kachina

American  

[kuh-chee-nuh] / kəˈtʃi nə /

Also katchina.

noun

1. any of various ancestral spirits deified by the Hopi Indians and impersonated in religious rituals by masked dancers.

2. a Hopi religious ritual at which such masked dancers perform.

3. a masked dancer impersonating such a spirit at a Hopi religious ritual.

4. kachina doll.

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kachina British  

/ kəˈtʃiːnə /

noun

1. any of the supernatural beings believed by the Hopi Indians to be the ancestors of living humans

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Etymology

Origin of kachina

1885–90; < Hopi ḳacína < Keresan (Santa Ana) k̉â˙cina (or a cognate word)

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

kachina

Two rooms hold 14 exhibit cases brimming with artifacts from tribes across the country, such as baskets made by the Apache in Alabama and kachina dolls from the Hopi and Zuni in the Southwest.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 22, 2022

Tricia Loscher, the western museum’s assistant director and chief curator of the Goldwater exhibit, said that as a Heard intern in the 1990s she was tasked with cataloging his kachina dolls.

From Seattle Times ● Dec. 22, 2018

He decided to weave the kachina dolls into a game, not only because they had a “ready-made aesthetic” he liked, but because it seemed like “a cool talking point to use this indigenous art.”

From The Verge ● Sep. 1, 2018

One of the best juxtapositions is a vitrine that alternates three Sottsass glass objects with three kachina figures by unrecorded Hopi artists whose colorful geometric forms clearly relate.

From New York Times ● Jul. 26, 2017

When these girls see a Hair Eater Kachina coming up on the house top they run from her, remembering the old trouble when that kind of a kachina had done such an awful thing.

From The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi by Lockett, Hattie Greene