Hopi Katsinas

(Southwest)

A

• Katsina - masked dancer doll that represents benelovent supernatural spirits (called katsinas also) living in mountains and water sources
  • rain-bringing deity who wears a mask painted in geommetric patterns symbolic of water and agricultural fertility
  • rids of bad spirits

• physical records of these dances and the costumes they wore

• Collected by the Surrealists because they believed it expressed the soul, human nature, fears, desires

• paintings done directly on the buffalo hide

• the subjects are of horses, fauna, and the arrival of white man;document the lives of the Indians who were captured and the hardships they had to endure

• The Native Americans who hunt buffalo are considered the most nomadic

Scalp shirt of Lakota Sioux

(Plains)

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• ceremonial scalp shirts; the beads are porcupine quills, traded

• hair is from family members and other people who donated their hair

Serpent mound

(Eastern Woodland: Mississippian)

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• effigy mound - Ceremonial mounds built in the form of animals or birds

• overlooking a creek in Ohio; found in the juncture of two rivers; and it echoed the river

• it measures nearly 1/4 mi from its open jaw, which seems to clasp an oval-shaped mound in its mouth, to its tightly coiled tail; reproduced more than once

• date and meaning is controversial; contained no evidence of burials or temples
  • it was perhaps for a ceremonial pathway (representing the stages it took to make it all the way to the top...afterlife?)
  • Such a large and elaborate earthwork could have been built only by a large labor force under the firm direction of powerful elites eager to leave their mark on the landscape forever

• Serpents, however, were important because they were associated with the earth and fertility of crops

Southwest Native American

Characteristics

Navaho weaving

(Southwest)

A

• Navajo textiles are highly valued and have been sought after as trade items for over 150 years; originally utilitarian blankets for use as cloaks, dresses, saddle blankets, and similar purposes.

• Done when white men kept pushing Native Americans to the west
  

• used vertical looms with no moving parts. made of wool and cotton; strong geometric patterns; separate color for each cardinal direction

Eskimo burial mask

A

• composed of 9 carefully shaped parts that are interrelated to produce several faces, both human and animal, as a visual pun.

• refined in the placement and precision of geometric and representational incised designs

• reflect a nomadic lifestyle that required the creation of small, portable, and practical objects.

Adena Pipe

(Eastern Woodland)

A

• tubular pipe carved from Ohio pipestone into an effigy (meaning "a portrait of a person") of an ancient American Indian man. 
  

• Characteristics show evidence of contact with Central Americans - ear spools 
  

• The sculpture reveals wonderful details of clothing, hair-style, and ornaments of the Adena culture

• Tubular pipes were used for smoking tobacco as a part of special ceremonies. Shamans also could have used them as "sucking tubes" through which they believed they could draw evil spirits from the bodies of sick people. The effigy may represent a shaman or medicine man in the act of a ceremonial dance.

• Some think the carving is so naturalistic that it can be said to represent a dwarf with a goiter. The short legs compared to the body simply may indicate that the artist was less interested in the legs, or the artist may have had difficulties representing bent legs while keeping the proportions accurate; it's The decorated loincloth with the feather bustle

Kwakiutl mask

(Northwest Coast)

A

• the Kwakiutl settled in British Columbia

• USES:
  • Kwakiutl religious specialists (shaman) used masks in healing rituals; they also mimick or take on the role of the clan ancestor, 
    
  • Men (not females) also wore masks in dramatic public performances during winter ceremonial season

• Animals and mythological creatures are represented; example of transformation; the mask's human aspect is also exaggerated and has distorted facial parts (animal characteristics)

• moveable mouths: This mask is constructed to open and close rapidly when the wearer manipulated the hidden strings; he appears to "magically transform" from human to eagle 
  
• 
  

totem poles

(Northwest Coast)

A

• monumental sculptures carved from large redwood or cedar trees; 80ft tall with depictions of humans and animals

• USES: 
  
  • totem pole in front of an Indian's home would show the ancestry and the social rank of that family.
  • Because the Northwest Coast Indians had no written language, the totem poles were a very important part of their culture. The totem poles allowed them to record stories, legends, and myths through images
  • stories commemorate historic persons, represent shamanic powers, or provide objects of public ridicules

• poles were not as common to the tribes until the white traders brought them iron tools for carving, after which the totem poles became a dominant symbol of the tribes

Mississippi birch baskets
(Eastern Woodlands)

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• Birch was often used for canoes and baskets

Mississippian shell gorgets

(Eastern Woodland)

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Chilkat blanket

(Northwest Coast)

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• these blankets go over the shoulders of individuals; images are repetitive, very strictly organized in a symmetrical arrangement

• made of mountain goat wool spun over a core of cedar-bark string; made by "twining"
  

• The design often represents an animal (such as a bear), but is reordered and modified through complex principles.

Mississippi effigy jars

(Eastern Woodlands)

A

• characterized by the adoption and use of riverine (or more rarely marine) shell- tempering agents in the clay paste.

• Effigy pots were a mainstay of many Mississippian peoples, although they come in many different varieties. Some come in anthropomorphic shapes, some zoomorphic shapes and others in the shape of mythological creatures

Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde (Anasazi)

(Southwest)

A

• Sometime in the late 12th century, a drought occurred in their homes and the Ancestral Puebloans moved to Mesa Verde("Green Flat Rock")- Cliff Palace (Colorado)

• Cliff Palace is wedged into a sheltered ledge to heat the pueblo in the winter and shade it during the summer. 
  

• It contains 200 stone-timber rooms plastered inside and out with adobe (sun-dried brick)
  

"Lightning Man"  kiva mural (Kuaua Pueblo)

(Southwest)

A

• Ancestral Puebloans decorated their kivas with elaborate mural paintings representing deities associated with agricultural fertility
  • Kiva - square or circular semisubterranean structure that is the spritual and ceremonial center of Pueblo Indian life
    • once were roofed  and entrance is with a ladder through a hole in the flat roof
    • stores ritual regalia (the decorations, insignia,orceremonialclothes of any office or order)
  • where preparations for public ceremonies took place

• "Lightning Man" mural - lightning man is on the left and fish and eagle images (as associated with rain) is on the right
  • seeds, a lightning bolt, and a rainbow stream from the eagles mouth
  • all figures are associated with the fertility of the eart and rain