Gisela Ermel
puzzle in the North American Southwest
In: Q'Phaze, No. 6, Kassel 2007
Who or what are Kachinas? If you ask different people, you get different answers. One of the Hopi Indians would answer: "High respected knowledgeable," while another would say: "ghosts". Again, another might say: "They came to us from space." The Zuni know these creatures under the name "Koko" and keep them as gods and messengers of the gods. Parallels to the Kachinas and Koko would be the Yei Navajo Indians. In virtually all Indian peoples of the North American Southwest we find the Kachina motif. It goes back to the time of the high culture of Anasaszi Indians? (See also my article: the Chaco phenomenon). 
Kachinas: Drawing of FH Cushing, c.1890
These mysterious creatures have been interpreted as helping spirits, astronauts, aliens, time travelers, culture bearer, rain, harvesting, fire or Fruchtsbarkeitsgötter, teacher of men, star beings, and much more. This is quite confusing. Offensichtich but they were as human form presented, and if it is accessible to the rock art researchers such as the mask image and the headdress are detected and identified, not necessarily mean that it "masks" carried. Kachinas are by no means only the simple cute dolls, the tourist gift shops in the Pueblo of today may be for sale. The Kachina motif is still very popular. One finds Kachinas in comics, on subway station walls, banking houses, to silks on popcorn packs, on whiskey bottles, ceramics, rugs, weavings, etc. were
Chocolate Kachina Apparently the Kachinas / Koko / Yei, according to mythology anthropomorphic stranger, which eventually came from somewhere and at some point again disappeared somewhere, and they promised to once again return. They were the Indians think in many ways, so provide the myths, whether of knowledge, know-how or equipment - grossly simplified as far as the essence of the traditions.
If all the myths of the Indians had not been so different and contradictory! What you can not give itself to the statement about the number and the names of the Kachinas, may be seen from the fact that for a while among the modern Hopi "Mickey Mouse" in the pantheon of the Kachinas was taken up and awake at ceremonies marched and danced.
One Anthropologist says there is 335 Kachinas, another says it is 229th The Navajo Yei limit their below twenty, while other sources speak again of over four hundred different Kachinas. Their number is not determined. Again and again they added Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo Indians Kachinas new, while others are "out of fashion came, and also to representations of certain features were incorporated Kachinas not always true.
are unanimous in the various Indian tribes nor the origin of these strangers. As it is said once, it came from the underworld, then again is not an earthly location of the speech, the coming out of the universe, from nearby stars etc. - an underground location was never specified as the home of the Kachinas.
During their stay among the Indians to the Kachinas certain bases have occupied, to which they withdrew to their respective actions. Shall apply to the Hopi, the San Francisco Mountains as Kachina apartment, as well as a place near Pinon called Kisiwu as a place in Springerville, Arizona, a place in Monument Valley, and various places throughout the Chaco phenomenon of the Anasazi (ca. 850-1150) played a role.
The Zuni remember a divine city, Kolhulwala-wa, paradoxically, even as at a specific point somewhere north the Zuni settlement was presented, then "located in the Clouds" as a "sky city". Some places are in the traditions of the Pueblo Indians as a "gateway to the Kachina World", by the time could not only enter the Kachinas this world, but through which one could still reach their world.
A vertical stone plaque on the path is to the rock paintings of Palatki in Arizona such as a connection point. This dark shaded rock Plate imagine a goal, according to some Indians, by the Kachinas to travel between their and our world.
Another point is an altar-like structure on top of Twin Angels Mound, as the gateway to the world-Kachina applies. Twin Angels is a rock capital of the Anasazi, located in one of its long straight Roads. The Canyon de Chelly is also considered a stay of the Kachinas. Here do the Navajo have been taught by their Yei.
Some consider Hopi Kiva ruins in the Anasazi area as the former homes of Kachinas, and among the historic Pueblo Indians are kivas (round underground rooms), including as related to goals Kachina world. A myth of the Acoma, recorded in 1928, reports on the construction of the first kiva, later revered as a holy place, "can appear where the Kachinas.
Time and again we read in the traditions of the Pueblo Indians of the Kachinas their journeys over land and water, and even to distant worlds material missiles used. In particular, the Hopi and Zuni remember reports of "flying shields". In the Hopi were known Paatoowa Others, the "object that can fly over the water," also called Taweyah reason of its similarity of form with a pumpkin.
The Zuni remember the so-called Hero Twins, the Ahayata, twin sons of the sun god. They had once been sent to the people, so provide the Zuni, and led them and guided them in their migration to the proposed objectives for the individual strains. Here are the divine twins have traveled in flying shields. This Shields them had given her father the sun, and with them they could not only fly in the clouds over water and land, but also to the "underworld" and the "land of eternal summer, where the gods dwell.
These shields are known in the Zuni traditions as a magic shield, shields clouds, smoke, end shields, fog-making shield and water shield. The Hero Twins traveled always on (or in?) The sign, but not with him, as one might put it, if it had been endorsed as a shield against attack. These shields should have been equipped with defensive capabilities, as the Zuni deliver that light or fire rays from these could shields went out, turning attackers and animals in stone or burnt into stone. The shields should have from a mysterious "cloud material" passed on them was a kind of cross, where others could come out the "flashes of fire." When they parted, the Hero Twins, the Indians left the back, these should have suggested to make a replica of their flying shields, to always remember them. Even today represents a beautiful mesh of white cotton thread to a ring decorated with curious and down-quality springs, this shield of the Hero Twins.
The Hopi know divine twins that are seen with a white sign in context. The Hero Twins of the Navajo, also sons of a sun god (the mother here is a Yei / kachina woman), more time to their heavenly father have visited. There in the "Turquoise House" up there on the horizon, they had to pass difficult adventures that are still likes to tell of the Navajo. On old rock paintings of the Navajo, the Hero Twins shown in some cases by a circular, spiral-like object - a parallel to the flight shields of the Hopi and Zuni myths?
rock art of the Navajo: One of the Hero Twins
But what is of traditions of the Pueblo Indians to think about flying up to? Could ancient rock art to be here? Among the most controversial subjects on the rock art of the North American Southwest belongs to the so-called "shield bearer" and a round, disc-like object. At the sign support is a round circle that seems to serve in some cases as a basis for a body. Is it a round shield that covers a body? Most, however, no arms, legs and even to see no arms and only sometimes look a head (but almost always with "probe") and by foot. The round circle is sometimes patterned, sometimes not. The show with pattern on the circle shown on plate carrier usually horizontal lines or Circles, triangles, stars including geometric shapes, so talk some rock art researchers from the strip tank design. In many such rock art has now been found that the out-looking legs only later include the actual image has been added.
All American Man: One of the typical "shield-carrier" rock art 
shield motif on the ruins of the Round Man House Anasazi But very more often come round disks before on rock art, standing there in isolation, without being connected with a figure. The disk-like Structures emerge as a rock art motif from the first time after the mysterious civilization of the Anasazi Indians. This motive must have been, given its frequency is very important. After the collapse of the Anasazi culture, the motif is widespread in the regions around the old Anasaziland. During the collapse time of the Anasazi (= the time between high culture and the disappearance of the Anasazi = 1150 to 1300) it is found in practically the entire area in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, and it was also on the witnesses such as neighbors of the Anasazi Kayenta, Sinagua and Mogollon immortalized on the rock walls.
resplendent round disk-like objects directly in Anasazi cliff houses of the collapse time, such as in Round One in the House Tsegi Canyon (named for such a rock art), the Jailhouse Ruin, in Honanki and Palatki and many other ruins.
round object on a rock wall Honanki 
Two other examples of round objects, below: on the rock face of Palatki The classic Vernal-style Fremont-region (the Fremont were primitive hunter-gatherer neighbor of the Anasazi) offers round shield-like objects en masse, often in addition to spirals, dots, stars, and fantastically endowed human figures. round discs are also in the Mesa Verde area, in Canyon de Chelly, on the San Juan River, the Rio Grande and in Texas. Particularly interesting is a shield with a cross motif pattern of the Palatki ruins in Arizona, but it is reminiscent of the "cloud shield" of the Hero Twins of the Zuni Indian myth.
is to distinguish the location of label support, however, rock art, much of the later Indian as Comanches, Apaches, etc. were aufbegracht and in this case represent in fact defense shields in war scenes. These shields offer so no real parallel to the old shield motifs in Anasaziland and the surrounding regions, and must not be confused with them.
The motif of the "shield-bearer" and "shield" is only since about the 1950 debate. The researchers wonder if you have to do it with Klanzeichen, with mythological figures, the personification of the sun, or whether there is just cute circles were drawn. Or the mirror? Or stars? Or even turtles, as someone speculated? The "shield bearer", it is believed by most archaeologists, were just what they are: people who protect themselves with a shield against attacks. There's just one catch. There were only dug only two objects in Anasazigebiet that - maybe! - Could be interpreted as defensive shields. It is not clear whether the Anasazi at all shields produced and used. During the Time of high culture they had such weapons of war and not have needed, because this time, the excavations were younger, was a peaceful time without the struggles and wars.
What then shall all the "shield bearer", with its nice "probes" represent? Bison hunters, some suspect, with "hörnerartigem headdress. The renowned rock art researcher Polly Schaafsma want to see in the round disk-like objects, representations of the Central American rain god Tlaloc. Triangles on the circles may be Tlaloc teeth. Rock art interpretations, there are almost as many as rock art researchers. What is clear here that is nothing.
And if the Pueblo Indians talk about flying discs and their Kachinas Hero Twins, it may be a connection at least proposed. It is striking that the motive of the Kachinas and the round objects appearing only in the aftermath of the civilization of the Anasazi. What memories of events which have been placed here?
In our current cargo cults, for example, were reproduced only aircraft glad customized antennas made of branches and Coca Cola cans imitations, etc., having had compared with their more technologically sophisticated visitor, seen in which the primitives such items , had been whisked away. If the kachina representations, and the round objects on rock art and the myths of heavenly teacher a reminder of unknown master planner of the Anasazi, which helped this a cultural leap and they let build mathematical and astronomical pre-planned drawing board systems as well as straight as mysterious streets? The historical time frame seems to confirm this.
Historical traces of the Kachinas:
Up to about 850: In the North American Southwest live primitive Stone Age farmers, basket makers and mining house builders, land and climate is perfectly suited for a long time. No trace of any Kachina motifs.
Typical pit house, the basket maker Anasazi Ca. 850: Some of these stone-age farmers - Some group of the Anasazi - a sudden leap to make culture to high culture without intermediate stages of development. Almost from one day to the other, they begin a complicated construction project. Whose center is located in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and it extends over the entire present-day corner region: Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Here for a comprehensive plan, a project is drawn, the first by a team of architects, astronomers, mathematicians, engineers, designers, surveyors, etc. must have been planned in every detail. (Master planner of the later models = illustrated and imitated Kachinas?) The fetched from all corners of the Anasazilandes workers are guided and controlled. This Project that without a creator and a monitoring body could not be imagined without links, stone buildings, settlements, calendar systems, and a road network through an invisible astronomical and geometric line network with each other. Everything is connected to everything, every building, every stone is indeed a very well defined and previously calculated Place. No Kachinas are presented, the Anasazi probably have enough to do so, complete the enormously labor-intensive construction project. The models for the later illustrated and imitated Kachinas live and work well even among them.
Today's archaeologists speak of a "master plan" and an incomprehensible and enigmatic Chaco phenomenon. But who the master planner, who designed this huge construction project that could run and controlled? The archaeologists have been able to find an answer. No known people and no simultaneous strain appears to be eligible, not even the local Anasazigruppen on a stone age farmers level. What all of this was built is still unknown. Of the thousands of rooms in the Great Houses and multi-storey buildings was apparently only a fraction of "occupied" or used. The workers themselves were living still in its tried and true pit houses. Most Roads led - straight up and over many kilometers away - to no discernible purpose for us. The construction project covered the entire four states today-ranging area with a geometric-astronomical pattern that can be seen only when one combines all the items on a map with lines. This pattern was the real purpose of the Master Plan? For whom and for when it was created? We have identified up to now not even all the lines and orientations, and found again, not all Roads. The master plan is likely even more fantastic and more extensive than previously thought.
reconstruction of Pueblo Bonito: Great Houses one of the typical
From about 1150: The construction project ends so suddenly and mysteriously as it began. Was the master plan completed? For the Anasazi - now left to themselves? - Begins the time of collapse. They move in cliff dwellings that they build into the stone walls of canyons, more or less far from Chaco Canyon, which is now completely deserted. These cliff dwellings - Cliff Dwellings - are virtually inaccessible to defend and easy, yet virtually invisible to located under rock overhangs.
White House: one of the tpyischen cliff dwellings of the collapse time of the Anasazi
From 1500: In the period shortly before the invasion of the first Europeans in the southwestern United States, in all material pueblos of the Hopi, Zuni, Tewa, and Acoma and those on the Rio Grande - that border areas around the abandoned Anasaziland - Kachina ceremonies. Heyday of the Kachina cult.
Kachina: Drawing a Hopi Fewkes in the collection
reconstruction of Pueblo Bonito: Great Houses one of the typical From about 1150: The construction project ends so suddenly and mysteriously as it began. Was the master plan completed? For the Anasazi - now left to themselves? - Begins the time of collapse. They move in cliff dwellings that they build into the stone walls of canyons, more or less far from Chaco Canyon, which is now completely deserted. These cliff dwellings - Cliff Dwellings - are virtually inaccessible to defend and easy, yet virtually invisible to located under rock overhangs.
White House: one of the tpyischen cliff dwellings of the collapse time of the Anasazi In other places, be built numerous towers (Purpose: still unknown) and defensive Pueblo settlements, surrounded by an outer wall. Was the time of the Chaco phenomenon one been peaceful time, so now is the time of the collapse of a period of raids and massacres. Numerous settlements and Cliff Dwellings are attacked, killed the Anasazi in many places, often even fried, boiled and eaten. More and more Anasazi left their homes and move away.
But who were the enemy or attacker, the archaeologists have not been able to determine. What happens then, it must have been so dramatic that the Anasazi were Unopened food and valuables are simple. Where are the Anasazi disappeared, is still completely unknown. The fact that the Pueblo Indians as Hopi, Zuni, Acoma and so are their descendants could not be proved and is questionable. Rather, they are descendants of the witnesses of Anasazikultur, or they migrated in the meantime and had contact with descendants of the witnesses of the Chaco phenomenon.
Ca. 1300: The corner region where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico is almost deserted and abandoned by the Anasazi. Round remain witnesses who had been during the time of the Chaco phenomenon and during the collapse of Anasazikultur lived on the old-type of Stone Age farmers, and do so still.
1330: The earliest archaeological traces of the Kachinas. Homolovi II of the Little Colorado River in Arizona is obviously one of the earliest sites of the Kachina religion. A large, over 1,200 rooms with forty comprehensive Pueblo kivas and plazas three large mural contains Kachinatänzern and the San Francisco Peak. Kachinas are also ceramic pots and on the nearby rock art. The Hopi believe that have lived here for a while, the members of two of their clans and were moved later to the Hopi mesa.
Until 1500: Time of the spread of the kachina religion, starting perhaps from the Rio Grande area, the most heavily populated region after the disappearance of the Anasazi. Kachina cults play no role so great, Kachinas are first presentation motive above all. The rock art of this period show that the world view of the People have changed. Beginning of a new religion? Especially the rock art of the Rio Grande style influenced later the sand paintings of the Navajo, the Pueblo Indians of Kachinamasken, the ceramic design, patterns, altar paintings and the later Kachinapuppen various Indian tribes. At the same time: the Jornada Mogollon rock art style, the masks and being with "goggles" and enigmatic headdress dominate. The ancestors of the Jornada Mogollon were adjacent-witnesses of the Anasazi civilization was. Kachina motifs also ceramic. The archaeologist Adams about this period: an "explosion of Kachina Zeremonialismus. And this is exactly in the regions around the former territory of the Chaco phenomenon. The Anasazi had disappeared, but apparently survived memories of their high culture with unknown master planners in the iconography of religion and the surrounding descendants that time witnesses.
From 1500: In the period shortly before the invasion of the first Europeans in the southwestern United States, in all material pueblos of the Hopi, Zuni, Tewa, and Acoma and those on the Rio Grande - that border areas around the abandoned Anasaziland - Kachina ceremonies. Heyday of the Kachina cult.
1615: The earliest reference in a European written document, the word "Cacina 'without further detail.
1681: One of the earliest written references to Kachinas, contained in a report by the English head of a cavalry division, Juan Dominguez de Mendoza. In his account of the reconquest of the Indian pueblos in New Mexico after the Pueblo revolt of 1680 he reported how he entered the abandoned Pueblo of Puaray and "many masks of chacherias, replicas of the devil, as they use in their devilish dances "took place. The Spaniards of course, burn all the "heathen rubbish." Other English documents from this period mention Pueblo ceremonies and masks, also of biased Christian perspective.
1850: First evidence of a Kachina doll. At the end of the US-Mexican War, the Hopi area, American Territory. This year in the management agent TenBroeck Fort Defiance, and includes a flat from there Kachina doll.
1880: At about this time, begin the first anthropologists to Kachinas interested. To celebrate this time only a few, living in very isolated areas Pueblo peoples actively kachina cults and ceremonies. Researchers are beginning to systematically collect information on the appearance, the history and attributes of the many Kachinas, that did and actions are imitated and reproduced in rituals. One of the most significant instances of this research was the 1899-1900 expedition to the Hopi, led by Dr. Walter Fewkes of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Fewkes made drawings to make the best Hopi. The result was a series of over 250 images of Kachinas. These images were published in 1903 together with Fewkes' observations of Hopi ceremonies. These representations were not only an important source for anthropologists, ethnologists and archaeologists, but, interestingly, also of Indian artists from other pueblos, where the Kachina tradition since the first contact with the White 16th Century had not been continued.
Kachina: Drawing a Hopi Fewkes in the collection Today: New insights into who were the Kachnias where they came from and where they went, there is not. Only lots of speculation. My suggestion: The traditions of the Kachinas could to memories of the master planner of the Anasazi decline that caused the cultural leap and could be carried out by a part of the Indians a preplanned drawing board construction project, for whom, for what and for whenever.
Literature:
Breen, Judy: The Fremont: kah2/students/Fremont An enigmatic people and their Rock Art www.jan.ucc.edu/ ~
Bunzel, RL: Zuni Ritual Poetry. In: 47th Annual Report of the Buerau of Amerian Ethnology, Washington, D.C., 1932
Cushing, Frank Hamilton: Zuni Fetiches. Second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, D.C., 1880-1881
Cushing, Frank Hamilton: Outlines of Zuni Creation Myths. 13th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 1891 - 1892. Washington, D.C., 1896
Ermel, Gisela: Das Anasazi-Rätsel. Leipzig 2005
Hartmann, Horst: Kachina-Figuren der Hopi-Indianer. Berlin 1978
McPherson, Robert S.: Sacred Land, Sacred View. Navajo Perceptions of the Four Corner Region. 1992
Moyer, David: A Case of Mistaken Identity: Shield Bearing Warriors on the Northwestern Plains. 51th Annual Northwest Anthropological Conference, Missoula 1999
Schaafsma, Polly: Kachinas in the Pueblo World. Albuquerque 1994
Schaafsma, Polly: Warrior, Shield and Star. Santa Fé 2000
Schaafsma, Polly: Tlolocs, Kachinas, Sacred Bundles and Related Symbolism in the Southwest and Mesoamerica. In. Curtis Schaafsma / Carol L. Riley: The Casas Grandes World. University of Arizona Press, Salt Lake City 1999
Short, Susan Rock Images of New Mexico. 1999th www.mninter.net/ ~ short
Waters, Frank: The Book of the Hopi. Dusseldorf, Cologne 1982
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