Winter Solstice Kachina Chief  Ahola (Hopi, mainly 1st & 2nd mesas)

Opens the Powamu ceremony on the first night. The performance involves mimetic magic to slow the passage  of the sun. The next day, after visiting several sacred shrines, Ahola visits all of the kivas (ceremonial chambers) and houses with ceremonial associations, distributing bean and corn plants and marking the entrances with four strips of corn meal, thereby appealing to the Cloud Chiefs to sit over these places. At the end of this ceremony,  Ahola descends to a shrine where he bows four times to the Sun and asks for long life, health, happiness and  good crops for his children (the Hopi People).