Originally published: Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, c1994.

Introduction Polly Schaafsma -- The Hopi Indians, with special reference to their cosmology or world-view / Fred Eggan -- The Zuni ceremonial system : the Kiva / Edmund J. Ladd -- The meaning of katsina : toward a cultural definition of "person" in Hopi religion / Louis A. Hieb -- The katsina cult : a western Pueblo perspective / E. Charles Adams -- Kachina depictions on prehistoric Pueblo pottery / Kelley Ann Hays -- The prehistoric kachina cult and its origins as suggested by southwestern rock art / Polly Schaafsma.

Anthropomorphic figures in the pottery mound murals / Patricia Vivian -- The evolution and dissemination of mimbres iconography / Marc Thompson -- The interconnection between western Puebloan and Mesoamerican ideology/cosmology / M. Jane Young -- Pueblo ceremonialism from the perspective of Spanish documents / Curtis F. Schaafsma -- The changing kachina / Barton Wright -- Kachina images in American art : the way of the doll / J.J. Brody -- Stories of kachinas and the dance of life and death / Dennis Tedlock.

"The Kachina, or rain deity, stands at the center of the Pueblo Indian religious experience. In the Pueblo belief, the kachina is responsible for the tribe's very survival, for without his intervention the crops will not grow, the cisterns will not be filled, the rivers will not flow." "In Kachinas in the Pueblo World, fourteen noted scholars, among them Fred Eggan, J.J. Brody, and Dennis Tedlock, examine the role of the kachina in the cultures of the Rio Grande, Zuni, and Hopi pueblos. They trace the figure of the kachina to a Mesoamerican original, look at the fortunes of the rain deities after the Spanish and subsequent Anglo conquests of the Pueblo homeland, discuss the transition of the kachina doll from religious object to art, and consider the role of the kachina in allowing elements of Puebloan belief to endure in the modern world." "This stimulating collection of essays and the accompanying illustrations will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from professional anthropologists and cultural historians to kachina-doll collectors and general readers with an interest in the Native Americans of the Southwest."--Jacket

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