Hopi Pueblo Umtoinqa Katsina, Shooting Thunder Kachina Doll, c.1940s [SOLD]

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Once Known Native American Carver

This representation of Umtoinaqa dates to the early 1940s. He stands unaided but is also provided with a string from which to hang. He is not signed with the name of a carver. He appears in the simple style of the period. His face is yellow with warrior marks on his cheeks, rectangular eyes, and a triangular mouth. He wears a huzrunkwa, or warrior feather, on the crown of the head. His body is painted with blue pigment.

The Umtoinaqa Katsina, known as the Shooting Thunder Katsina, acts as a guard or policeman during the Bean Dance. He guards the perimeter of the dance plaza to keep unsuspecting intruders out of the way. He carries a bull roarer which he uses to create the sound of thunder. He is one of the great variety of katsinam who appear in the Mixed Dances of spring and early summer as well.

Non-Pueblo people do not necessarily understand the meaning and purposes of katsinam and katsina dolls. It is quite understandable that a person who has never seen a katsina doll would not understand its meaning or purpose, but those who are familiar with katsina dolls also may not necessarily know their real purpose.

The Hopi Pueblo religion is not easy to describe or understand if one is not a Hopi. It is a religion based on clan membership, with relations based on the clan of the mother. Those members of a clan are responsible as guardians of their ritual knowledge and to the overall duties of the Hopi religion, a religion that incorporates supernatural spiritual beings called katsina.

The katsinam are the spirit beings who live with the Hopi for six months every year. They arrive on the Hopi mesas in December, and their numbers increase in February, the time of the Bean Dance or Powanuya. They depart from the Hopi mesas in July, after the Home Dance or Niman ceremony. During their six-month visit, they perform ceremonial functions and public dances at all the villages. They exist through the men of the villages who impersonate them during their stay.

The Hopi have an agreement with the katsinam that they will honor them with dances and ceremonies in exchange for what the Hopi need to subsist-rain, good crops, fertility for humans and crops, and overall survival. This exchange is mutually beneficial. The Hopi also make dolls in the likeness of the katsinam, not as items of curiosity, but as personifications of the katsina spirits. These are then presented as gifts for the appropriate behavior of the children.

The katsina dolls are presented to the females by the spirits as personal gifts to award virtuous behavior in a public dance. The first katsina dolls appear in mid-February during the Powamuya. The katsinas dancing in the plaza at that time bear beautiful katsina dolls, and other gifts, for the Hopi people. Generally, girls are presented with katsina dolls, and boys are given rattles, bows and arrows, lightning sticks' and other items. The gifts are considered to be from the katsinam and not from the Hopi men who actually carved or made them. The gift could have been made by a father, brother, uncle, or clan relative, but the presentation is from a dancing katsina at the time. That is the reason that dolls made for this purpose are never signed with the name of the maker. Only modern katsina dolls made to be sold are signed by the maker.


What is a Katsina?

Condition: very good condition with no known repairs. Slight paint abrasion.

Provenance: this Hopi Pueblo Umtoinqa Katsina, Shooting Thunder Kachina Doll, c.1940s is from the collection of a client of the gallery

Reference and Recommended Reading: Kachinas: a Hopi artist’s documentary by Barton Wright

TAGS: Kachina – Katsina DollHopi Pueblo

Alternate close-up view of the face of this Katsina doll.

Once Known Native American Carver
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