Kachinas: The Barry Goldwater Collection at the Heard Museum

Phoenix, Arizona: W. A. Krueger Company with the Heard Museum, 1975. First Edition Stated . Trade Paperback. Very Good. 11" x 9. Jacka, Jerry - Photography. 60 Pages with Five Page Comprehensive Index. The cover has some wear to edges and there are couple of small creases at the bottom corner area. Interior pages are faultless. Within the Navajo Reservation in Arizona lies the small homeland of the Hopi Indians. These rocky mesas jut westward into the high desert of the plateau. The mesa tops are thinly coated with sand and soil to support occasional juniper, sagebrush and in rainy seasons a sparse stand of grass. Around the cliff-lined perimeters water seeps out in intermittent springs. The sand dunes which collect on their slopes are washed down by the summer thunder storms to the valley floors. For hundreds of years this has been the chosen land of the Hopi tribe. These durable people have resisted the natural forces of drought and disease as well as enemy people who raided and pillaged or demanded acceptance of alien ways. They have resisted all encroachment for over four hundred years. Tides of Navajo, Spanish and Apache, and Anglos have surged about their mesas and still they hold fast. Upholding them in their resistance to change and in their ability to wrest a living from an inhospitable environment is their religion. The Hopi a religion is as all-pervasive and it incorporates every aspect of their lives. It is a religion which aligns a pantheon of supernaturals; deities, ancestral spirits, and benevolent forces on the side of the animistic Hopi. The relationship of the Hopi to the supernatural is that of equals belonging to different halves of the universe yet following similar lives. This duality reiterates its presence in all parts of Hopi religion and without knowledge of its importance the understanding of one religious facet, namely kachinas, is impossible. The concept of equal but different has allowed a system of obligations and payments to be the normal method of interaction. Supernaturals when given prayers via prayer meal and feathers are then obligated to perform certain duties for the giver. Color illustrations on every page. Includes a three page essay by Barry Goldwater.