Native cultures have created a wide range of arts and crafts that beautiful and stunning to recreate. The Hopi tribe from Arizona created Hopi Kachina dolls. These wonderful, carved dolls are mysterious and beautiful dolls that come in a wide variety of looks and styles.

Kachinas were spirits of the gods that the Hopi worshiped. Regular Kachina celebrations were believed to bring down the Kachina spirits who would sing and dance and bring rain for the harvest. The Kachina would also give gifts to children.

Before each ceremony, men in the Hopi villages would carve Kachina dolls. They would spend days and sometimes a whole week carving these dolls. During the ceremony, one of the tribesmen would give out these dolls to the daughters in the village.

Each doll was to be hung on the wall of the pueblo and were studied by everyone in the pueblo. They were designed to give insight into the spiritual nature of each Kachina. Hopi Kachina dolls are still an important cultural milestone for the remaining Hopi tribe and they are still created.

The types of dolls can be divided into four different periods: early traditional, late traditional, early action and late action. Early traditional dolls were crafted from 1850 to 1910. These dolls are very primitive and consist of one piece of cottonwood root for the body. They only vaguely resembled humans, with only a few pieces of material such as cotton glued to the body to represent human features.

The late traditional period lasted from 1910 to 1930. The dolls became much more detailed, with more carving more pieces of wood and more extra pieces added. It was around this time that they started selling the dolls to interested people. However, the elders of the tribe forbid outsiders from seeing religious ceremonies, which ended this source of income.

The early action period lasted from 1930 to 1945. It was a time of oppressive restrictions on their religious and cultural history. The heads of the dolls began to become more separated from the body and the dolls began to look steadily more realistic. Paints were used to give them more detail and real doll sized clothes were added to their bodies.

The late action period lasted from 1945 to now and found the dolls gaining realistic body proportions, the ability to show movement, detailed customs, doll bases designed to display the dolls, carved feathers and painted details. Prices for dolls started at $0.25 in the 1800s but the can now fetch up to $1,000 per doll.