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Kachina doll
Arizona
Poli Mana Katsina – Butterfly Maiden Kachina doll
Hopi
Before 1900
Carved wood (cottonwood) and pigments
Height: 55 cm – 21 ½ in.
Provenance
Ex collection Robert Brady (1928-1986)
Ex collection The Robert Brady Museum Foundation, Cuernavaca, Mexico
Ex collection Donald Ellis, New York & Dundas, Canada, inv. S4003
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Kachina dolls (or katsinam) represent spirits or gods from the pantheon of the Pueblo peoples in the American Southwest. Given to children, kachina dolls constituted a teaching tool allowing them to familiarize themselves with the spiritual world and perpetuating knowledge of the founding myths on which their society was based.
The doll presented here is exceptional for its great age, superb colors, large tableta and intense sculptural presence.
Barton Wright notes in « Esprit Kachina » (p. 95, Ed. L’Enfance de l’Art, 2003), that Poli Mana is not a kachina but a social dancer. Her beautiful dance is given on all the mesas and usually in the fall. Both boys and girls dance starting very young, often at about the age of four. The dance begins early in the morning with the very young. After each performance they withdraw and individuals slightly older take their place until the end of the day. At this time, some of the boys’ aunts may push the girls out of the way so they can dance with a nephew.
Female social figures also appear during the Mamzrau initiation dance, when they are referred to as Pahlik' Manas. Butterfly Maiden figures usually wear an elaborate tableta with corn-related symbols.
"This Hopi doll represents the goddess of maize. In the crenelated frame around the head, you’ll see the clouds over the mountains; in the small chequerboard at the centre of the forehead, the ear of maize; and around the mouth, the rainbow [...]. Is this not poetry as we continue to hear it?”
André Breton, Le Littéraire, 1946
The doll presented here is exceptional for its great age, superb colors, large tableta and intense sculptural presence.
Barton Wright notes in « Esprit Kachina » (p. 95, Ed. L’Enfance de l’Art, 2003), that Poli Mana is not a kachina but a social dancer. Her beautiful dance is given on all the mesas and usually in the fall. Both boys and girls dance starting very young, often at about the age of four. The dance begins early in the morning with the very young. After each performance they withdraw and individuals slightly older take their place until the end of the day. At this time, some of the boys’ aunts may push the girls out of the way so they can dance with a nephew.
Female social figures also appear during the Mamzrau initiation dance, when they are referred to as Pahlik' Manas. Butterfly Maiden figures usually wear an elaborate tableta with corn-related symbols.
"This Hopi doll represents the goddess of maize. In the crenelated frame around the head, you’ll see the clouds over the mountains; in the small chequerboard at the centre of the forehead, the ear of maize; and around the mouth, the rainbow [...]. Is this not poetry as we continue to hear it?”
André Breton, Le Littéraire, 1946
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