Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0402Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of a large number of Native Americans dressed in ceremonial clothes lined up in front of a pueblo buildings. Above the image "62" is printed, below the image "V23194 - The Katchina Dance to the Rain-gods - Hopi Indians at Shonghopavi, Arizons." is printed, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company Copyrighted, Underwood & Underwood Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Portland, Oregon, London, Eng., Sydney, Aus." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
V23194
THE KATCHINA DANCE TO THE RAIN GODS - HOPI INDIANS
Shonghopavi is one of the six pueblos on the Arizona Reservations occupied by the Hopi (pronunciation) Indians. The Hopi are divided inot several groups consisting of numerous clans, each of which has its own legends an ceremonies.
One of these groups is known as the Katchina. Perhaps their most famous and interesting ceremony is the dance to the rain-gods. The garb of the cermonial dancers is very grotesque in effect. The men wear hideous masks of leather and felt, painted with blotches and streaks of red, green, and white. Their cotton kilts are embroidered in figures symbolic of clouds, thunder and lightning. THe headdresses flapping above the masks are a gay mixture of turkey feathers, spruce twigs, and shell ornaments. Each dancer werad a fox sking hagning from the back of his belt. The motion of the dance is chiefly a rapid up-and-dwon step, facing first one way and then the other and swaying acka nd forth, all in time to "music" of their own production. Part of this music they make by rattling stones inside the dried gourds in their hands, and part by the rattling of sheep's hoofs inside of turtle shells, fastened to their ankles.
The exact nature of this old ceremony is not fully understood ; its purose is an appeal to the rain-gods, yet in a certain sense these men represent the rain-gods. As this village is on a mesa or table-land of rock in te midst of the Painted Desert rain is always needed. The people manage to raise a little corn and a few beans in the desert sand or in the gullies where the soil is a little richer ; but rain is always most welcome.
Copyrigh by The Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection