Hopi Soyok Wuhti Katsina Doll with Crook and Knife [SOLD]

To quote Barton Wright “The awesome figure of the Monster Woman appears during the Powamu ceremony as one of the many Soyoko who threaten the lives of the children.  Dressed all in black, with long straggling hair, starring eyes and a wide-fanged mouth, she carries a blood-stained knife and a long jangling crook—a truly fearsome creature to the children.

“When she speaks, it is in a wailing falsetto or with a long dismal hoot of ‘Soyokό-u-u-u.’ from which her name is derived.  She may reach for the children with the long crook and threaten to put them in the basket on her back, or to cut off their heads with the large knife that she carries in her hand utterly terrifying her young audience.

“On some mesas she may be the ogre that threatens a small child who has been naughty and bargains with a relative to ransom the child, but on others she is not.  In some villages she leads the procession of ogres; in others she remains at the side, content to make threatening gestures.”

This carving by Cordero shows Soyoko as in a rage, storming toward someone, hair flying crazily, beard swaying and skirt and cape flowing in the wind.  She does not carry a basket in which to haul away a child so she must be in a chase after someone else.

Jonathan Charles Cordero was born in Moenkopi, AZ on the Hopi Reservation.  His father, who was Cochiti, died when Jon was just a baby.  Although Jon was raised on the Hopi Reservation, he would always spend a month each summer with his Cochiti grandmother, the famed matriarch of storytellers, Helen Cordero.  His grandmother tried to teach him to make storytellers, but it just wasn’t his calling.  Instead, when he was in high school, he learned to carve Kachina dolls from his uncles, Hopi master carvers Loren Phillips and Tom Holmes.  Loren was not only his teacher, but also continued to encourage Jon in his carving through the years. 

Condition: one small section of the hair (beard) has been glued back in place (see below).

Provenance: from the estate of Tom Mittler, a former resident of Michigan and Santa Fe, who purchased it from Adobe Gallery in 1989.

Referenced material: Kachinas: a Hopi Artist’s Documentary by Barton Wright