Museum Expedition 1905, Museum Collection Fund

This is a folded hide parfleche, tied in the center. It is painted with geometric designs in red, green, and yellow.

Eagle Dancer (Kwahu) Kachina Doll. Artist probably Henry Shelton as he is stylistically like those he carved in body sculptural form and hand treatment. A Kachina with outstretched arms made from one piece of cottonwood root. His arms have real feathers and down on them. He wears a carved dance skirt, a bandolier and a pelt sash that hangs down in the back. His helmet style mask is blue, topped with a yarn band and feathers and circled with a yarn ruff around the bottom neck area. His eyes are black slits, his yellow beak is open. He wears yarn ties around his calves. Although unsigned, he is stylistically like those carved by Henry Shelton in body sculptural form and hand treatment. The eagle dance is a prayer for good crops, rain, and plentiful eagle feathers as their feathers important in many ceremonies. The Kachina usually appears in a group of several forming a dance troop, squawking and imitating eagle behavior while the Koyemshi (mudhead clowns) sing to them. The sponsoring kiva must fast, abstain from sex, and no eating of salty or fatty foods before the dance.

Museum Expedition 1904, Museum Collection Fund

This Kachina doll is slightly unusual as it has carved facial features. Its arms are articulated at the shoulders and it wears a cotton warp dance skirt with painted sash and trim. Wool yarn is wrapped around the wrists and ankles and the boots are painted on. A cap is nailed to the head with remnants of fur remaining.

The whistle is in the form of a human face with an open mouth and the instrument is likely to have been used during the Hamatsa initiation ceremony. Cotton cord is wrapped around the "neck."

Painted a reddish color, this wooden dragon fly has a straight body, round head, and two inset cross pieces on the body for wings. The antennae are straw. There are six evenly spaced painted stripes on each wing and four stripes around the tail. See also 03.325.7278.2

Museum Expedition 1903, Museum Collection Fund

Rooster (Takawee)Kachina Doll Kachina body totally carved from one piece of cottonwood root. He has a muti-striped face and helmet type mask, black slit eyes and a yellow bird beak. He has a bare chest painted yellow on the PL side and blue on the PR. He wears a white cape, and holds a rattle in his PR hand and plant fibers in his PL hand. He wears a beaded necklace and jingle bells on the bands on top of his boots. This type of Kachina dates to the post-Spanish era when the Spanish brought chickens and roosters into the Hopi territory. Rooster Kachina may appear during winter kiva dances.

Polychrome wood "copper". Ceremonial shields called “coppers" were highly-prized emblems of wealth among the Northwest Coast peoples, and were both traded and displayed during potlatches, ceremonial gatherings. The wooden grave marker in a copper form is a reference to the affluence and importance of the individual. One half of its top section is missing. On the remaining section one half of a bird's face is visible. On the lower portion, divided by a central vertical line, bird wings are visible.