From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Pueblo Clowns
Pueblo Clowns
parts of the performance may consist of sporting with
excreta, smearing and daubing it, or drinking urine and
pouring it on one another".[1][2]
Anthropologists, most notably Adolf Bandelier in his
1890 book The Delight Makers, and Elsie Clews Parsons’s
Pueblo Indian Religion, have extensively studied the mean-
ing of the Pueblo Clowns. Bandelier notes that the Tsuku
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,
providing their own humorous interpretation of popular
culture, re-enforcing taboo and communicating tradi-
tion.
Notes
[1] Parsons 1934
[2] Hyers 96, p.145
References
• Gutenberg etext of Adolf Bandelier The Delight Makers
• M. Conrad Hyers The Spirituality of Comedy: comic
heroism in a tragic world 1996 Transaction Publishers
ISBN 1560002182
19th century Koshare Kachina doll (fetish), private collection.
• Elsie Clews Parsons Pueblo Indian Religion, University
of Chicago Press, 1939.
Pueblo Clowns (sometimes called sacred clowns) is a
• Elsie Clews Parsons and Ralph L. Beals, The Sacred
generic term for jester or trickster in the Kachina reli-
Clowns of the Pueblo and Mayo-Yaqui Indians American
gion practiced by the Pueblo Indians of the southwestern
Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 36, No. 4 (October-
USA. There are a number of figures in the ritual practice
December, 1934), pp. 491-514
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 See also
another.
• Heyoka
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 External links
Hano Clown), the Tsuku, the Tatsiqto (or Koyemshi or
• Rainmakers from the Gods: Hopi Katsinam, Peabody
Mudhead) and the Kwikwilyak. With the exception of the
Museum online exhibition
Koshare, each is a kachinam or personification of a spir-
• A two-part BBC Radio 4 documentary by the
it. It is believed that when a member of a kiva dons the
comedian Stewart Lee on the Pueblo Clowns
mask of a kachinam, he abandons his personality and be-
comes possessed by the spirit. Each figure performs a set
role within the religious ceremonies; often their behav-
ior is comic, lewd, scatological, eccentric and alarming.
Among the Zuni, to enter the Ne’wekwe order, one is ini-
tiated "by a ritual of filth-eating"; "mud and excrement
are smeared on the body for the clown performance, and
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Pueblo Clowns
Categories:
• Hopi mythology
• Sacred clowns
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