dolls, of questionable authenticity and quality. The problem is that genuine Kachina dolls make wonderful gifts and can cost anywhere between hundreds and even thousands of dollars. But for a collector, the way is riddled with cheaper and synthetic versions of these gorgeous dolls created for the tourist trade.