New Acquisition

This is a Hano Mana kachina doll. I posted a while back on some Zuni kachina rock art and the role that kachinas play in Pueblo religion.

The place where I bought this had it misidentified, but the artist's inscription on the base that identified him as Hopi-Tewa helped me figure it out with a little research. It also opened up an interesting historical story.

The Hopi are a Puebloan tribe that lives in a series of villages on the three Hopi Mesas (called First, Second and Third Mesas) in northeastern Arizona. They speak a Uto-Aztecan language and have evidently been living in the area for thousands of years.

After the collapse of the Second Pueblo Revolt against the Spanish in 1696, a village of Tewa people, another Puebloan group that speaks a Tanoan language, left the Galisteo Basin in northern New Mexico and migrated west, presumably to avoid the Spanish. The exact details of this journey aren't clear but by about 1700, the Hopi allowed the Tewa to build a village on First Mesa, a couple of hundred miles away from their starting point. The Tewa soon proved their worth by defeating a raiding party of Utes and have been there ever since.

The Tewa village is known as Hano and much later in the 19th century they established a second village at the base of First Mesa named Polacca. The Hopi-Tewa still speak their language that is unrelated and mutually unintelligible to Hopi. They also all speak Hopi, but no Hopi speak Tewa, which has been the subject of a good deal of anthropological research.

The Hopi-Tewa have their own religious beliefs that are similar to but distinct from those of the Hopi. The two groups do cooperate in a number of rituals. This Hano Mana kachina is a Hopi-Tewa one, known in English as the Hano Long-haired Kachina Maiden.