Pueblo Clowns

Pueblo Clowns (sometimes called sacred clowns) is a generic term for jester or trickster in the Kachina religion practiced by the Pueblo Indians of southwestern America. There are a number of figures in the ritual practice of the Pueblo people. Each has a unique role and belongs to separate Kivas (secret societies or confraternities), and each has a name that differs from one mesa or pueblo to another.

They perform during the spring and summer fertility rites. Among the Hopi there are five figures who serve as clowns: the Payakyamu, the Koshare (or Koyaala or Hano Clown), the Tsuku, the Tatsiqto (or Koyemshi or Mudhead) and the Kwikwilyak. With the exception of the Koshare, each is a "kachinam" or personification of a spirit. It is believed that when a member of a kiva dons the mask of a kachinam, he abandons his personality and becomes possessed by the spirit. Each figure performs a set role within the religious ceremonies; often their behavior is comic, lewd, scatological, eccentric and alarming. Among the Zuni, to enter the Ne'wekwe order, one is initiated "by a ritual of filth-eating"; "mud and excrement are smeared on the body for the clown performance, and parts of the performance may consist of sporting with excreta, smearing and daubing it, or drinking urine and pouring it one another". [Parsons 1934] [Hyers 96, p.145]

Anthropologists, most notably Adolf Bandelier in his 1890 book "The Delight Makers", and Elsie Clews Parsons’s "Pueblo Indian Religion", have extensively studied the meaning of the Pueblo Clowns. Bandelier notes that the Koshare were somewhat feared by the Hopi as the source of public criticism and censure of un-Hopi like behavior. Their function can also include defusing community tensions, re-enforcing taboo and communicating tradition.

Notes

References

* [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18310/18310-h/18310-h.htm Gutenberg etext of Adolf Bandelier "The Delight Makers"]
*M. Conrad Hyers " [http://books.google.com/books?id=_0KjfR6U4VwC The Spirituality of Comedy: comic heroism in a tragic world] " 1996 Transaction Publishers ISBN 1560002182
*Elsie Clews Parsons "Pueblo Indian Religion", University of Chicago Press, 1939.
*Elsie Clews Parsons and Ralph L. Beals, " [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294(193410%2F12)2%3A36%3A4%3C491%3ATSCOTP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B The Sacred Clowns of the Pueblo and Mayo-Yaqui Indians] " American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 36, No. 4 (October-December, 1934), pp. 491-514

External links

* [http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/katsina/ Rainmakers from the Gods: Hopi Katsinam, Peabody Museum online exhibition]
* [http://www.stewartlee.co.uk/archives.htm A two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary by the comedian Stewart Lee on the Pueblo Clowns]