Kachina

Palahiko Mana, Water-Drinking Maiden, Hopi 1899. She wears a headdress with stepped Earth signs and corn ears. Water Drinking Woman seems to be a name for the corn itself, one of many forms of the Corn Maidens. [1]
Drawings of kachina dolls, Plate 11 from an 1894 anthropology book Dolls of the Tusayan Indians by Jesse Walter Fewkes.

A kachina (/kəˈtʃiːnə/; also katchina, katcina, or katsina; Hopi: katsina [kaˈtsʲina], plural katsinim [kaˈtsʲinim]) is a spirit being in the religious beliefs of the Pueblo people, Native American cultures located in the south-western part of the United States. In the Pueblo cultures, kachina rites are practiced by the Hopi, Hopi-Tewa and Zuni peoples and certain Keresan tribes, as well as in most Pueblo tribes in New Mexico.

The kachina concept has three different aspects: the supernatural being, the kachina dancers, and kachina dolls (small dolls carved in the likeness of the kachina, that are given only to those who are, or will be responsible for the respectful care and well-being of the doll, such as a mother, wife, or sister).[2]

  1. ^ Sacred Women in North American Rock Art, August 20, 2011. Image is from the Bureau of American Ethnology 21st Annual Report.
  2. ^ Colton, Harold Sellers (1959). Hopi Kachina Dolls: with a Key to their Identification (rev. ed.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. pp. 1–3.