Jemez Pueblo Tsa (Antelope) Katsina Doll [R]

This cylindrical Katsina doll is an Antelope Katsina from Jemez Pueblo.  The Jemez name is Tsa and he dances with the Deer Katsinas.  The black and white figures painted on the cheeks represent eagle feathers.  The face is shielded by a visor comprised of sticks tied together with string which leaves the visor in an open framework.  Two small ears are made from leather and a cap of cotton rests atop the head representing eagle down that appears on the real mask.  The face is painted turquoise in color with black and white designs.

Regular Katsina masks are made of buckskin or cowhide.  As a black pigment, corn rust and a black stone from the mountains are used.  Micaceous hematite is used on masks to make them shine.  For turquoise or blue-green pigment the boiled gum of piñon is used; for red pigment, a red hematite, which is also smeared on the face by hunters. Across the bridge of the nose and under the eyes of masked dancers is painted as usual a streak of black paint.  Mask beaks are made of gourd.  Eagle feathers, tail feathers and downy feathers, are by far the commonest used on masks.

In general, a man keeps his katsina mask in his own house, unless he is living in his wife’s house or is unmarried, when he keeps them in his mother’s house.  The impersonator of some of the Katsinas keeps his own mask, which is buried (the mask proper, not the horns) in the north, at his death.

Condition: excellent condition with only the cotton soiled with an accumulation of dust.

Provenance:  from the collection of a Santa Fe resident

Recommended Reading: The Pueblo of Jemez by Elsie Clews Parsons, Published for the Department of Archaeology, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts by the Yale University Press. 1925