Kachina Shalako - Sio Salako Katsina - Lot 9

Kachina Shalako - Sio Salako Katsina Hopi, Arizona Cottonwood root, pigments, feathers H. 12.5 cm (without base and feathers) Circa 1930-1940 Provenance : - Collection Galerie Flak, Paris - Collection Léo Scheer & Nathalie Rheims, acquired from previous owners between 1999 and 2003 A touching Kachina, small in stature but powerfully evocative. Her costume, adorned with black triangles, schematically depicts bird feathers. Her horns and bulging eyes are characteristic of the spirit Sio Shalako (or Sio Salako). This spirit originally came from the neighboring Zuni and seems to have entered the Hopi pantheon during the first part of the 19th century. The prefix "Sio" in the name of this Kachina means "from the Zuni neighbors" in the Hopi language. The first known Sio Salako dance on Hopi mesas dates back to the 1850s. In the seminal work Dolls of the Tusayan Indians, published by the Heye Foundation, Museum of the American Indian in New York in 1894, Jesse Walter Fewkes illustrates an example of this character heralding good rain (illustration opposite).