Kachina dolls are an iconic Indigenous art form. Their craftsmanship is striking, and non-Native people have long admired and sought to acquire them. But they’re just one element in an encompassing religious outlook.
Among Southwestern Puebloan cultures, especially the Hopi and Zuni, kachinas are spirit beings. Each is the living essence of a powerful phenomenon – a creature, an ancestor, an element or a place.
And on sacred occasions, they visit the community, as ceremonial dancers become these spirit beings. Reverence for kachinas ensures health, harmony and the rain on which farming relies.
The kachina tradition has deep roots. And archeologist Tim Roberts thinks that some of the earliest evidence is painted on the West Texas landscape.
“I've always had an interest,” Roberts said, “even going back to college days when I was traveling around the Southwest, in the kachina figures. But when I came to work with Parks and Wildlife, one of the parks in my region is Hueco Tanks, and obviously it's an important rock art site.”
Roberts recently retired after 25 years with the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. As cultural resource coordinator in the Trans-Pecos, he became particularly engaged with the rock art of Hueco Tanks State Park.
On volcanic outcrops near El Paso, hundreds of images are painted here in caves and hidden recesses; the iconography may date to as early as 650 CE. And in these colorful pictographs Roberts finds arresting similarities with kachinas.
Take one of the most famous Hueco Tanks pictographs – the White Horned Dancer. It’s a 4-foot-tall figure with outstretched arms, giant horns and bulging eyes, or goggles. It has a patterned band or sash at its waist.
It could be a cousin to the Hopi “ogre” kachina, which similarly bears curved horns and goggle-eyes. Dancers that embody this kachina likewise wear a distinctive sash.
Traditionally, kachina dolls are given to young people, as a tactile way to transmit moral lessons. The ogre kachina presides over food gathering and processing, its intimidating visage reminding Hopi children not to shirk these chores.
The White Horned Dancer, too, seems aligned with food preparation; there are deep mortars, probably used for grinding corn, beneath the pictograph. Perhaps this image, like a kachina doll, had a teaching role.
“These kachinas in general are tools for educating children about the kachina spirits and other aspects of Hopi society,” Roberts said. “And so perhaps at Hueco Tanks, the White Horned Dancer and other figures there served a similar role.”
Elsewhere at Hueco Tanks, a small figure – less than 10 inches high – features a long snout; spikes, fans or feathers rise from its head, and its dress is patterned. The details align with a prominent Zuni kachina called Shalako. In Zuni tradition, Shalako is a divine messenger, who brings rain. And within the Hueco Tanks figure is a smaller image – of a figure known as the Goggle-Eye Entity, who’s thought to be a rain god.
“Having that Goggle-Eye Figure, that possible deity figure,” Roberts said, “with this other image potentially illustrates that idea of communication between this world and spirit world.”
Other rock-art figures here wear giant, terraced headdresses. Nearly identical headdresses – known as “tablitas” – appear on contemporary kachinas and are worn by kachina dancers.
The Hueco Tanks pictographs were created by a mysterious culture called the Jornada Mogollon. For a millennium, the Jornada farmed and foraged in what’s now West Texas, before abandoning their villages around 1450. Some Hopi clans trace their origins to the south. Roberts thinks the Jornada may be the ancestors of contemporary Hopis.
Hueco Tanks is a Texas treasure. It may also preserve the deep history of a living religious tradition.
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