Part buffoonish mirth-maker, part priestly intermediary, the sacred clown occupies a prominent place in the Puebloan Southwest. In the arid lands and fertile imaginations represented by the village-building, crop-cultivating legacy of the prehistoric Anasazi culture--among New Mexico's Keresan-and Tewa-speaking Rio Grande Pueblo tribes, the Zuni, and their Hopi neighbors in northeastern Arizona--clowning is serious business.
The clowns are, at once, Everyone and No One, the least favored and the most important. Drawing a name from the title of a novel about the prehistoric Southwest written a century ago by anthropologist Adolph Bandelier, they are the "Delight Makers."
Clowns complement Kachinas, a Hopi term that refers to sprits representing life's serious ideals. Kachinas, who appear at public ceremonies and secret rituals in the guise of masked men, assist Puebloans in attaining well-being symbolized by harvests of corn, beans, and squash. In a universe of extremes, the Kachina promises the security afforded by predictable, unbending rectitude. Yet the universe also cries out for balance, so the clown speaks with the assertive voice of swirling ambiguity.
The most familiar Pueblo clown is one Keresans call Koshare. Tewas know this figure as Kosa, while Hopis label him Koyala or Paiyakyamu, and the Zuni parallel is Newekwe. "The Koshare are covered with white paint, and with the exception of tattered breechclouts are absolutely naked," Adolph Bandelier observed in the 1880s, his words as applicable today as then. "Their mouths and eyes are encircled with black rings; their hair is gathered in knots upon the tops of their heads, from which rise bunches of corn husks; a string of deer-hoofs dangles from each wrist; fragments of fossil wood hang from the loins; and to the knees are fastened tortoise-shells". Typically, Koshares' white body paint is interspersed with zebra-like black horizontal stripes. Often, they wear a black-and-white cap surmounted by a side of which are fastened cornhusks.
Many Pueblo villages are grouped into moieties, a pairing into such associations as the Winter People and Summer People, who represent linked yin-yang elements. Similarly, two formal organizations of clowns, called societies, may occupy the same village. In such instances, the Koshare counterpart is the Kwirana. Kwirana body paint is customarily applied in vertical patterns, the opposite of the Koshare's decoration. For example, a Kwirana--his hair gathered together into a single horn--may paint the right side of his body orange and the left white, and vertical strips of orange and black can appear on the face; sometimes, the left side of the Kwiran's body is painted yellow and the right white, while others adopt yellow body paint interspersed with white stripes. Among the Hopi, Tsuku--their bodies caked with yellow clay, eyes and mouths streaked with soot, and hair gathered up in stubby norms--appear in village plazas wearing tennis shoes and a black breechcloth over cutoff jeans.
The Zuni are well-known for yet another type of clown--the Koyemci or Mudhead--which finds favor among their Hopi neighbors and is also seen in some other tribes. It is said that in the days when the Zuni sought the way to their rightful home at the Middle Place, a priest sent his youngest son and a daughter out in search of the promised land. The pair slept together; apparently this was the boy's fault, having taken the
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