Examines the role of kachinas (rain deities) in the cultures of the Rio Grande, Zuni, and Hopi pueblos. Considers the origins of the kachina cult, traces the figure of the kachina to a Mesoamerican original, and looks at the fortunes of the rain deities after the Spanish and Anglo conquests of the Pueblo homeland. Discusses the transition from religious to art object, and considers the role of the kachina in allowing Puebloan beliefs to endure. Includes color photos and bandw illustrations. Schaafsma is a research associate of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico. Material originated at an October 1991 seminar. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This collection of American Indian legends was gathered by Gene Meany Hodge from authentic sources in the 1930s and centers around the sacred supernatural personages of the American Pueblo Indians called Kachinas (pronounced Kah-chee-nahs). Mrs. Hodge wrote: “All in all the Kachinas are lovable and kindly supernaturals who bring rain and other blessings to the people.” The legends of the Kachinas are a unifying and cohesive force in the continuance of Native American social history. In these stories, you discover why Kachinas wear feathers, how Tihkuyi created the game animals, why the war chiefs abandoned latiku, how the rattlesnakes came to be what they are and other events from the past. This book makes an ideal companion to “Coyote Tales from the Indian Pueblos,” also published by Sunstone Press.

Since 1973, carvers and collectors as well as museum curators have turned to Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's Documentary as their primary source for information about kachinas. For more than twenty years, this book has remained the most interesting, colorful, and comprehensive authority on the subject.

A collection of paintings of Hopi kachinas by Edwin Earle, who lived in Oraibi from 1935-36, is accompanied by detailed descriptions and explanations of kachina ceremonies.

Archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and Native American scholars offer new views of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 that emphasize the transformative roles of material culture in mediating Pueblo Indian strategies of resistance and Colonial Spanish structures of domination.

In the centuries before the arrival of Europeans, the Pueblo world underwent nearly continuous reorganization. Populations moved from Chaco Canyon and the great centers of the Mesa Verde region to areas along the Rio Grande, the Little Colorado River, and the Mogollon Rim, where they began constructing larger and differently organized villages, many with more than 500 rooms. Villages also tended to occur in clusters that have been interpreted in a number of different ways. This book describes and interprets this period of southwestern history immediately before and after initial European contact, A.D. 1275-1600—a span of time during which Pueblo peoples and culture were dramatically transformed. It summarizes one hundred years of research and archaeological data for the Pueblo IV period as it explores the nature of the organization of village clusters and what they meant in behavioral and political terms. Twelve of the chapters individually examine the northern and eastern portions of the Southwest and the groups who settled there during the protohistoric period. The authors develop histories for settlement clusters that offer insights into their unique development and the variety of ways that villages formed these clusters. These analyses show the extent to which spatial clusters of large settlements may have formed regionally organized alliances, and in some cases they reveal a connection between protohistoric villages and indigenous or migratory groups from the preceding period. This volume is distinct from other recent syntheses of Pueblo IV research in that it treats the settlement cluster as the analytic unit. By analyzing how members of clusters of villages interacted with one another, it offers a clearer understanding of the value of this level of analysis and suggests possibilities for future research. In addition to offering new insights on the Pueblo IV world, the volume serves as a compendium of information on more than 400 known villages larger than 50 rooms. It will be of lasting interest not only to archaeologists but also to geographers, land managers, and general readers interested in Pueblo culture.

Educational resource for teachers, parents and kids!

Contains over 300 drawn color sketches of kachina dolls, with types of masks, body paint, clothing, moccasins, jewelry, tabletas, articles used and carried, and the meaning of symbols.

Five starred reviews! Mother-son team Jonah and Jeanette Winter bring to life one of the most secretive scientific projects in history—the creation of the atomic bomb—in this “astonishing…beautifully told” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) picture book. At a former boy’s school in the remote desert of New Mexico, the world’s greatest scientists have gathered to work on the “Gadget,” an invention so dangerous and classified they cannot even call it by its real name. They work hard, surrounded by top security and sworn to secrecy, until finally they take their creation far out into the desert to test it, and afterward the world will never be the same.

"Documents the efforts of indigenous peoples to redefine heritage as a protected resource. Michael Brown takes readers into settings where native peoples defend what they consider to be their cultural property ... By focusing on the complexity of actual cases, Brown casts light on indigenous grievances in diverse fields ... He finds both genuine injustice and, among advocates for native peoples, a troubling tendency to mimic the privatizing logic of major corporations"--Jacket.