The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

ody of a bird and the head of a woman. Her body is spotted
yellow “to represent the earth,” and centered on her breast is “a
red, arrow-shaped heart” which “is the center of herself and the
world. Around her is a blue circle to represent the sky, while an
inner arc represents the milky way; above it are symbols for sun,
moon and the stars.” 27
One of the interesting features of this depiction of Earth
Woman is her resemblance of Tinotzin, the goddess who
appeared to the Indian Juan Diego in 1659 and who is known as
Our Lady of Guadalupe today. The Virgin Morena (the dark
virgin), as she is also called, wears a salmon-colored gown that
is spotted yellow to represent the stars. She wears a cloak of
blue, and her image is surrounded by fiery tongues—lightning or
flames, presumably.
Certainly the Keres Fire Society’s goddess was made to
represent, that is, to produce, medicine power, and the arrowshaped
heart she exhibited spoke to the relationship between the
ideas of “heart” and “strength,” or power.
A Mayan prayer connected with Huracán, or the Heart of
Heaven, that refers to her as “grandmother of the sun,
grandmother of the light”:
Look at us, hear us! … Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth!
Give us our descendants, our succession, as long as the sun
shall move … Let it dawn, let the day come! … May the
people have peace … may they be happy … give us good
life … grandmother of the sun, grandmother of the light, let
there be dawn … let the light come! 28
Certainly, there is reason to believe that many American
Indian tribes thought that the primary potency in the universe was
female, and that understanding authorizes all tribal activities,
religious or social. That power inevitably carries with it the
requirement that the people live in cooperative harmony with