Kachina Dolls

Our Southwest is a veritable treasure chest of interesting things made by clever Indian craftsmen. Here and there, at Indian trading posts or Indian roadside stands along the way, among the rugs, sashes, pottery, and silver and turquoise jewelry, you will find Kachina dolls. Not too many. Up until a few years ago they were quite scarce in the trading posts, but could be bought at the various Hopi pueblos, where the best ones are made. While they were originally made for their little girls, as stated in the preface, they produced even more of them when it was discovered that tourists prized them. And like everything else, someone saw a chance to earn a dollar and started to manufacture them. Some years ago the Japanese even went so far as to make them of papier-mache. Many of them are machined and given a quick coat of paint. But you can still buy good Kachina dolls both on the mesas and at trading posts.

All in all the Hopi-made dolls are good, and usually when you find one a bit worn, with a cord around its neck, you can figure that at one time it adorned a pueblo wall. The Hopi Kachina makers take great pride in their work. Their dolls are made out of cottonwood roots, which gives them that sort of rough texture that is pleasing to the eye. Some of the very old dolls have cloth and buckskin clothing to make them more realistic, but for the most part they are made entirely of wood with the exception of feathers and fluffs, as shown in the following pages.



As mentioned before, there are about 250 different Kachinas, but the Hopi do not make that many different dolls. There are certain Kachinas that lend themselves better to carved dolls, and it is with these that we will deal.

Years ago, when starting out boys and girls in whittling, I made it a practice to give them Kachina dolls to whittle, for various reasons. It acquainted them with the feel of wood and the meaning of grain. It taught them how to sharpen a knife, and how to use it. And best of all, they whittled figures without having to worry about human faces, which are the bugaboo of all whittling novices, and a lot of others, too.

This booklet will mainly show how Kachina dolls are whittled and painted, and to what use they can be put. This is not an ethnological thesis, but is written for the craft-minded who like to whittle, and who like Kachina dolls. I do not imagine that anyone will make all of the objects listed and described, but there may be one or more of them that you will enjoy making.

The first thing you will need is a piece of wood. Since it would be rather difficult to obtain cottonwood roots, our next best bet is a piece of straight-grained soft wood. I have used sections of green, knot-free basswood, willow, and poplar saplings or branches with good results. A piece of wood about 1½ inches in diameter is of a proper size to start out with. The green wood whittles easily and, due to the short lengths and deep cuts, it is not likely to check. And of course it is already round.

Also, white pine, sugar pine, and basswood can usually be bought at a lumber yard or millwork shop. It should be cut in rectangular sections and then rounded.



Then, of course, you will need a knife that holds an edge. A good quality of pocket knife is best, and all the whittling I have ever done has been with a small blade, from 1¼ to 1½ inches long. As the knife comes from the store it is not sharp enough for whittling. So get a small abrasive stone, and a piece of leather to strop it on, and sharpen it until you cannot see the edge; as long as you can see a “white” line or spot on the edge, your knife is not sharp. Thereafter, keep it sharp at all times.

You will also need sandpaper to sand down the knife cuts in the wood.

Now for the part that worries most beginners: painting the dolls. If you have a fairly steady hand, and use a good brush, this should not be too much of a problem. I have often said that it a person can pare a potato without wasting it, and can write fairly well, he or she can make a Kachina doll.

We use water colors for painting. That is what the Hopi use, and water colors are not so messy. While any good brand of water colors will do the trick, you will have the best success with poster or show-card colors. They are opaque and cover better than transparent water colors. Although many of the old Kachina makers use brushes made out of yucca leaf stems, chewed and trimmed to the sizes required, you can pick up a couple or three small brushes that will do a better job. Sable-hair brushes are best, but also more expensive.

Painting the dolls is not as difficult as one may think. Remember—you don’t have to paint faces, and the masks are all more or less abstract or symbolic in design. And furthermore you don’t have to do any shading or blending. It is all flat work.



There are two methods of painting. Most of the old-time Kachina makers give the entire doll a coat of white paint first, and the rest is painted over that. But usually, with good poster colors to work with, it is easier to lay out and paint each color directly on the bare wood. The colors dry rather rapidly and, if used rather thick (not too much water), they will not be apt to run or bleed where colors overlap. So don’t let the painting stop you. I have seen cub scouts make some very nice looking dolls.

The Indian does nothing to preserve the painted surface and the water colors are apt to smudge and wear off. On the other hand, a glossy surface on a doll looks awful, and is not in character. So we suggest that you use a light spray coat or two of Krylon, or Spray-fix, or any other crystal-clear spray, such as come in bomb cans. Krylon is a crystal-clear plastic spray, and Spray-fix is a fixative (in a bomb can) such as is used by artists to prevent smudging of pencil, charcoal, or pastel drawings. But whatever you use to preserve the water color, it should be “water white” and should not be sprayed on to impart a shiny surface, except where stated otherwise in the following pages.

Naturally, questions arise as to where one can get ideas for more difficult kinds of Kachina dolls, or Kachina costumes. Here are a couple of good books which contain such information: Hopi Kachinas, by Edward Kemrard; Ceremonial Costumes of the Pueblo Indians, by Virginia Roediger.

Moreover, Kachina dolls are shown from time to time in Arizona Highways Magazine and there are many crayon drawings of Kachinas, made by a Hopi Indian, in the 1899-1900 Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology.