Aldrick Mooya
Chowilawu
14" total
height
Chowilawu is a kachina that
few Hopi men will make as a doll. Very few can be found and they
are in the older collections. Reverend Voth (a Mennonite missionary
among the Hopis in the 1890's) managed to persuade someone to
make a doll of this kachina, for which they were both roundly
castigated by the priests of Oraibi.
The kachina appears during
the initiation into the Powamu fraternity, an event that usually
takes place the day before the initiation into the Kachina cult.
He is never seen in public, even though he appears on all three
mesas.
Some Hopis equate this kachina
with Qochaf and others with the whirlwind, but it seems doubtful
that he is either of these. If this kachina did not have a ruff
and if its lower legs and forearms were blackened, it would be
a closer representation of this particular personation.
The black spot on its chest
is mathced by one on its back, but the spots should not be encircled;
rather they are a small smudge just over the sternum and in the
same position on the back.
Wright, Barton. Kachinas: a Hopi
Artist's Documentary (70).
