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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Babcock, Barbara A., ed. The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. This is one of the major theoretical works behind our discussion of symbolic inversion, reversal, reflexivity, and why societies sometimes institutionalize behavior that deliberately contradicts ordinary norms.
Black Elk [Nicholas Black Elk], as told through John G. Neihardt. Black Elk Speaks. Originally published 1932; complete annotated edition, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Chapter 16, “Heyoka Ceremony,” is the important material for our comparison, particularly Black Elk’s explanation that Heyoka authority is connected with visions of the Thunder Beings and that sacred power is expressed through apparently foolish or reversed behavior. The modern Nebraska edition includes annotations by Lakota scholar Raymond J. DeMallie and additional contextual material.
Burke, Charles H. “Circular 1665: Indian Dancing.” Office of Indian Affairs, April 26, 1921; “Supplement to Circular No. 1665: Indian Dancing,” February 14, 1923; and “To All Indians,” February 24, 1923. Copies are preserved in the Indian Rights Association Papers, reel 40, D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Newberry Library. These are the crucial primary federal documents behind our discussion of attempts to discourage, regulate, and suppress Native dances. Contemporary archival citations confirm the dates and repository.
Mathiowetz, Michael D. “The Keepers of Tradition: Clown Societies in the Casas Grandes and Puebloan Worlds.” KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History 91, no. 2 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2025.2461803. This is the major new archaeological source in Part Two. Mathiowetz argues that clown societies existed within the Casas Grandes cultural world during the Medio Period, approximately AD 1200–1450, and may have influenced later Pueblo clown institutions; he also explores relationships with governance, Sun Youth, katsina ritualism, medicine societies, and agriculture.
Mathiowetz, Michael D. “The Sun Youth of the Casas Grandes Culture, Chihuahua, Mexico (AD 1200–1450).” KIVA 84, no. 3 (2018): 367–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2018.1463685. This earlier article supplies much of the archaeological and iconographic background underlying Mathiowetz’s later clown-society argument, particularly his reconstruction of Sun Youth and the political-religious complexity of Paquimé.
National Gallery of Art. “Awa Tsireh: Two Kossa,” ca. 1925. Corcoran Collection, accession 2015.19.381. This is the primary museum record for the artwork we discuss throughout Part Two: two Kossa figures painted by San Ildefonso Pueblo artist Awa Tsireh during the period of the Pueblo dance controversy.
National Gallery of Art. “Expressing the Individual” and “Artists Who Expand Views of the Southwest.” These NGA interpretive resources are particularly valuable because they discuss Awa Tsireh’s repeated representation of Kossa, the possibility that his clown imagery responded to federal attempts to suppress Pueblo ceremonial life, and his practice of omitting or altering details to protect sacred Pueblo knowledge from non-Pueblo viewers.
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. “Statement on Online Collections and Culturally Sensitive Collections.” This is the major contemporary museum source behind our section on restricted knowledge. NMAI explicitly states that it withholds culturally sensitive images and information when requested by authorized Native or Indigenous communities and can present records without publicly displaying the objects themselves.
National Museum of the American Indian. Koyemsi (Mud Head Clown) Mask, ca. 1966. A (Zuni), catalog no. 25/8935. This object was especially useful because NMAI identifies it as a ceremonial/ritual object and currently withholds its image, making it a concrete example of the principle that museum possession does not automatically make ceremonial material unrestricted public property.
National Park Service. “John Fire Lame Deer (Tahca Ushte).” NPS biographical resource. Useful as a supplementary source for the Heyoka comparison because the NPS explicitly identifies Lame Deer as a Heyoka, explains the association with dreams or visitations involving Thunder Beings, and distinguishes that sacred role from ordinary clowning.
Parsons, Elsie Clews. Hopi and Zuñi Ceremonialism. Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, no. 39. American Anthropological Association, 1933. Used for the comparative discussion of Hopi and Zuni ceremonial organization, including katsina institutions, rain and weather-control functions, society structure, and Koyemshi within the larger ceremonial world.
Pueblo de Cochiti. “Visiting for Cultural Events.” Official Pueblo de Cochiti guidance. This should remain one of the most important contemporary sources in the entire two-part show because it comes directly from the Pueblo rather than from an anthropologist: Cochiti describes tribal dances as religious ceremonies rather than public performances, prohibits photography and recording during cultural events, and explicitly asks visitors not to press people for information.
Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. The Zuñi Indians: Their Mythology, Esoteric Fraternities, and Ceremonies. Twenty-Third Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1901–1902. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. Used as an important historical ethnographic source for the placement of Ko’yemshi within the wider structure of Zuni ceremonial life; like other early ethnography in the episode, it is treated as a historical source rather than a complete statement of contemporary A religious doctrine.
Swentzell, Roxanne. Oral history interview by Mija Riedel, November 8–9, 2011. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Used for Swentzell’s Indigenous explanation of Pueblo clown imagery, social reflection, difficult communication, and the clown’s capacity to reflect behaviors such as greed back toward the community.
Turner, Victor W. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969; later editions by Routledge. This provides the comparative anthropological vocabulary we use near the end of Part Two—particularly liminality, communitas, structure, anti-structure, and rituals of status reversal. Turner was studying Ndembu ritual rather than Pueblo religion, which is exactly why we use his framework comparatively rather than presenting it as an Indigenous explanation of Koshare.
Wenger, Tisa. We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807894217_wenger. This is probably the single most important secondary source for Part Two. Wenger reconstructs the fight over Pueblo dances, missionary and federal accusations, Charles Burke and Indian Affairs, the political deployment of the category “religion,” Pueblo resistance, and the complicated consequences of defending Indigenous ceremonial traditions through Euro-American concepts of religious freedom
Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball.
