Carved From Cottonwood Root, Given to Teach a Child

A kachina figure, more accurately called a tihu in Hopi and made in comparable forms among several other Puebloan peoples, is a carved representation of a katsina, one of a great many spirit beings recognised in Hopi religious tradition, made from cottonwood root and traditionally given to children, especially girls, as part of their religious education, hung in the home where the figure could be seen and its associated katsina remembered and learned about over time.

Whiteley's ethnographic scholarship on the Hopi stresses that the carved figure itself is not, in Hopi understanding, an object of worship or a literal container of spiritual power in the way some outside descriptions have mischaracterised it, but rather a teaching tool and a memory aid tied to the katsina religion's much larger body of ceremonial practice, which the figure represents without itself being the primary locus of that practice. The carving itself uses relatively simple tools, but demands considerable skill to render the correct proportions and attributes of the specific katsina being represented, a competence traditionally learned by watching and assisting an experienced family carver over several years. Figures made for a child are generally kept rather than sold, remaining within the family as the child grows.