Pueblo Clowns

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19th century Koshare Kachina doll (fetish), private collection.

Pueblo Clowns (sometimes called sacred clowns) is a generic term applied to the offices of jester or trickster in the Kachina religion practiced by the Pueblo Indians of southwestern America. There are a number of figures in the ritual practice of the Pueblo people, each had a unique role and belonged to separate Kivas (secret societies or confraternities), and each had a name that differed one mesa from another.

They performed during the spring and summer fertility rites. Among the Hopi there were five figures who served as clowns: the Payakyamu, the Koshare (or Koyaala or Hano Clown), the Tsuku, the Tatsiqto (or Koyemshi or Mudhead) and the Kwikwilyak. With the exception of the Koshare, each was a kachinam or personification of a spirit. It was believed that when a member of a kiva dons the mask of a kachinam, he abandoned his personality and became possessed by the spirit. Each figure performed a set role within the religious ceremonies; often their behaviour was comic, lewd, scatological, eccentric and alarming.

Anthropologists, most notably Adolf Bandelier in his 1890 book The Delight Makers, and Elsie Clews Parsons’s Pueblo Indian Religion, have extensively studied the meaning of the Pueblo Clowns. Bandelier notes that the Koshare were somewhat feared by the Hopi as the source of public criticism and censure of un-Hopi like behaviour. It is possible that they served a number of functions such as defusing community tensions, re-enforcing taboo and communicating tradition.