Description Polik-mana or Butterfly Maiden is a kachina, or spirit being, in Hopi mythology. Every spring she dances from flower to flower, pollinating the fields and flowers and bringing life-giving rain to the Arizona desert. She is represented by a woman dancer at the yearly Butterfly Dance, a traditional initiation rite for Hopi girls. The rite takes place in late summer, before the harvest, to give thanks to Polik-mana for her spring dance. Award winning artist Earl Dino Patterson Jr., also known as Sunaweuma, hails from the Hopi and Navajo tribes of Hotevilla (Third Mesa) on the Hopi reservation in northeastern Arizona, belonging to the Roadrunner and Greasewood clans. This exquisite Kachina, meticulously carved from Hopi cottonwood root, is signed by Earl Dino Patterson (Sunaweuma).
