Rayna Green Three hundred and more kacinam, masked spirits who come in the winter to Hopiland, chastise and reward The People. Those who help make the crops grow by bringing rain sometimes become Cloud People when they leave Hopiland. In their dances-which, like all dances, songs, pots, and weavings, are really prayers-they bring families, clans, and villages together. They come out of the kivas bringing food and other presents, sometimes behaving in a frightening kind of way. Oftentimes, the masked beings are almost like the Clowns who accompany them; they act in backwards, unseemly, un-Hopi ways. The masked spirits are allowed to do anything at all, rolling in the dirt, throwing dirt, and worse, making fun of people who act un-Hopi. They teach the children about being Hopi. One type of masked Clown, the Mudhead, is also a kachina. They're all sacred beings. Some of their deeds exist only in old stories. There are many stories about Tusan Homichi, the Mouse-how once he went to war and defeated the hawk who was stealing chickens from The People. The Hopi were grateful to this tiny, plucky creature who defended them against hunger. The Mouse kachina is like that Mouse of the old stories. When Disney Studios put its version of the Mouse spirit on the silver screen, it must have been wonderful for Hopis to see him sing, dance, and perform brave and Clownlike acts, just as in their old stories and in his theninfrequent appearances in Hopiland. Worldwide, Mickey Mouse and his remarkable companions generated enormous love and admiration, so it wasn't only Hopis who seemed to understand and appreciate his magical power. In this instance, they expropriated a symbol of power from the other culture, just as theirs had been expropriated for centuries by bahanas, the whites who'd come to Hopiland so long ago. After Mickey Mouse began to appear in the thirties, how long or how often the Mickey Mouse kachina danced in the winter dances with the other masked spirits is not known. No one has seen him dance since the late fifties. Still, his spirit has been represented in Mickey Mouse kachina dolls, the carved cottonwood figures made to teach children the Hopi way. The true importance and power of this kachina doll and hundreds of others made for sale in a commercial market insatiable for Indian religious artifacts has little to do with their elevated status in museums and in private bahana collections. The Mickey Mouse kachina doll pictured here embodies the spirit of the Mouse and all the kachina versions of him. Obviously, the way he is carved shows that he is a Mudhead. Cheerful and alert, he is the essence of the Hopi version of Bobby McFerrin's magic song of the eighties, Don't Worry, Be Hopi, now worn on T-shirts throughout Hopiland. Perhaps the irrepressible optimism, bravery, and clever trickery of the screen Mickeydeeply needed by a Depression-worn America-was shaped and formed by that original Mouse spirit, sent in dreams to Disney by the kacinam, who are ever mindful of what The People need to survive. Certainly, when the Hopis pray, they pray for all beings, not just for themselves. The Mickey Mouse kachina acknowledges the power and persistence of