Kokopelli, the hump backed flute player of the American Southwest, is a trickster who will take over your imagination for a while if you let him. He belongs to a number of Uto-Aztecan and Keresan people in the American Southwest, and many stories are told about him. I think that Kokopelli is a trickster, willing to wander from his people to play tricks on all the peoples of the earth. Here are some notes about how to draw the hump backed flute player like the ancient Anasazi drew him on the rocks of their desert homeland.
The crest represents the paired antennae of the insect form of the Kokopelli. There is usually an even number of crest elements. If multiple they may project from the hump as well as the head. Sometimes they appear to represent rays of light. Ends of crest elements are sometimes recurved or bulbous. According to Frank Waters and Oswald White Bear Fredericks ,the insect is paired, with the one without antennae representing the Blue Flute Clan, the one with antennae the Gray Flute Clan; while the one with bulbous antennae represents the kachina of that name.
The hump may be an arc which may cover the entire back, or only the lower half. Often, particularly in present day Anglo Kokopelli designs, the hump may be represented as a curve of the entire body, as if the dancer were bending forward. The hump might represent a hunchback deformity, or the curved back of the insect, or the back-pack of a wandering peddler.
The arms are usually depicted as a chevron, representing the elbows pointing earthward.
The flute is usually a straight line or pair of lines. Often the end is flared or bulbous like the end of a clarinet. This flare is ancient, and is not a contemporary addition to the design. Occasionally Kokopelli plays two flutes, like an ancient Greek aulos.
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Not represented here, an erect phallus often projects upward from the lower body. This element is ancient, being clearly represented on a thousand year old bowl displayed at Mesa Verde National Park. It may be a simple line or an arrow. The arrow may be drawn transfixing the trunk, evoking the insect transfixed by an arrow, but I'm not certain of the authenticity of this element.
Forward leg: The forward leg is a continuation of the curved line that delineates the hump.
Backward leg: Similarly, the backward leg continues the straight line of the front of the body.
What I wrote here turns out to be of very dubious authenticity. I have left it on the Web, almost unchanged, as an example of the fancies that get spun about Kokopelli, by me and a lot of other people.
Ekkehart Malotki is probably the first person to write about Kokopelli who speaks Hopi fluently (though not as a native) and has access to most of its dwindling speech community. He uses oral texts to show that the mythic figure we call Kokopelli is actually a conflation of two figures.
The prominently hump-backed robber fly is called Kokopelli , and the kachina with this name does not have a flute and is not associated with the Flute Societies. The kachina scatters food from his hump and is promiscuous.
"To put it bluntly, the bottom line is that the term "Kokopelli" has no justified use in the field of Southwestern rock art. I tell all of my rock art friends to avoid the K-word in this context and simply refer to the motif as a fluteplayer. On the other hand, the K-word is appropriate in all curio stores that have commercialized the motif as a good-luck charm. However, there is no cultural foundation for this figure in any of the American cultures. Kokopelli is thus a total fabrication (come about through a misalignment of a Hopi kachina with the rock art symbol) of the dominant white society."
It appears that Kokopelli is an Urban Legend
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