The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

Notes
Grandmother of the Sun: Ritual Gynocracy in
Native America
1. Anthony Purley, “Keres Pueblo Concepts of Deity,”
American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 1, no. 1
(Fall 1974), p. 29. The passage cited is Purley’s literal
translation from the Keres Indian language of a portion of the
Thought Woman story. Purley is a native-speaker Laguna Pueblo
Keres. Shipapu is the underworld where the dead go, where the
Great Mother in her various aspects and guises lives, and from
whence she confers to the caciques the authority to govern. Shi
wana are the rain cloud spirits. They come from Shipapu by way
of southeastern or southwestern wind currents. They are the
dead, or the ancestors, who are obliged to bring rain to the
pueblo in the proper season. Cha-yah-ni (cheani) are medicine
men or holy people. The word may also have the connotation of
medicine or ritual power. Kopishtaya or Kupistaya is the Laguna
word for Spirits; it, like its allied terms katsina or koshare, is a
collective noun.
2. Purley, “Keres Pueblo Concepts,” pp. 30–31.
3. Hamilton A. Tyler, Pueblo Gods and Myths, Civilization
of the American Indian Series (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1964), p. 37. Evidently, Huruing Wuhti has other
transformative abilities as well. Under pressure from patriarchal
politics, she can change her gender, her name, and even her
spiritual nature, as this passage from Tyler suggests: