Kachina and the Cross (15 page)

Read Kachina and the Cross Online

Authors: Carroll L Riley

Tags: #History, #Native American, #United States, #State & Local, #Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), #Social Science, #Anthropology, #General, #Ethnic Studies, #Native American Studies, #test

BOOK: Kachina and the Cross
6.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Page 66
remained in the Southwest, these rites contained incomplete versions of Aztec ceremonies of the twelfth month, Teotleco, interpreted through southwestern iconography, some of it pre-Hispanic in date. If this was the case, Oñate and his men probably saw or heard of the Shalako, especially at Zuni; however, the ceremony was not reportedat least in such terms as to allow it to be identified until much later historic times.
Other southwestern ceremonial behavior is attested to by archaeology. The cult of the god Quetzalcoatl, associated with the morning and evening star, was certainly part of the ceremonial scene in Oñate's day. Archaeologist Charles C. Di Peso believed that Quetzalcoatl manifestations such as the plumed serpent, use of macaw and parrot feathers for ritual costume and prayer plumes, multifloored structures of adobe (Di Peso refers to "puddled adobe," but in all probability they were coursed adobe), square columns, T-shaped doorways, and stairways appeared as a complex "before A.D. 1050." Of course, Di Peso was relating this complex to Medio period Casas Grandes, and his dates run consistently a century or so too early.
Adjusting Di Peso's dating would probably make the complex too late for Chaco Canyon, although some of these elements, the square columns and stairways, were utilized there, as was the scarlet macaw. On the other hand, coursed adobe is not characteristic of Chaco, although adobe walls are found at the outlier site of Bis sa'ani, east of Chaco Canyon, dating to around A.D. 1130. Nor is the plumed serpent found in Chaco culture. This does not absolutely rule out Quetzalcoatl worship. Ornithologist Charmion McKusick believes that the scarlet macaw itself is a strong marker of Quetzalcoatl worship. The goddess Chalchihuitlicue, "Lady Precious Green," the deity of lakes and springs, and the consort of Tlaloc, was also closely associated with Quetzalcoatl. McKusick suggests that the green plumaged military macaw may have been sacrificed to Chalchihuitlicue. Military macaws, however, seem to be absent from Chaco Canyon and, as said above, are rare in the Southwest outside of Casas Grandes. This might indicate that Chalchihuitlicue worship did not catch on in the upper Southwest, but McKusick points to Chalchihuitlicue depictions at Awatovi as indicating a worship of this complex goddess among the Hopi.
Even assuming that Di Peso's Quetzalcoatl complex is valid for Mesoamerica, certain elements may have spread independently at different times to the Southwest. I suspect that another complexone that appears in the Mimbres area of southern New Mexico around A.D. 1000, embodying the sun-deer, moon-rabbit complex and the idea of supernatural twinswas the basis of Quetzalcoatl influences in the upper Southwest.
Quetzalcoatl
was a god of merchants and travelers. Under the name
Ehecatl
, he represented the wind. He was
Page 67
also the embodiment of Venus as the morning star, and his name means at least two things: "winged serpent" and "sacred twin." The latter name relates to a twinning with the monstrous Xolotl, the personification of death, represented by the evening star. These twins are fairly clearly related to the divine twins of southwestern religion, and their earthly avatars, twinned religious officers such as the elder and younger bow priests of the bow priesthood in Zuni.
As discussed in chapter 2, sometime in the period A.D. 1150-1200 the various settlements that we collectively call Casas Grandes expanded their influence throughout much of southern New Mexico. A century or so later, certain Quetzalcoatl ideas, including those of the Mimbres, swept into the upper Southwest through Casas Grandes auspicesat about the same time and by the same mechanisms as the kachina cult. If there
was
an earlier Quetzalcoatl manifestation (say, at Chaco Canyon), it was now likely enriched and modified by the new Casas Grandesbased religious ideas.
The Pueblos as of 1598 worshipped a series of deities that appear historically and which can also be identified iconographically from the Golden Age. They include, among others: Sun Father, Moon Mother, the fire god, the twin war-gods (the northernmost extensions of the concept of the divine twins), and the horned or plumed water serpent, which has both Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc aspects. The association of Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc actually goes back to Mesoamerica and may date as early as Olmec times. It seems to me that kachinas, at least some of them, are functional equivalents, and perhaps historical descendants, of the
Tlaloco
, the plural form of Tlaloc, sometimes thought of as "helpers" of the primary Tlaloc manifestation.
In any case, Pueblo religion was focused on the kiva or ceremonial chamber and on the courtyard where many of the dances and other ceremonies were held. Kivas were of various sizes and both round and square, partially underground or incorporated in house blocks. Oñate's soldiers reported kiva murals, though they misinterpreted them. The murals most likely related to the ceremonial round.
Unfortunately, we cannot give a detailed coherent description of Pueblo religion as of Oñate's time. The religion of Pueblo Native Americans today has been described in encyclopedic measure by the Pueblo expert Elsie Clews Parsons. Her descriptions of the later historic period probably encode much of what was there in 1598, and, as discussed above, evidence from rock art, mural paintings, and the like give some information on deities and cultic observances such as the kachina organizations. What we lack is specificity of detail, and
that
we probably shall never have.
The political and social organization of the Pueblos was quickly under attack by the Franciscans, primarily because of the close intertwining of religion and
Page 68
political and social organizations. Everywhere the old political order of priests and their helpers was suppressed, even officials with "secular" functions, like the bow priests. As we shall see, the newcomers imposed on the Pueblos something akin to the Spanish
cabildo
structure: a town governor, counselors, and officers with police duties. Eight years before Oñate, Castaño de Sosa had attempted to form cabildo-like governments in the Pueblos, but Castaño's authority did not last long enough for much to be accomplished. Oñate likely started from scratch.
Evidence from rock art suggests that along with the kachina cult in the fourteenth century, the various Pueblos had organized warrior, hunt, and medicine societies. These sodalities still exist, though they were much changed in the Spanish periodthe war societies, especially, serving the Spaniards' need for mercenary warriors to fight against the surrounding nomads. It seems likely that the Spanish-Pueblo office of "war captain" in the seventeenth century was held by the head of the war society of a given Pueblo. However, to a lesser or greater degree, all the societies, because of their association with Pueblo religion, came under missionary attack. In Oñate's time this had not really begun.
Lacking any coherent evidence of the sociopolitical situation in the pueblos in 1598, I can only make broad generalizations. Archaeological and distributional evidence suggests that many of the Pueblos had some sort of clan structure. The term cl
an,
as used classically in anthropology, referred to matrilineality; that is, it represented a group of people who had (or at least, claimed) common descent in the female line. Clans were important in various social and ceremonial ways, functioning, for example, to organize and control marriage.
Among modern Pueblos the nearest to the classic definition of clan is in the west, where matrilineal clans are found among the Hopi and Zuni. Marriage in Hopi is exogamous, meaning that it is necessary to marry outside the clan, and it also is matrilocal, which is to say that the bridegroom moves to his wife's homein the case of the Hopi, to a house block where the clan matriarch resides. Hopi clans are also grouped into exogamous larger divisions that the anthropologists call phratries. Crosscutting these clans are societies concerned with various ceremonial activities including kachina initiation. A number of kiva groups also crosscut both clans and societies. Among the Hopi, both boys and girls are initiated into the kachina society, something rather atypical in the Pueblo world.
At Zuni, clans are also exogamous and matrilocal. Houses are owned by women. The man moves in but is always somewhat of a "visitor." If the marriage fails, he returns to his mother's or sister's home. The father's clan of any given individual is ceremonially important, and marriage into this clan, though not actually forbidden, is discouraged. The Zuni have six kiva groups generally
Page 69
restricted to men. All male members of Zuni society between the ages of eight and twelve join a kiva group, usually one chosen by the father or mother at the child's birth. These are not immutable; an individual can choose another group later in life. All boys are initiated into the kachina society, but women normally do not join this society. The Zuni also have curing societies, which are for the most part open to both sexes.
In modern times, the Keresans have matrilineal clans that function to regulate marriage. Ceremonialism is largely in the hands of the religious sodalities. Sometimes called "medicine societies," these also included war and hunt groups. There are winter (turquoise) and summer (squash or pumpkin) kivas with associated Koshare and Quirana, two clowning groups that have management roles in the ceremonial round. These groups are called "clowns" because part of their function is burlesque and satire, but among the Keresans, as elsewhere in the Pueblo world, they are primarily religious in nature. In addition, one finds masked kachinas (whose organization varies somewhat from pueblo to pueblo), weather-control figures who dance primarily in the summer. The head religious officer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is called a
cacique.
This name is a Spanish-introduced word, having been picked up by them from the Taino speakers of the Greater Antilles. The office itself may be old. In some Keresan pueblos, the cacique was also head of the Flint Medicine Society. Other officers included the two war priests and various lesser figures.
The Towa (now the single pueblo of Jemez) have matrilineal exogamous clans, though at present the family structure is patrilineal, and the father normally owns the family dwelling. This may be due to centuries of Spanish influence. There are the two kiva moieties (a moiety is a division of a society into two parts), Turquoise and Squash, the membership of which is patrilineal, and a number of societies involving curing, hunting, and war. Kachinas are called
katsana
, a variation of the Hopi name. The cacique heads the political organization; under him are officials, who originally may have been war chiefs, and their assistants.
The Tewa have summer and winter moieties corresponding to the Squash and Turquoise moieties of the Keresans; in these groups the cacique is a moiety head. Kachinas are associated with these summer and winter moieties, and all boys belonged to one or the other of these kachina societies. The moieties were patrilineal, though there is considerable flexibility in membership. There are "clans," but they serve no marriage function.
The Northern Tiwa towns have so-called clans that are actually kiva groups and are assigned to moieties, the northside kiva groups and the southside kiva groups. The Southern Tiwa also have summer and winter moieties and what are sometimes called clans, the corn groups with color-direction associations. At
Page 70
present, kachinas are very weakly developed in both the northern and southern Tiwa.
The anthropologist and Tewa Native American Edward P. Dozier believed that the clan system in the eastern pueblos, Jemez and Tewa, represented a late (presumably historic) borrowing from the Keresans. I suspect that elements of the kachina cult were also reintroduced in historic times from the west, in this case from Hopi. I say
reintroduced
because it seems clear that as of the time of Oñate and for some centuries before, kachinas were an integral part of eastern Pueblo ceremonialism. The new kachina system that arose after the seventeenth-century repression by the Franciscans was a mixture, terminologically and in ceremonial content, of the old Rio Grande Pueblo cult and cultic practices from Hopi and Zuni.
Historian Ramón A. Gutiérrez, in a recent publication, has suggested that aboriginally the Pueblo Indians were all matrilineally oriented.
. . . suffice it to say that all of the Puebloans were matrilineal at the time of the conquest, and that those Puebloans who were in closest contact with Spanish towns became patrilineal or bilateral. Those Pueblos who most resisted Christianizationthe Hopi, the Zufii, and the Keres at Acomaremained matrilineal. Among those people we still find a vibrant array of women's fertility societies, spirited ceremonials to vivify the earth and a host of descendant earthbound symbols that celebrate femininity. Among the Puebloans who became most acculturated to European waysthe Tewa and the Keres (except Acoma)women's fertility societies were suppressed.
This is an intriguing idea, and a Spanish-introduced "patrilinealization" may indeed have been a factor in the acculturation process among the eastern Pueblos, though I suspect the situation may be somewhat more complicated than a simple transfer from matrilineal to patrilineal status. In any case, hard evidence for thisor any other specific systemis very scanty.
The ceremonial headships of modern Pueblos probably represent somewhat similar offices as of the time of Oñate. What seems to have happened is that the Spanish-introduced cabildo officials replaced certain religious officials, and/or perhaps took over certain functions originally performed by members of the religious hierarchy. It seems clear that a distinction between "religious" and "secular" among the Pueblos could not have been made as of Oñate's time.
If we know little for sure about the Pueblos in 1598, our information on the Jumano and Apachean neighbors of the Pueblos is even less secure. The Jumano had headmen and probably some sort of band structure, but as to the composition of Jumano bands and how such basic social organizations as the family and

Other books

Twilight by Meg Cabot
Vampire King of New York by Susan Hanniford Crowley
The Slam by Haleigh Lovell
I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh
Underground Soldier by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Steam Heat by Elizabeth Darvill
Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard
Tactics of Mistake by Gordon R. Dickson
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz