The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

A Keres Interpretation
When a traditional Keres reads the tale of Kochinnenako, she
listens with certain information about her people in mind: she
knows, for example, that Hutchamun Kiuk (properly it means
Remembering Prayer Sticks, though Gunn translates it as Broken
Prayer Sticks) 5 refers to the ritual (sacred) identity of the
cacique and that the story is a narrative version of a ceremony
related to the planting of corn. She knows that Lagunas and
Acomas don’t have rulers in the Anglo-European sense of
monarchs, lords, and such (though they do, in recent times, have
elected governors, but that’s another matter, and that a person’s
social status is determined by her mother’s clan and position in
it rather than by her relationship to the cacique as his daughter.
(Actually, in various accounts, the cacique refers to Yellow
Woman as his mother, so the designation of her as his daughter is
troublesome unless one is aware that relationships in the context
of their ritual significance are being delineated here.)
In any case, our hypothetical Keres reader also knows that the
story is about a ritual that takes place every year and that the
battle imagery refers to events that take place during the ritual;
she is also aware that Kochinnenako’s will, as expressed in her
attraction to Miochin, is a central element of the ritual. She
knows further that the ritual is partly about the coming of summer
and partly about the ritual relationship and exchange of primacy
between the two divisions of the tribe, that the ritual described
in the narrative is enacted by men, dressed as Miochin and Shah-cock,
and that Yellow Woman in her Corn Mother aspect is
the center of this and other sacred rites of the Kurena, though in
this ritual she may also be danced by a Kurena mask dancer.
(Gunn includes a drawing of this figure, made by a Laguna, and
titled “Ko-chin-ne-nako—In the Mask Dances.”)
The various birds and animals along with the forces such as
warm air, fire, heat, sleet, and ice are represented in the ritual;