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Flute Players

Petroglyph panel with flute players, birds, animals and human figures — Ancestral Pueblo panel with flute players.

The Hopi kachina Kokopelli has a hump and is associated with fertility, but traditionally does not carry a flute. Elder Hopis have referred to flute-playing rock art figures as "cicadas," noise-making insects with a flute-like proboscis. The cicada is an important Hopi figure, believed to bring the plant-nurturing heat essential for a good harvest.¹

1903 Hopi Kokopelli drawing and the contemporary icon.

Pecked Ancestral Puebloan flute player beside a corn plant and animals — Ancestral Puebloan flute player displaying fertility characteristic of the traditional Kokopelli kachina.

Painted Archaic figures, one appearing to hold a flute — Possibly an Archaic era painted flute player.

Small Barrier Canyon Style figure that may be playing a flute — This small human-like figure (5.5 inches / 14 centimeters tall) may be playing a flute, rarely seen in Barrier Canyon Style art.

Faint stipple-pecked flute player — An unusual stipple pecked Ancestral Puebloan flute player.

Petroglyph of a bighorn sheep playing a flute, among other animals — A flute-playing sheep, possibly Fremont.

Notes

Ekkehart Malotki, Kokopelli: The Making of an Icon (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).

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