Note 134 — COMPARATIVE STUDY OF KATCINA DANCES IN CIBOLA AND TUSAYAN

Hahaíwüqti. I have elsewhere shown reasons to suspect that several personages may be the same “Earth goddess.” Kókyanwüqti, the Spider woman, is also an “Earth goddess.” As everything, even man himself, came from the womb of the earth, symbolized by the spider, it is not surprising that an Indian should call the spider the creator. It is a very different thing, however, to interpret such information by our philosophic ideas. That the primitive should consider the earth as the mother of everything, its creator in one sense, is natural; that the Pueblo Indian should symbolize that mother by the Spider woman is probable, for other races have done likewise; but that he associates with mother earth the spiritual idea which we have of the Creator is absurd. His cosmogony bears no evidence that he rose, in pre-Columbian times, to the belief in a Great Spirit who created the universe.