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The Pueblo religion includes more than 500 divine and ancestral spirits. These spirits are believed to interact with humans during rituals, where performers, adorned in Kachina masks and attire, are thought to transform into the spirits they represent.
A kachina (/ k ə ˈ tʃ iː n ə /; 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.
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi and by the earlier term the Basketmaker-Pueblo culture, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado.
Pueblo peoples have lived in the American Southwest for millennia and descend from the ancestral Puebloans. [3] The term Anasazi is sometimes used to refer to ancestral Pueblo people, but it is now largely avoided. Anasazi is a Navajo word that means Ancient Ones or Ancient Enemy, hence Pueblo peoples' rejection of it (see exonym). [4]
Myths of the Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo peoples tell how the first human beings emerged from an underworld to the Earth. According to the Hopi Pueblo people, the first beings were the Sun, two goddesses known as Hard Being Woman (Huruing Wuhti) [32] and Spider Woman. [32] [33] It was the goddesses who created living creatures and human beings.
Kokopelli pictograph "Cañon Pintado", ca. 850–1100 AD, Rio Blanco County, Colorado Petroglyph of Kokopelli in the "Rio Grande Style" of the ancestral Pueblo culture after the year 1300 AD; taken at Mortendad Cave near Los Alamos, NM. Kokopelli has been revered since at least the time of the Hohokam, Yuman, and Ancestral Puebloan peoples.
Hopi mythology (and similar traditions in other Pueblo cultures such as the Zuni and Acoma) states that this is the hole from which the first peoples of this world entered. As they stepped outside of the sipapu , they changed from lizard-like beings into human form.
Kiaklo was then tasked with conveying the customs and rites of the kachinas, the words of the gods, to the Zuni, including comforting messages for the mothers of the lost Little Ones, and how they made a pathway that all the dead follow to the spirit world. [3]: 49–70 [2]: 390–415 [4]: 15, 32–40