2007 ArtesdeMexico 85 CORAHUICH-Ingles-libre

8/17/2019 2007 ArtesdeMexico 85 CORAHUICH-Ingles-libre

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Konrad T. Preuss’s Mexican Adventure

Margarita de Orellana

A hundred years have gone by since an inquisitive and determined German anthropologist named

Konrad eodor Preuss arrived in Mexico. His goal was to study and live with indigenous

communities that had always avoided contact with outsiders: Huicholes, Coras, Mexicaneros

and Tepehuanes. For centuries, these cultures have retained a strong sense of identity, and kept

their traditions alive. Preuss was convinced that a better understanding of their spiritual life would offer

him insight into the religion of the ancient Mexica culture.

How does one even begin to imagine Preuss’s first contact with those tribes? He was aware of the

achievements of other anthropologists who had gone before him and also of what they had endured.

How did he react to the hostility or indifference with which these communities may have greeted him?

How was he able to establish such open communication with them, one that would reveal keys to under-

standing their cultures? What resources did an anthropologist such as Preuss need a hundred years agoin order to enter such diverse and not always friendly worlds?

We know that Preuss attended many Cora, Huichol and Mexicanero rituals. He transcribed their songs

and prayers, recorded their music and described their dances. He collected about 2300 cra objects, most

of them ritual in nature. He was an active participant in the agricultural ceremonies known as mitotes,

sharing in the ecstatic experience produced by the music, dancing and peyote consumption. Later, he

would remember them as the most interesting moments in his long stay in rural Mexico. In his diary he

exclaimed, “How paltry is the mere aesthetic experience compared to the sensation of watching the ritual

aer one has also understood the intellectual forces that explain the origins of all this!”

In this issue of Artes de México, a selection of the ritual objects that Preuss acquired in this country

will be shown publicly for the first time in a hundred years. is collection has been preserved all these

years due to the fact that it is housed, along with Preuss’s field notes and journal, at the Berlin Ethnologi-

cal Museum (part of the Dahlem Museum Center), which has generously allowed us access to them andto publish photographs of them. is is the second time that we have had the opportunity to work with

this institution and its curators (see Artes de México issue no. 17 on the Dahlem Museum’s surprising

collection of pre-Hispanic sculptures). We are once again fortunate to have Johannes Neurath as the is-

sue coordinator. He was previously the guest editor of our colorful and very popular issue on Huichol

art ( Artes de México issue no. 75).

As if pulling treasures one by one out of a chest, at the Dahlem Museum we were able to inspect each

of these precious objects that we are pleased to share with our readers here. Preuss believed that these

pieces were not precisely offerings to the gods. ey were used in religious practices, and their manufac-

ture formed part of the rituals: non-verbal dramatizations of the myth, as Preuss called them. e objects

were magical instruments that sustained the existence of the gods and the movement of the world. ey

were tools that helped the gods in their activities. In retrospect, the aesthetic value of these pieces is in-

creased by our knowledge of their meaning.Many of these pieces are like tiny, symbolically-charged worlds that provide us a glimpse of the spiri-

tual dimension of these ancient cultures that are still alive today, and whose existence continues to be

governed by myths and rites.

Mexico is deeply indebted to the many foreign scholars who have helped open our eyes to our own

cultural wealth. is issue of Artes de México is intended as a tribute to the memory of Konrad eodor

Preuss, a German pioneer of Mexican ethnology, and an account of the Mexican adventure that he em-

barked on a century ago.

Translated by Michelle Suderman.

Ancient Cora and Huichol Art: The Konrad T. Preuss Collection


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Konrad eodor Preuss:In Search of Magic, Rituals and Songs

Paulina Alcocer

The son of a civil servant, Preuss was born in 1869 in the cityof Preussisch–Eylau (eastern Prussia). He studied geogra-phy and history at the University of Königsberg (now Kalinin-

grad, Russia) and in 1894 presented his doctoral thesis, “e

Funerary Customs of Indigenous Americans and Northeastern

Asians.” It is worth noting that even in this early scientific work,

he tended to oppose the monotheistic supposition of a body-

soul dualism in referring to the religions of ethnic groups. It

was due to his rejection of this notion that he was able in subse-

quent works to address theoretical problems concerning magic,

art and ritual.

Like many of the first generation of German anthropologists,Preuss was a disciple of Adolf Bastian in Berlin. He took courses

in ethnology at Friedrich Wilhelm University and joined the

staff of the Royal Museum of Ethnology as a scientific assistant

in their Oceania and Africa departments.

Inspired by Eduard Seler, a pioneer in the study of pre-His-

panic codices and Sahagún’s manuscripts and at that time curator

of the museum’s Americas department, he soon changed course

to focus on Mexican studies, publishing a series of articles on the

Mexica religion at the turn of the century. Nevertheless, unlike

his mentor Seler—who increasingly focused on Mesoamerican

studies during these years—Preuss always kept up his general

anthropological interests, particularly in the field of ritual theory.Influenced by classical philologists, folklorists and historians of

contemporary religion—many of whom belonged to Hermann

Usener’s influential school—he demonstrated a great interest in

the comparisons made between the Aztecs and other ancient

civilizations, such as the classic Greeks and the Vedic Hindus.

In his earliest essays on Mexico, Preuss suggested that Aztec

human sacrifice should be seen as the sacrifice of demons, in-

tended to increase the magical powers of deities associated with

natural phenomena. In fact, in his view, all forms of artistic ex-

pression, as well as sacrifice and the staging of ritual battles and

coitus, stemmed from magical acts aimed at bringing blessings

and abundance. According to this line of thought, what set thegods apart from other beings was the fact that they possessed

magical powers, though in the strict sense they were supposed

to be seen as objects in the natural world, distinguished only by

their ability to transform themselves.

Although at this stage, Preuss conceived of rituals as the non-

verbal dramatization of myths—following the tenets of the school

of natural mythology—by the end of the decade, rituals had

gained greater theoretical autonomy in Preuss’s thinking, and he

focused more on their particular kind of symbolization. Starting

in 1904, Preuss began to investigate the relationship between an-

cient Mexican culture and its extensions in northern America. In

e Sun’s Battle against the Stars in Mexico, he set out the resultsof his quest for a cohesive concept that would reveal the unifying

principles behind the enormous variety of phenomena present in

ancient Mexican religion. What ideas were there underlying the

beliefs and worldview of the peoples who shared this cultural tra-

dition? “Mexican religion strikes most researchers as so strange

that until now, the quantity and variety of images have stood in

the way of any attempt to discover some uniformity in them,” he

writes. “However, only a uniform conception of an evolving his-

tory capable of explaining all the facts can ensure the validity of all

the particular relationships established, as well as the most general

interpretations. One of the nodal points required to achieve such a

uniform conception is the struggle between the Sun and the stars.”

Although he was identified with the trend known as astralism,

which arose following discoveries about the astronomy of the

Babylonians and other ancient Old World civilizations, Preuss

was no uncritical partisan of that school of thought. He found it

unacceptable to replace the understanding of an entire cultural

tradition with crude labels by employing terms like “Sun wor-

ship,” “snake worship” or “fetishism.”

A clearer formulation of his stance on the subject can be

found in a 1910 work, e Observation of Nature in the Religionsof the Mexican Cultural Sphere. In it, he asserts that, “Every eth-

nologist must concur that progress in the science of the religion

of primitive tribes depends primarily on research into the ob-

servation of nature, which serves as the basis for the form and

essence of divine beings. Gods are thus constructed not from

depth of feeling or anything else; instead, it is a matter of effec-

tive forces that are questioned by man, and whose power has in

some way been lodged in man’s perception.”

Nor did Preuss believe that ideas about natural forces and

the gods could be attributed solely to nature’s influence. On the

contrary, he said, “Within man himself lies the desire to impart

magical influences to his natural surroundings.”Preuss’ expedition to the region known as El Gran Nayar was

no doubt directly motivated by Lumholtz’s studies of the Huichol

Indians. Seler himself had already published a lengthy article in

which he reorganized the Norwegian explorer’s materials ac-

cording to Mexicanist criteria. It appeared obvious to Seler and

Preuss that Lumholtz had neglected to record indigenous ritual

texts in their native language and failed to take the heuristic im-

portance of contemporary religious rituals into account when

interpreting aspects of ancient Mexican civilizations. In every

instance, the Berliners approached the ethnography of El Gran

Nayar in the light of their Mesoamerican interests and from their

ethnophilological perspective.It was Seler who proposed the idea for a German expedition

to El Gran Nayar. As M. Rutsch points out, Seler and Boas had

planned from the start to organize an international expedition

to the Huicholes’ mountain enclaves in collaboration with muse-

ums in New York and Berlin. In Seler’s view, however, Preuss was

not the ideal candidate to see it through, as neither his linguistic

skills nor his “speculative theories” had gained Seler’s trust. It

was the geographer Von Richthofen who was able to turn things

in Preuss’s favor, and he was officially put in charge of the enter-

prise by Prussia’s Ministry of Religion, Education and Medicine

and the Royal Museums’ general administration. Financing was

to be provided by the foundation that Joseph-Florimond, theDuke of Loubat, had established in Berlin to fund the chair in

Linguistics, Archaeology and Ethnology in the Americas.


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Documents at the Berlin Ethnological Museum provide in-

formation on the original plans for Preuss’s expedition to Mexico.

e goal was “to study Indian antiquities and tribes in western

Mexico, in particular, the states of Jalisco, Tepic, Zacatecas, Du-

rango, Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Sonora.” e expedition was

justified by the fact that “the museum possesses practically no

archaeological or ethnological materials from there,” despite the

importance they might have to studies of ancient Mexican cul-

tures, given that these “native tribes are linguistically related to

the Aztecs. eir religious life in particular will help to clarify, in

retrospect, the culture of ancient Mexico, and to interpret picto-

graphic manuscripts with mythological and religious content.”Preuss’ expedition to western Mexico was thus originally

geared toward the exploration of archaeological sites that were at-

tributed to the Chichimecas, such as La Quemada. e archaeo-

logical objects were to be illegally transported to Berlin, in order

to enrich the world-famous collections of Prussia’s Royal Muse-

um of Ethnology. e objective of the ethnological study of the

mountain tribes was to obtain information about their myths that

might prove useful in interpreting the expedition’s finds. To the

majority of Berlin-based Mexicanists, the conceptions of living

Indians were but the impoverished remains of their past glory.

Preuss reversed the order of priorities. Choosing to respect

current Mexican legislation which prohibited the export of antiq-uities, he embarked on an ethnographic study of the mountain-

dwellers. He spent half a year among the Coras, nine months

with the Huicholes and another three months with the Mexi-

caneros. ough Seler, his direct superior in Berlin, repeatedly

exhorted him not to neglect the archaeological aspect, in the end

Preuss paid him no mind and devoted the entire expedition to

the indigenous population of the Sierra Madre Occidental.

He focused chiefly on transcribing and translating ritual texts.

Using a sophisticated payment system, he convinced several re-

ligious specialists to dictate ceremonial songs to him, word for

word. In all, Preuss filled thirteen 400-page notebooks and came

close to running out of paper up in the mountains.

Based on these philological studies, Preuss developed a new

theory of Mesoamerican religion. Magical objects (such as gourdbowls, arrows or small wooden pyramids) served to ensure the

connection between the gods and the world. But this magic was

not governed by a utilitarian teleology. Ritual objects were not

meant to manipulate nature. e miniature pyramid was a rep-

lica of the sky. Whatever happened to an object also occured on

the macrocosmic level.

Unlike Lumholtz, who had gained some celebrity as a field

researcher even before travelling to the Sierra Madre Occidental,

Preuss was every inch the armchair anthropologist, with nearly a

hundred scientific publications to his name when he departed on

his first expedition. As an ethnological professional, Preuss had

little use for the old-school style of naturalist research so familiarto Lumholtz, who had moved freely across a spectrum of disci-

plines ranging from geology to ethnology. Preuss was a research-

Ritual combat during Easter celebrations, Jesús María, Nayarit, 1923. National Museum of the American Indian. Smithsonian Institution.

Photograph by Edward Davis.


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er specializing in problems of religious theory, anthropology and

linguistics in the Americas. By the time he began working in the

field, he’d already thoroughly developed his hypotheses, to the

extent that the empirical data obtained in El Gran Nayar seemed

to fit his theories a little too neatly. In discussing Preuss, however,

it must be remembered that there have been few great theorists

in anthropological history to have actually performed in-depth

field research. Preuss knew how to combine theoretical specula-

tion with empirical research in a way that few others did.

e initial hypothesis that guided his fieldwork among the

Coras, Huicholes and Mexicaneros was that any understand-

ing of ancient Mexico should begin with a detailed study of the

mountain “tribes.” Furthermore, to perform a valid analysis of

the religions of Mexico’s ethnic groups, it was indispensable to

obtain traditional texts in the vernacular tongue. Aer the expe-

dition, Preuss analyzed the abundant corpus of oral literature us-

ing classical philological methods. In his interpretation of rituals,

he developed Usener’s approach: ritual art is part of the “means

of religious expression.” In other words, it can be located on thesame analytical plane as songs and dances.

Translated by Daniel C. Schechter.

Exploring the LivingCultures of the Nayar

Manuela Fischer, Richard Haas and Edith eis

Preuss took great care in making the preparations for his tripto Mexico. Documents housed by the Berlin Ethnological

Museum attest that he took intensive Spanish courses at the

Berlitz Institute, and that he obtained letters of recommenda-

tion for the various Mexican governmental agencies from the

Prussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He le Germany early in

1905. In Paris, he met with Léon Diguet (1859–1926), a longtime

researcher of the Coras and Huicholes. When Preuss boarded

the America at the port of Cherbourg, his luggage included a

wooden box, a crate of rifles, a tin suitcase, clothing, a tent, a bed

and two packages of letters.

He stopped in New York, taking advantage of the opportunity

to visit Franz Boas (1859–1943), staying at his house and discuss-ing his plans with him. While in the Empire City, Lumholtz him-

self gave Preuss an introduction to his former field of study, which

the younger man would cultivate earnestly from then on. From

New York, Preuss traveled to the port of Veracruz, accompanied

by the Mayan studies expert Edward Herbert omson (1860–

1935). He then took the train to Mexico City where he spent some

enjoyable evenings at the home of Celia Nuttall (1857–1933), a

specialist in Mayan codices, and met with the archaeologists Al-

fredo Chavero (1841–1906) and Antonio Peñafiel (1839–1922) as

well as the ethnologist Nicolás León (1859–1929).

Preuss then traveled by rail to Guadalajara, finally reaching

the terminal of San Marcos, Jalisco. From there, he continued his journey to Tepic by stagecoach. In Tepic, he procured pack ani-

mals and the necessary provisions, with the assistance of Eugen

Hildebrandt, consul for the German Empire, and his business

partner, Maximilian Delius. He also obtained letters of introduc-

tion on behalf of the governors of Jalisco and Durango as well as

Tepic’s political leader.

In the numerous reports and letters he sent back to Germany,

Preuss documented the details of his journey. e file of certifi-

cates relating to Preuss’s position as an employee of the Berlin

Royal Museum of Ethnology contained letters addressed to his

immediate superior, Eduard Seler, the director of the Americas

section and at that time his main academic liaison.

ere are other letters addressed to his colleague and personal

friend Max Schmidt (1874–1950), as well as reports with a more

official tone addressed to the Prussian Ministry of Religion, Edu-

cation and Medicine. In these missives, Preuss told of the strides

he’d made in his research and provided a glimpse of the oen

adverse conditions of life in the sierra. ere’s no doubt that for a

native of Prussia, the climate in Jesús María Canyon would hard

to withstand, reaching temperatures of up to 45ºC (110ºF) in

the shade. He also sent versions of these reports to the editorsof several German scientific journals, such as Globus: Illustrierte

Zeitschri für Länder- und Völkerkunde (Brunswick); Zeitschri

der Gesellscha für Erdkunde (Berlin); Archiv für Religionswissen-

schaen (Leipzig) and Zeitschri für Ethnologie (Berlin). As regu-

lar mail service had been established in Cora territory as early as

1892, Preuss took advantage of the situation by sending his writ-

ings to Tepic. From there his compatriot Delius, a locally based

businessman, forwarded them to Germany, where they were pub-

lished within a few weeks of the time they were written.

On December 24, 1905, Preuss sent Seler the following let-

ter: “Most distinguished Herr Professor: Tomorrow at seven in

the morning I plan to embark on my journey to Cora territory.Aer spending Christmas Eve at the home of the local consul, I

want to brief him on the route of my journey and my plans. Soon

aer I arrived in the capital, it became clear to me how difficult it

is to export antiquities from Mexico. erefore I shall not make

any collection trips to the Chichimeca zone in question, mainly

because it would mean too great a depletion in my funds. And so

I have postponed all that and have begun to plot my trip to Cora

territory. […] Eventually, should it become necessary to return

to Tepic, I could perform excavations near the sea. Some tombs

have already been recommended to me. ere are still down-

pours here which last a good part of the day, causing floods, and

this has delayed my departure.”Preuss le Tepic on Christmas Day of 1905, bound for Jesús

María Chuísete’e via the royal road. He arrived there six days later.

He immediately commenced his ethnographic study of the Coras

and remained among them until June 1906, allowing him to wit-

ness many of the rituals associated with the dry season. His base of

operations was the Jesús María–San Francisco de Paula road in the

scorching river gorge where the Coras lived, although he also vis-

ited the Nayar mesa in the high part of the sierra. At that time there

were 1500 indigenous people and 100 mestizos (persons of mixed

race) in Jesús María, the municipal and ecclesiastic seat of the Cora

region, which was far less densely populated than it is today.

Of the three groups he studied, the Coras turned out to be themost reluctant to participate in the ethnographic investigation.

During the first month, he only managed to secure the collabo-


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ration of Francisco Molina, an indigenous man who had fought

alongside Lozada in 1873. Actually, Molina no longer practiced

his ancestors’ religion, but he was the only qualified interpreter

available, since the other Coras spoke little or no Spanish.

Aer his first two months in the mountains, Preuss seemed to

have overcome any initial difficulties. In a letter to Seler he wrote,

“Until this point, my study of the Coras has been limited. During

the two months I’ve lived among them, I managed to attend their

most important ceremony, the mitote dance. I also documented

the mitote songs—twenty-three in all—as well as the most im-

portant prayers, and translated them from the Cora language. I

was even able to record most of the songs on my phonograph.

ese songs are very ancient and reveal absolutely foundational

concepts, despite the fact that these indigenous people have ad-

opted a large number of Catholic customs. [...]

“e songs can be compared to the extraordinary Aztec songs

that have been handed down to us by Sahagún. In general, many

customs go back to the pre-Hispanic era. During the mitote, for

instance, I saw a child who personifies the morning star and con-quers the other stars which take the guise of the deer character.

[…] Similarly, the ballgame using one’s buttocks was still being

played here a decade ago. I hope to make a valuable contribu-

tion to an understanding of the ancient Mexicans, and I’ve ascer-

tained with great satisfaction that many of my interpretations of

the ceremonies have been confirmed by the Coras.”

Preuss had not even spent four months in the mountains when

he addressed a letter to the general administration of the Berlin

Museums to explain why he needed to extend his stay another full

year. Eduard Seler backed his request, though in his reply to Preuss,

he could not help but express the dilemma faced by German an-

thropologists of the day, which affected even Seler’s own interests.Although they were responsible for all aspects of ethnological re-

search in addition to university instruction, the ethnologists’ main

obligation was to amass museum collections. us Seler urged

Preuss to collect archaeological objects from western Mexico.

Under the circumstances, Preuss was quick to underline his

progress in this task. In a letter dated March 14, 1906, he wrote,

“us far, I’ve managed to amass a collection of 400 Cora items

including ritual instruments and art objects.”

But true to the plans of the founding director of the Berlin

Royal Museum of Ethnology—who had stated that an ethno-

graphic collection should not be simply an accumulation of ex-

otic objects but also include materials that would allow a cultureto be documented in all its aspects—Preuss proposed something

more than a mere collecting expedition. Instead, he insisted on

carrying out in-depth ethnological research based on transcrib-

ing texts in the indigenous languages while noting the difficulty

in completing such a project in the time allotted. In a letter ad-

dressed to the general administration of the museums he stated

that, “e indigenous area of the Sierra Madre […] strikes me as

a single vast whole, and it would be impossible to cover all of it in

a year—not even by restricting my attention to its main features.

And by choosing to limit it to a single tribe, one would be unable

to solve most of the problems, since they can only be addressed

in the context of the other tribes.”In April 1906, Seler wrote Preuss from Rome to inform him

of the difficulty he had encountered in trying to find additional

funds for the expedition, mainly because the museum’s Americas

section was already deep in debt. While congratulating him on

the strides he’d made thus far, Seler said two dry seasons ought

to be more than enough to compile a lifetime’s worth of materials

for study and recommended that Preuss curtail his goals, adding

a subtle reminder that the main objective of the trip was to “com-

pile archaeological materials from the Zacatecas area.” He further

wrote, “I do not reproach you for considering other goals as your

principal task, nor that you’ve dedicated yourself, and want to

continue dedicating yourself, to them exclusively. e success

you’ve had so far justifies your decision.” In his response, dated

May 13, 1906, Preuss made no mention of Seler’s instructions.

On the contrary, he raised the need to devote at least a year’s

study to each of the region’s four ethnic groups.

Even though Preuss’ expedition was moving ahead at full

speed, he experienced his fair share of adversity and obstacles.

In a letter addressed to Max Schmidt in May, Preuss had this to

say: “e indigenous people [Coras] have eyed me with great

suspicion the whole time, and my presence always makes themuneasy. Nevertheless, I’ve attended their ceremonies and dances,

both in the town and up in the hills. In the towns of Jesús María

and San Francisco, I found men willing to dictate their songs,

tales and prayers to me. Two other Cora towns were too far away,

so I visited them only briefly. It took money to accomplish my

goals, but I also had the help of a priest who lived alone among

the Coras.”

With the commencement of the rains, Preuss moved to Hui-

chol territory and rented the San Isidro ranch, which became

his headquarters from late June to early October 1906, during

the rainy season. He returned to Jesús María for the mitote as-

sociated with the first fruits. In January, he settled in San Andrés(Teteikie), staying at the mission of the Catholic priest. In mid-

February he moved to Santa Catarina (Tuapurie), finally finish-

ing his work among the Huicholes in late March 1907.

Of his extended stay in San Isidro, Preuss had this to say:

“e indigenous people visited me daily, and I returned the visits,

mainly on the occasion of their many fiestas. I labored daily on

transcribing their texts, thus obtaining a large part of my collec-

tion. It was a truly difficult job, since the Huichol language—like

that of the Coras—is practically unknown, though there was an

advantage here in that the Huicholes were easier to deal with

than the Coras. e latter are infinitely more reserved but also

more prone to violence, since they’re more fearless. e Huicho-les, in contrast, only become belligerent and boastful at their

fiestas, which they attend in droves, with both the men and the

women getting drunk. In these situations, the hatred they feel

toward foreigners comes to the fore and they accuse us of steal-

ing their lands. A further difficulty of working here is that the

ranch communities are widely scattered and normally consist

of no more than five little houses. Many of these include sev-

eral dwellings with cornfields between them. Furthermore, the

people customarily make extended forays for commercial activi-

ties or to visit their places of worship, so it can be hard to track

them down. e Huicholes are generally poorer and their terrain

rougher. By four or five months before the harvest, you alreadybegin to notice a lack of food. Wild fruits and roots are eaten

during these times of scarcity.”


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With San Isidro as his base, Preuss made several excursions

through Huichol territory: “Another three-week excursion took

me to Guadalupe Ocotan, on the other side of the Chapalagana

River, where I had the chance to witness four fiestas. […] Work-

ing here was occasionally uncomfortable, mostly because the

Huicholes fear that I am searching for mines. ey think my

camera is some kind of metal detector.”While among the Huicholes, in addition to the aid of a Cora

Indian named Molina, Preuss hired José María Carrillo and later

Ramón N. to serve as intermediaries. ey were bilingual and

well-acquainted with the outside world. He invariably paid these

informants for their services, though he noted that the wages

demanded by the Coras were much higher than those earned by

the Huicholes; even so, a day’s salary was three times that of a

farmhand. Additionally, special bonuses were awarded to those

storytellers who were able to work with him throughout some

of the longer sessions. He was not ashamed to acknowledge that

indigenous people would come to his camp to “sell” him myths.

Once the expedition’s objectives were understood, his assistantswould also be responsible for selecting ethnographic pieces for

the museum collections. Some of them earned commissions for

finding objects. Sometimes the pieces would be paid for in cash;

other times they’d be traded for cloth, beads or wool. On certain

occasions, as in the case in Santa Catarina, a form of reciprocal

donation did the job: gis for cultural testimony. Meanwhile, the

anthropologist focused on transcribing texts and observing ritu-

als. e line-by-line translations were done in situ, in collabora-

tion with his assistants, and a more detailed version was done

later. One of his employees learned to use the camera, helping

out with photo documentation. Due to the technical require-

ments of the time, Preuss had to develop his own pictures.During these trips, his collaborators obtained the necessary

authorizations to visit sacred sites and negotiated the collection

of pieces for the museums. Where necessary, Preuss would use

official recommendations to facilitate his research activities.

Due to complications with customs in the port of San Blas,

it was no easy matter for Preuss to ship his collections to Berlin.

In a letter he sent to Max Schmidt from San Isidro, Preuss com-

plained that the customs officers unpacked everything, despite

Delius’s attempts to intervene, so in the long run, it turned out tobe more practical to transport the objects overland from Tepic

to Tampico for shipment to Europe.

During his time with the Huicholes, Preuss had gone through

the 15,000 marks he’d originally budgeted for a year’s stay. To

solve his financial problems, he made a deal with the Municipal

Museum of Ethnology in Hamburg to sell them an ethnographic

collection valued at 3500 marks, “without prejudicing the Berlin

museum’s interests.”

Finally, at the beginning of April 1907, he traveled to the

town of San Pedro Jícora, in the region of the Mexicaneros. As

Preuss noted in another letter to Max Schmidt, “e Aztecs

have always been my aspiration.” From Jesús María, he followeda route that passed through San Francisco, San Juan Peyotán,

Huazamota and San Antonio.

Amid these accessible indigenous people, whom he would

come to consider the most civilized of the three tribes, he found

the most collaborative informants. He rented a house on the

town square and hired two locals to take him to most highly re-

spected storytellers. He summarized the spirit of his field work

as, “Living peacefully alongside the people, sharing their joys

and hardships.”

Preuss realized that the Mexicaneros were not, as he’d sup-

posed, the missing link between the ancient Aztecs and present-

day Coras and Huicholes, although certain characters in Nahuatexts—referred to simply as “devils”—do shed some light on cer-

tain deities of ancient Mexico.

Cora game bags from Jesús María, Nayarit.


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ere was one problem that he could never have anticipated:

with such a wealth of textual material, his supply of paper could

run out—something that almost came to pass. He had been

planning to stay with the Mexicaneros until the end of the rainy

season, and even to visit the Tepehuanes and Tarahumaras, but

then he contracted malaria and his funds again began to run low.

He le San Pedro Jícora on June 25, 1907. On his way to the

Mesa del Nayar and Jesús María he passed through the town of

Santa Teresa (Cueimarutse’e), in the most elevated part of Cora

territory. As the rivers rose, he had to leave his most valuable

collections behind in Jesús María with the intention of shipping

them later, aer the end of monsoon season. He reached Tepic

on July 14, 1907.

Once in Tepic, he found that 4000 marks had arrived from

Berlin to help him continue with his research. Had he known

that these funds would be made available to him, he would have

attempted to research the Tepehuanes, despite his malaria.

In a letter written in mid-August aboard the ship Albingia,

he noted, “My return journey from Tepic was deplorable. It tooka while for my stomach to get used to a meat diet, and in ad-

dition, I continued to suffer from bouts of malaria. I was glad

to have embarked without becoming seriously ill. I am feeling

much better now.”

Preuss had a number of reasons to feel satisfied with the

results of his expedition. In a report addressed to the Ministry

of Religion, he enumerated the expedition’s accomplishments

as follows: “1. An extraordinarily rich body of indigenous texts

in three different languages (Cora, Huichol, Mexicano), unlike

anything known today among the people of Mexico and Central

America. e texts, with interlinear translations, fill about thir-

teen 400-page notebooks, and comprise 293 myths, hundreds oflong chants and songs, and numerous prayers. e entirety of

this corpus was transcribed directly from the indigenous people

themselves, who have no written language, and then translated

by indigenous interpreters, who possessed only the most rudi-

mentary knowledge of Spanish. 2. Material to produce grammar

books for two languages—Cora and Huichol—that were virtu-

ally unknown until now and are quite different from each other.

[…] 3. Detailed descriptions of or information on the rituals and

ceremonies of the tribes in question. 4. A collection of around

300 selected ethnological objects. […] 5. Around seventy wax

phonograph cylinders with songs and prayers in the Huichol

and Cora languages. […] 6. Nearly a thousand photographs,demonstrating every aspect of indigenous life and the natural

environment.”

e ethnographic collection sent to the Museum of Hamburg

comprised 400 Huichol and 150 Cora objects. In the 1920s, the

Berlin Museum sold a small part of the Preuss collection to Swe-

den’s Gothenburg Museum.

Based on his scholarly research during the trip to Mexico,

Preuss published numerous articles on the Coras, as well as one

monograph in 1912, “e Expedition to Nayarit I: e Cora Re-

ligion.” Some unpublished manuscripts on Huichol texts were

lost during World War II. Part of the material from the Mexi-

caneros was published posthumously between 1968 and 1976,edited by Elsa Ziehm.

Translated by Daniel C. Schechter.

e Use of Magical InstrumentsPaulina Alcocer and Johannes Neurath

The expedition to the Gran Nayar marked a new style of re-

search using philological and morphological methods for a

project that sought to understand the American peoples on their

own terms. From that perspective, the integral analysis of a ritual

is especially significant and is based on detailed documentation,

not only of texts but of every form of religious expression, such

as dance, music and ritual paraphernalia. In this sense, Preuss’s

ethnographic collection is especially valuable for the connec-

tions it makes between intellectual culture and material culture,

two spheres that he considered inseparable.

C

In Jesús María, following the New Year’s celebration, Preuss wit-nessed a mitote ritual for the first time. His transcription of ritual

texts commenced later with the collaboration of Ascensión Díaz,

from San Francisco, and then other singers from Jesús María:

Leocadio Enríquez and Santiago Altamirano. He also was able

to convince other specialists—like Matías Cánare (governor of

Jesús María), Haciano Felipe and Lucio Bernabé—to tell him

myths and stories. at way, he gradually won the friendship

and confidence of a few informants. However, he was rejected

outright by some of the singers, and on the Mesa del Nayar he

was even told that the mitotes no longer existed, which was obvi-

ously not the case.

Among the Cora Indians he witnessed important syncreticceremonies combining local and Christian traditions, includ-

ing Christmas, Easter, the Changing of the Authorities ceremony,

Carnival and the ceremony of the Baths. In his view, though, it

was a “nominal Christianity,” in which the Coras constantly strove

to adapt their pagan customs to the Catholic liturgy. His notes on

the different groups of dancers—the moros, the urraqueros, the

maromeros and, above all, the judíos—are interesting.

He collected a number of masks worn by the so-called “old

men of the dance” and documented the ritual use of one of them

as an oracle. “e dancers carried a wooden staff in one hand,

known as palma. A miniature version of this staff, made of natu-

ral palm leaves, is placed in the hands of dead people. ey weara crown decorated with four bunches of long magpie feathers;

children who die before the age of twelve wear the same crown.

Some of the dancers had covered their faces with a beaded veil.

e magpie is the bird of Mother Earth.”

In June 1906, the German ethnologist was invited to the

planting ritual or cicada ritual at the ceremonial center of Tauta,

a Cora community in San Francisco de Paula Kuaxata. Accord-

ing to the report he sent to the magazine Zeitschri für Ethnolo-

gie, Preuss had gained the confidence of the locals by showing

them a letter he had written attesting that “there was nothing

reproachable about their customs.” At the time, expressing such

an opinion in writing was a sign of solidarity because just a fewyears earlier, the sub-prefect of Jesús María had attempted to

prohibit and suppress these ceremonies.


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“I feel strong emotions when I remember those ceremonies

and festive dances,” wrote Preuss, “because I truly managed to

penetrate the intellectual world of the Coras and their ancestors.

Although the Jesus María mitote was more interesting, my best

memories are from the community of San Francisco, whose in-

habitants treated me very kindly, even inviting me to take an ac-

tive part in their ceremonies.”

Of course, active participation implied consuming peyote, at

that time a common Cora practice. In reading his report, it be-

comes clear that Preuss did not resist the more pleasurable effects

of the psychotropic cactus. In this text, written in a slightly ironic

tone, Preuss testifies to several typical effects: insomnia, height-

ened acoustic perception, stimulation of the imagination and a

fixation on details such as spiders and other insects perishing in

the fire: “e crowd jammed the small ritual patio, which was

enclosed by a ring of stones. Everyone took an active part, even

in the minor rituals. In the center of the patio a peyote potion

was being prepared in a large gourd bowl. Everyone was served

a large spoonful, using the same spoon for everyone. Actually ithad the consistency of a porridge more than that of a beverage.

Its consumption, oen in large quantities, is one of the sacrifices

a field researcher must endure.

“Peyote induces sleeplessness, but I couldn’t have slept any-

way—sitting on the uncomfortable rock they always offered me

as a seat, regaling me with corn-leaf cigars, while serving me

more and more peyote. All the while, behind me, the frenzied

dancing and noisy rhythmic stomping of sandals continued.

In the distance, there were rumbles of thunder, which are the

words of the gods and are mentioned in the songs. Fortunately,

we were blessed with the usual nocturnal rain. A cicada fell into

the bonfire chirping its swansong without anyone becoming up-set over the death of a deity. With the same indifference people

watched the death by incineration of an enormous centipede

that had appeared from between the people’s bare legs. For what

seemed like an eternity, every detail of its luminous body was

visible as it burned.”

e researcher from the Royal Prussian Museum of Eth-

nology clearly enjoyed indigenous rituals. In his opinion, they

marked the most interesting days during his long stay among the

Coras, the Huicholes and the Mexicaneros.

In the same report, he talks of the connection between the

ritual act, the songs and a myth that all refer to the rising Sun

and its victory over the stars. “e boy who represents the Morn-ing Star [Ha’atsikan] was taken before the altar. He shot an arrow

with the bow he found there. e arrow fell on the far west side

of the ritual patio. Simultaneously, one of the dancers picked up

a sash that belonged to one of the traditional governor’s assis-

tants, who had deposited it in that same spot in the west. Swing-

ing it in the air, the dancer moved in circles around the fire a few

times. Finally, he threw it toward the arches of the altar on the

eastern side, where it remained. […] e aforementioned sash

represents the snake that lives in the sea of dawn. e snake is

the dawn and lives in the West, as we know from Cora myth.”

e ritual text that corresponds to this scene explains that

Ha’atsikan first kills the snake, then the falcon carries it up to thezenith, where the eagle devours it. At that moment, the snake is

transformed into the “water of life,” or rain. Controlled by the

Sun, the water causes no further misfortunes, but rather be-

comes a blessing. Preuss explained that, “[e] snake that lives

in the western sea […] represents the night sky. Its darkness is

conceived as water, and the Morning Star is believed to kill it ev-

ery day with its arrow. Next, the snake is offered to the Sun God

as food. So the Morning Star transforms the snake’s destructive

energy into a blessing. In the same way, it makes the dew fall

upon the earth. It is believed that in the past, before the Morn-

ing Star dominated the snake, the latter effectively destroyed the

world and all humanity.”

HAmong the Huicholes, Preuss’s main interest was also to obtain

textual testimonies, although he obviously took advantage of the

opportunity to observe the rituals that took place during his stay.

His reports contain descriptions of different ceremonies, like the

ritual of the tender corn cobs; a few healing ceremonies; the ritual

of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the dance of the Wainarori; the

Pachitas ritual (Carnival); the peyote and toasted corn rituals, Ku-ruánime, the changing of the roof on the great tuki temple, the

change of leaders for the tukipa ceremonial center, the ceremony

to protect against fleas and the heiwatsiire ritual. So, in different

communities, he witnessed virtually the entire annual cycle of Hui-

chol rituals. He described the sites and the ritual paraphernalia,

providing explanations of their meaning, and also explored the

sacred places in the regions of San Andrés and Santa Catarina.

In the peyote ritual, he noticed that “All the dancers were

holding deers’ tails. As in Jesús María, the two feathered sticks

that many wore on their heads represented deers’ antlers, while

the choreographic movements of the dance imitated the attack-

ing thrusts of a deer’s antlers. e peyoteros’ costumes includedhats decorated with turkey feathers and squirrel tails—both solar

animals. Like their family members, the peyoteros wore the face

paint of the gods. Of all the dances I watched in the sierra, none

made such an impression on me as the abandoned frenzy of the

peyote dance, which would begin at noon in the plaza outside

the temple. Danced by men and women alike, some 175 peo-

ple in all would step in time to the rhythm of the singer’s lusty

voice. ey would make turns in different directions, in absolute

chaos, suddenly rushing headlong inside the temple for a few

moments. Many dancers would leap wildly in the air, shaking

the sugar canes painted with lightning and rain clouds with one

hand, while holding the deer tails in front of them with the other.e consumption of peyote caused some of them to have a terri-

ble, fixed deathlike stare on their faces, but the rest of the people,

sweaty and enveloped in an enormous cloud of dust lit up by the

burning hot sunrays, would be shouting with joy. e sight of

the dancers decked out in feathers, belts, sashes, bags and other

accessories, was an extremely colorful spectacle.”

Animated by his understanding of this ritual, he exclaims,

“How paltry is the mere aesthetic experience compared to the

sensation of watching the ritual aer one has also understood

the intellectual forces that explain the origins of all this!”

Preuss’s ethnographic descriptions are not lacking in humor.

He describes the ritual for protection against fleas as follows: “Aboy of seven, who had been crouching before the altar hidden

under a blanket, was taken outside, first to the middle of the


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plaza, then successively to all four corners. Aer each sortie he

re-entered the temple, leaping on all fours, until he finally re-

mained outside. e grubby little tyke understood his role as a

flea perfectly. He bounced his way into a crowd of women wait-

ing—brooms in hand—to sweep the temple aer the final cer-

emony. e women scattered amid screams of laughter.”

MIn the Mexicanero community, Preuss researched the xuravet —

equivalent to the Coras’ mitote—and visited the sacred caves in

the vicinity. He paid special attention to healing techniques anddocumented practically all the prayers and xuravet songs com-

mon at Carnival time, as well as numerous myths and tales. He

managed to prove that despite the havoc wrought by the Con-

quest and the changes inflicted by Spanish colonization, many

of the ancient beliefs had been preserved in these cultures. But it

was in the literature of this Nahua culture that he first discovered

vestiges of themes from European folktales.

P’ CPreuss amassed the most systematic collection of Cora and Hui-

chol objects ever seen. Although he never managed to write the

final volume of his Die Nayarit-Expedition about the materialculture and social life of these peoples, it is possible to use mu-

seum catalogue entries and some of his articles to reconstruct

the role that the analysis of Cora and Huichol objects played

in the global interpretation of the culture of these indigenous

mountain dwellers.

Many of the Cora and Huichol pieces at the Berlin Museum

are ritual objects, which Preuss saw as forms of cultural expres-

sion and therefore, as having the same religious importance as

the texts, songs and dances.

On numerous occasions, Preuss criticized the tendency to

consider any ritual object as a simple offering. Referring to ar-

rows, gourd bowls and other Cora and Huichol ceremonial ob-

jects, he insisted that they were the magical instruments of thegods. e votive arrows “cannot be considered offerings, but nei-

ther are they prayers. Instead, they are indispensable vehicles for

obtaining life, health, rains and good harvests.”

e ceremonial feathered arrows are “beings in and of them-

selves, blessed with magical powers,” the equivalent of idols. “e

specific powers of the feathers depend on the color and habitat

of the bird in question,” and the different types of feathers cor-

responded to specific deities.

In the ritual texts recorded by Preuss, the ritual objects par-

ticipated in the dialogues and cosmogonic events at the same

level as zoomorphic or anthropomorphic divinities. According

to the mythology, the arrows and gourd bowls originally be-longed to the gods; it was they who brought them here when

they le the underworld. e job of men consists of restoring

e Sierra of Nayarit. Photograph by Léon Diguet. © Photo SCALA, Florence.

Collection of the Musée du Quai Branly, 1896–1898.


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them to their former state because “the gods need these objects

to keep the world functioning.”

In this sense, steps—imumui—are used by the sun to rise in

the sky and reach its midday position. e disks called nierika,

like the woven crosses called tsikurite, are “instruments to see,”

to obtain the shamanic visions that reveal the inner shape of the

cosmos, although the latter are also considered “stars.” According

to Preuss, the etymology of the word tsikuri comes from “turning

round with thread.” In a Cora song he documented, the chánaka

weaving, equivalent to the tsikuri, is a pre-figuration of the Earth.

at text describes how the first mitote ceremony was cele-

brated and how the goddess of the Earth and Moon created the

world. Aer taking her children from the depths of the primeval

ocean, she assigned the clouds to them as their abode. “But now

the gods started thinking: ‘What are we going to do? We’re tired

of just hanging here.’ ey remembered their mother, their el-

der brother and their father, and called them: ‘We’re tired now.

Do you know how you can help us?’ She listened and told them:

‘Look for something of yourselves.’ So they did, and they begansearching. ey took something of themselves which was earth,

and formed a small ball out of it. When they finished doing that,

they called their mother, their brother and their father. To their

mother they gave what they had taken from themselves. She re-

ceived it and wondered: ‘What am I going to do with that?’ en

she remembered Our Elder Brother, and told him, ‘Put your ar-

rows there, place them crosswise, one on top of the other.’ [e

narrator mentions explicitly that the arrows were placed in north-

south and east-west directions.] at’s what he did and that’s how

he placed his arrows. en he tied them in the middle with a knot.

When he finished, he called his mother and told her. She then

thought for a moment and remembered her hair. She pulled outa lock and wove it.”

What the song describes is the elaboration of a diamond-

shaped object commonly known as a “God’s eye.” It is a fairly

common handicra which is nevertheless replete with religious

significance because it was from a weaving of this type—manu-

factured with the arrows of the Elder Brother god and hair from

the mother god—that the earth’s surface was made. e song con-

tinues: “Once she had woven her hair, she took the earth and the

hair, arranged them on top of the arrows and le the product for

the gods. en she said to her children: ‘Stand on this.’ ey did

so, stamping on it with their feet to stretch it out. When they had

finished, they informed their mother, father and elder brother:‘Here it is, we’ve done as you asked.’ ‘Good,’ replied Our Mother,

‘You will remain here.’ And there she le the gods. Our Mother

blessed the product and called it ‘world’ (chánaka). With those

words she completed the job. ere she le the gods and every-

thing: stones, trees, grass, water and the god of Water [Txákan].

ere she le all the birds and the animals. She also le human be-

ings and domestic animals: cows, mules, horses, donkeys, sheep,

swine, chickens and cats. Here on earth she le everything that

exists in it, and she will remain in the middle, above us. Nothing

is missing, and she will remain here forever. She also le behind a

little something for us, her children, for one of these days.”

Preuss explains that, during this song, the mitote ritual be-gins precisely when the mother god says, “Stand on this,” and

the song continues with the words, “ey did so, stamping on it

with their feet.” By dancing, the ancestors stretched out the dia-

mond-shape weaving covered in earth, which is the world. at

is why every mitote celebration amounts to a representation of

the mythical events of creation. Manufacturing these objects im-

plies creating the world.

On several occasions Preuss warned against overly narrow

interpretations of indigenous religions. For example, “the [Cora]

deities are ancestors or natural forces, but it would be impossible

to classify them based on these two decidedly differentiated cat-

egories.” In fact, consistent with Preuss’s discoveries, we would

have to say that in the indigenous religions he researched, a con-

cept of nature as an area separate from culture and society sim-

ply did not exist. Nature is not merely the backdrop for human

life. e cosmos is not a given, nor does it exist independently

of ritual work. at is why Preuss insists that offerings are not

just a gi to revered beings. We can say that their elaboration

and dedication is a ritual that reenacts the birth of the gods and

allows them to exist.

Among the offerings for the renovation of special gods, hementions the one to Takutsi, the old goddess of unlimited fertil-

ity, which included maguey, jicamas, yams, and iguana and wild

boar meat, along with a replica of the canoe from the great flood.

Many of these items are the embodiment of the goddess herself.

Preuss also describes the offering of a catfish to the goddess of

corn and fish, Uteanaka—the catfish being an embodiment of

this goddess.

e fact that no clear distinction can be made between gods

and magical instruments is crucial to the theory of religion.

Preuss maintains that at the dawn of religion there can be no

conception of a deity because the transition from magical ob-

jects to gods is necessarily a later phenomenon in the history ofhumanity. In the case of the Indians of the Gran Nayar, the gods

are magical objects used by shamans and individuals in charge

of ceremonial centers.

e methodology employed by Preuss to interpret the sym-

bolism of the magical objects is based on philosophical medita-

tion on the process that the human intellect uses to form reli-

gious concepts and express them in texts and ritual customs, in

mythology and art.

Cora magical thinking shows how an indigenous religion lo-

cates “magic” precisely in the imaginative power of thought, in

“sudden, spontaneous enlightenment” or “instant understand-

ing.” In the final analysis, the magical action is to think and talkwith poetic force. It comes as no surprise, then, that the magic

of words is so important in religions like those of the Coras and

Huicholes. Prayer is nothing more than spoken ritual. Words be-

come offerings, and people pray with objects, music and dance.

So, according to Preuss’s theory, the starting point for any

study of intellectual culture must be to recognize the role of

imaginative power, a creative ability that acts by producing syn-

theses that combine sensory impressions with fantastic ideas,

through which the things of the world are gradually introduced

to the intellect, to then insert themselves into the analogical net-

work that comprises the worldview and which precedes and de-

termines the plethora of personal ideas.In magical rituals, there is no false law of cause and effect be-

cause no distinction is made between the part and the whole, and


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therefore, rituals are not intended to be a manipulation of nature.

What happens in the microcosmos of the gourd bowl or the ritual

area also happens at the same instant in the macrocosmos.

And thus, with his theory of magic, Preuss distanced himself

from Frazer and other authors of his time (like Lumholtz), for

whom the ritual was utilitarian behavior based on false knowl-

edge that would eventually be surpassed by human reasoning.

Preuss had no trouble accepting the polysemy of ritual sym-

bolisms. e tsikurite are a good example, inasmuch as they

represent “stars” and simultaneously the earth. e earth is also

represented by the gourd bowls. Cotton is believed to be the

goddess’s throne of clouds while simultaneously representing

the clouds that goddesses need to make rain.

A gourd bowl full of cotton represents humid, fertile earth,

which is why it also alludes to the female sexual organs that the

gods use to create life. It might be assumed, then, that arrows are

phalluses, but despite his interest in sexual symbols and phallic

rites, Preuss mentions nothing in this respect. Instead, the evi-

dence he finds indicates that the votive arrows are the projectilesused by the gods in deer hunting.

Every Cora arrow bears the symbols of the Morning Star

(Ha’atsikan ), even if it is dedicated to Mother Earth (Texkame)

or to the “ancients”—the most important deceased forebears

(takuate). e Morning Star is the protagonist in the cosmic

struggle between the forces of light and the sidereal nocturnal

monsters. e arrow is a metonymy for the Morning Star.

is identification provides an argument against the inter-

pretation that sees votive objects as the expression of a prayer:

“If we are now told that the votive arrows are like the arrows of

Ha’atsikan , this means that they are not a means to carry prayers

and offerings but rather, powerful weapons. Wouldn’t it be a verystrange custom to send prayers with an arrow?”

Despite his reservations regarding the concepts of prayer and

offering, Preuss explains that in the ritual songs he translated, it

is the gods who ask for the magical objects.

In our own experience, in Cora and Huichol rituals it is not

easy to determine who is asking and who is giving. In the dia-

logistic songs, the gods speak through the shaman, who is then

transformed into the people he was previously speaking to. e

symbolic efficiency of the songs apparently lies precisely in the

permanent change of perspective on the part of the Huichol sha-

man. e roles of the offering’s donor and recipient become sys-

tematically muddled, in the same way that the roles of hunter andprey, sacrificer and sacrificial victim, become confused.

In some articles, Preuss formulates a compromise between his

theory of magic and the principle of reciprocity. e Huichol offer-

ings serve to provide the gods with the magical instruments they

need for their activities, but they also express the donors’ desires.

Consequently, the iconography of arrows, gourd bowls, nierikate

and itarite visually expresses what is being asked. Many arrows are

made to ask for children’s health. Details on arrows like miniature

sandals, bows and bracelets refer to children. Aer small cloths

have been rubbed against an infant’s skin to rid him or her of an

illness, they are tied to votive arrows. A miniature gourd contain-

ing tobacco is for boys who wish to become witch doctors; a par-tially-woven textile for girls who want to be weavers.

Translated by Carole Castelli.

Instruments of the Gods:Select Pieces from the Preuss Collection

Margarita Valdovinos and Johannes Neurath

T S G (H)On a warm day in February or March 1907, the German ethnolo-

gist Konrad eodor Preuss visited the Huichol sanctuaries of

Te’akata. “If only for its natural beauty, it is worthwhile visiting this

area,” stated the researcher in a travel chronicle he submitted to

Globus magazine. “All the sanctuaries are located in a very nar-

row region alongside a creek that gushes over high waterfalls and

runs through enormous and impressive caverns. Six temples may

be glimpsed beneath some reddish rocks the size of towers.” More

places of worship and sacred caves could be found nearby. “e

two temples devoted to the gods of birth are only accessible by de-

scending a vertical rockface. New mothers make a pilgrimage there

five days aer giving birth: they enjoy the most enviable health.”He goes on: “e region of Te’akata is also the setting for

some of the myths I have documented. is is where the battle

between two groups of giants took place. While the losers were

being annihilated, the victors were becoming the ancestors, of

whom the people of Santa Catarina are so proud.” And further

on, “e god of fire appeared for the first time in one of the

Te’akata caves, burning from the netherworld up to the heavens,

whence the fire was stolen. On a strenuous day of work amidst

scorching rocks, I visited and documented it all, carrying away

a large booty.”

e pieces collected at Te’akata included a small wooden

pyramid, which was an offering to Father Sun, meant to serve assteps in his ascent to the skies. e miniature is a replica of the

sky which, in Mesoamerica, was not viewed as a dome but rather

as a stepped pyramid. e sun ascends into the sky by climbing

one side, and descends the other side. “When the sun is at the

zenith, it has reached the highest point in its journey.”

Ritual texts that Preuss transcribed in indigenous tongues

provide evidence for this interpretation: “e songs clearly ex-

press that the loy heights of heaven figure among the regions

where the gods carry out their activities. is is why they mention

that the gods ask for steps (imumui) to ascend to and descend

from heaven.” is document further states that, “I felt like I was

dreaming when among the ‘savages’ I was able to meet individu-als whose sensitivity to nature was so highly developed and af-

fectionate. In comparison, even the Greek world came up short in

my view, because the origins of their religious ideas can no lon-

ger be reconstructed, and their tales about the souls of trees and

plants represent only insignificant vestiges of what once existed.”

e miniature pyramid constitutes a good example for the

appreciation of the methodology Preuss used in his study of in-

digenous civilizations, both modern and ancient. “ere is no

doubt that among ancient Mexicans, the stepped pyramids with

places of worship at their peaks were also representations of the

gods’ abodes in the celestial heights,” Preuss explained in a lec-

ture on the Mexican astral religion. A simple Huichol offeringis the key to revealing the secrets of pre-Hispanic ceremonial

architecture. J.N.


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T S B G C (H)Preuss le us some crucial testimony as to the Huicholes’ rela-

tionship with the dead and with deified ancestors: “ey feel

a great need to have the dead with them, to keep many deities

present. […] In small temples, one oen only finds a small chair

for the god. ey have some fairly simple sculptures made out

of stone or wood to represent the gods. In a place of worship

near the Santa Bárbara church, every altar held a large bundle of

cloth and weaving, each with a stone inside. Surrounded by of-

ferings of votive arrows, feathers, seeds, ribbons bearing beauti-

ful designs and other woven textiles, these bundles could only be

opened once the rainy season had ended, given that the objects

had been arranged in a very specific way in order to bring good

harvests. I was able to bring the largest bundle back with me: the

fire god Tatutsi Uistewari, seated on an equipal and quite similar

to a Peruvian mummy.”

Another interesting aspect of these bundles with stone sculp-

tures at the center is that they bear a striking resemblance to themummies of the Cora kings as described in colonial chronicles.

According to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources, these

were actual human bodies wrapped in fabric and seated on equi-

pales (chairs of authority), which were worshipped in temples or

caves. Similar practices existed among the Huicholes.

A chronicle by Father Arlegui dating to 1851 quotes a report

describing the destruction of a Huichol ceremonial center located

on the outskirts of the town of Tenzompan: “Being Father Miguel

Díaz the guardian of this convent [of Tenzompa], he received news

that in Tenzompla—two leagues away from the town—there were

certain little straw huts in the most hidden part of the mountains.

ey were full of many shields, arrows and pots, and apparentlyno one lived in them. […] e largest hut had a small basket at the

door, and standing on it there was a waxen figure, a span high, rep-

resenting a very ugly black man, with his hands held in such a way

that he appeared to be guarding the door. Inside this same house,

there was a chair or equipal at the front, and seated on it there was

a figure with the following form: it was a dead body that was not

missing a single bone, oddly wrapped in woolen cloths adorned

with brightly colored feathers, the bones somehow joined together,

so that only the flesh and nerves were missing, and they were tied

together with cane. In the other houses, there were shields, pots

and many glass beads.” J.N.

T M O (C)Cora masks for the old men in the Dance of the Urraqueros are

especially powerful objects. For instance, Preuss had no prob-

lems acquiring the sacred Huichol bundles that are considered

to be the ancestors, but he never managed to collect any original

examples of masks for the Old Man of the dance.

Preuss described his experience with the San Francisco Kua-

xata mask as follows: “e mask worn by the leader of the dance

is especially interesting. It was carved about twenty years ago,

and it is so sacred that it was impossible to procure, so I had to

settle for an exact copy. e original was made by the key el-

ders aer fasting for ten days, meaning that they ate only once aday, and abstained from salt, and also that they drank water only

once a day. All the elders dreamed the same dream when they

slept, and that was that they must make a mask that depicted a

specific person. at is why the mask is a portrait. Aer mak-

ing the mask, they fasted ten more days, and only then did they

start using it. e mask itself is a powerful god, and the people

worship it. When the rains are scarce, the people gather at town

hall and fast for five to twenty days. During this time, the mask

is placed on the floor. […] Its long hair made from maguey fi-

bers is stretched out like a coat, and to bring the rain, an offer-

ing is made of paper and cotton flowers that represent clouds.

[…] When the mask is angry, it refuses to send rain, and does

not want to protect people from misfortune. By communicat-

ing through its white, black or red paint, it appears in people’s

dreams and shows them what they need to do. When it speaks

with white paint, the problem that needs to be addressed is ill-

ness. White is a kind of protective barricade, but illnesses can

get through it and affect the population. Black is a reference to

night and clouds, and its significance is that the mask commands

the celebration of a nocturnal mitote ceremony in the mountains.

[…] When the mask communicates through the color red, it isasking that people pray to the Sun, that the entire population

recite prayers to the Sun. Red also represents the lightning bolt

against which the mask can offer protection.” J.N.

T Y G B (C)e Preuss collection includes two of the most interesting Cora

ritual objects in existence, which are still in common use: the

yáwime gourd bowl and the chánaka weaving. Both pieces are

considered to be representations of the world.

However, given that they appear in different ceremonial con-

texts, a comparative analysis of their ritual use allows us to move

past their iconographic characteristics and see how such objectsare known for their great dynamism: like their design, their use

is an indispensable element in our understanding of the repre-

sentations that such objects contribute to ritual activities.

e interior of the yáwime gourd bowl features a design in

colored beads, parrot feathers and cotton fibers held in place with

beeswax. e composition of these elements provides a glimpse

of the world’s structure. Preuss sees in this design an analogy

with the distribution of the ritual space where the gourd is used:

four points indicating the cardinal directions, with a vertical axis

emerging from the center, indicating up and down.

In the agricultural rituals known as mitotes, these bowls are

placed on an altar located on the east side of a circular patio. epatio, the altar and the bowl are all seen as maps of the world. A

white handkerchief is placed on the inside of the yáwime bowl, and

several small floral bouquets are arranged on top of it in the form

of a cross. ese bouquets were provided by each of the partici-

pants in the ritual, so the arrangement represents the members of

the group and the world at the same time. is bundle is called téih-

kame and constitutes the central object of worship in the mitotes.

During the ritual, the gourd bowl acts as a container of men

and corn. is is why it is identified with the abode of Húrimua,

the goddess and creator of life. In its condition of recipient, of

uterus, the yáwime bowl provides human life and corn, but

above all, it creates an analogy between these elements, and al-lows people to understand their own existence in relation with

the lifecycle of the grain.


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85

T C W (C)e weaving known as chánaka (which literally means “world”)

consists of a circular structure made up of slender reed stems

interlaced with colored yarn. e design represents the territory

where humans live and within which they travel throughout their

lives. A circle in the center represents Tuákamu’uta, a mountain

that is considered the center of Cora territory and of the world.

Several triangles project from it, each one corresponding to a

mountain or a particular place, while their different colors at-

test to the varied landscape and kinds of soil there are on Earth.

ey correspond to places that the weavers have known all their

lives. Because of that, their woven interpretation is always differ-

ent. Today, for example, it is said to include certain cities in the

United States where large groups of Cora now live.

e weaving is done by the members of the Council of Elders.

It is elaborated during the five days of fasting following the ritual

held at the end of each year during which the traditional respon-

sibilities are allocated. When the ritual is over, the weaving is

taken to Tuákamu’uta and placed in a cave as an offering to OurFather Tayau, identified with the image of the Holy Sepulcher

and the Sun. is object is the central piece in a group of of-

ferings, consisting of arrows (tabehri) that are placed before the

gods of the directions (tyahkuatye) who inhabit the mountains

and hills around the community.

e ritual uses of these two objects show us the different

conceptions of the world and the diverse ways in which its in-

habitants relate to it. In the way the gourd bowl is used, we can

observe a process of concentration in which the different com-

ponents of the world are represented through its unity. is cen-

tripetal conception may be seen in the design inside the gourd

bowl, where in a single image of the world we can see its differ-ent regions, though what predominates is the overall image. A

similar process takes place in the distribution of the contents of

the gourd: the placement of the bouquets contributed by each

of the participants indicates that they all form part of a single

group and that it is only as members of this group that they are

able to establish ties with corn. e action that takes place dur-

ing the mitote ceremony refers to the relationship between the

ceremonial group and the corn, making it the starting point for

the conception of human life.

e case of the chánaka weaving is different, because more

important than its ritual use is its elaboration—always so innova-

tive—and the fate that awaits it: aer this offering is placed, it isabandoned. Moreover, the fact that it occupies the central spot in

the arrangement of offerings next to the ritual patio highlights the

existence of a centrifugal process where the objective is to frag-

ment the representation of the world’s unity. is process comes

into play in the chánaka weaving’s design, which is intended to

illustrate the diversity of the world and the different experiences

of its inhabitants. In a similar fashion, the ritual during which this

object is created alludes to the dispersion of the offerings, so that

the central object takes on its full meaning in the context of all the

other offerings which are placed as part of the same ritual process

in Tuákamu’uta, and throughout the Cora territory.

Other aspects of the ritual use of these two objects are equallydivergent. While the same gourd bowl is preserved and passed

down from generation to generation—such continuity being

presented as analogous to the relationship between humans and

corn—the chánaka is an object made to be offered and then for-

gotten, given that a year later, a new one will be made and offered

in its place. Its ephemeral presence refers to the changes that the

landscape undergoes with the changing seasons.

e dynamic conception of the world expressed in these two

objects provides a glimpse of two facets of the relationship be-

tween the Coras and the world they live in. In the case of the

gourd bowl, the world is conceived as an agent with an active

role, because it gives humanity life through corn. In the case of

the woven cloth, the world appears as a “passive agent,” given

that it is man, through his experience, who creates links between

himself and the territory he moves through in his lifetime.

T C F (C)Every Cora community that celebrates the mitote ceremony pos-

sesses certain prized items, including at least one crown of parrot

feathers. is object is always beautifully preserved by its custo-

dians. e great care that goes into this task is due not only tothe region’s dwindling parrot population—making the elabora-

tion of new crowns very difficult—but also to the valuable role

the crown plays: passed down from generation to generation, the

parrot-feather crowns help to interconnect the representations

of the gods, deer, corn and man.

During the mitotes, two individuals are seen wearing such

a crown. e first is a boy who represents Ha’atsikan, the Cora

cultural hero, and the second is a young man who personifies

the deer. ey appear at different moments of the ritual, danc-

ing around the central fire among the other participants. eir

feather crowns, hidden beneath a bandanna, also hold a bunch

of feathered sticks on either side of their faces to simulate a deer’santlers.

e boy Ha’atsikan appears at different moments at the center

of the ritual action. He is usually accompanied by a girl dressed

in white and covered with flowers made from colored ribbons.

She represents Tatyí, Our Mother Corn. Together, they move to-

ward the different cardinal directions to visit the spirits at each

point in the world. e youth—who is given the role of Narï—is

responsible for feeding the central fire and personifying the deer

in some of the dances. It is at this moment that he wears the par-

rot-feather crown.

Both participants have many other things in common be-

sides their costumes. ey form part of a single hierarchy ofritual positions, given that the young man chosen to represent

Narï must have played the role of Ha’atsikan in his childhood.

Similarly, during the ritual, the two characters facilitate the ap-

pearance of a new character who, though unseen—as he only ap-

pears through descriptions of him in the songs—shares certain

characteristics with them: it is Tahá, Our Older Brother. is de-

ity, identified with Saint Michael the Archangel, is considered to

be a true cultural hero among the Cora Indians, as he is also the

deer’s older brother.

e crown of parrot feathers is an element that evokes dif-

ferent aspects of whoever wears it. In the case of the child, the

crown shows us that he is the guardian of the corn. When it isworn by the young Narï, the crown identifies him as a particular

deer made from corn by Teih, Our Mother Corn.


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One final use of the parrot-feather crown may help us to

clarify its meaning. Another crown, identical to the one worn by

the two aforementioned participants, is placed around a gourd

bowl containing a large cotton boll. Set at the center of the altar

during the mitotes and at the ceremonies marking the change

of season (held in February, May, August and November), this

gourd contains the offerings of cotton le over the years by dif-

ferent residential groups that have participated in the ritual. e

crown of green feathers that surrounds it indicates that everyone

represented inside the recipient is closely linked to corn, which

is the main object of worship in these ceremonies. It also shows

the ritual’s participants that whoever wears the crown of feath-

ers—Ha’atsíkan, the deer and Tahá—remains in the world to

take care of them. e parrot feathers with their characteristic

bright green color represent corn tassels. M.V.

H, C MTPreuss’s collection of textiles is surprising in its diversity and com-

pleteness. e clothing, game bags, ribbons, belts and nets that theethnologist acquired during his expedition through the Nayarit

Sierra are notable for the variety of designs, techniques and mate-

rials. e diversity of pieces and styles is quite revealing in terms of

certain aspects of the use and manufacture of these objects.

e collection of Huichol ribbons, bands and sashes is ex-

traordinarily beautiful. Consisting of about a hundred pieces, it

features a varied graphic vocabulary that is notable for its color

combinations, original designs and the perfection of the tech-

niques used. While these kinds of objects continue to be pro-

duced and used today, modern examples rarely display the same

degree of complexity as the pieces collected by Preuss, where the

smallest details and intricate designs evidence the diversity oftheir use and central role in Huichol culture.

ere are many examples of game bags woven on the back-

strap loom, allowing us to identify certain distinguishing charac-

teristics of Huichol and Cora textiles. Huichol pieces are woven

from one end of the loom to the other, so when the textile is

folded in half to form the bag, the central design is divided in

two. Cora game bags are woven from both ends of the backstrap

loom, allowing the weaver to create a different design for each

side of the bag and to finish the weaving at the center—corre-

sponding to the bag’s base—with a simpler, more open stitch.

Mexicanero bags made from natural fibers display a diversity of

weaving styles and forms: square, round and extendible.e different techniques used to decorate Cora bags allow us

to track the evolution of their designs. e first group of tex-

tiles, woven or embroidered, contains simple geometric designs

that are repeated to create different “textures”—a bird’s wings, a

corncob, natural fibers, and so forth. A second group features

more elaborate designs with geometric forms that are combined

and organized in order to create certain images: flowers, animal

silhouettes, birds, tools, plants and so forth. A final group, made

up mainly of embroidered pieces, is characterized by the use of

more elaborate images of flowers, plants and animals in which

symmetry is not the rule, as it is the unique details and variations

that predominate.e textiles in the Preuss collection offer one further surprise:

just as they provide us with a glimpse of the textile universe from

nearly a century ago, they also reveal certain facets of the person

that collected them. e inclusion of antique and sometimes in-

complete textiles reveals the ethnologist’s interest in understand-

ing how they were used. is interest is particularly evident in

one particular type of object in his collection: the samplers. In

fact, a large number of the textile pieces appear to fulfill this

function, given that rather than presenting a finished design

done in a particular technique, they seem to be a collage of dif-

ferent stitches, color combinations and decorative techniques. In

this sense, Preuss’s samplers bear witness to his tireless quest to

understand the daily life of indigenous cultures. M.V.

Translated by Michelle Suderman.

e End of an Ethnological

Adventure Johannes Neurath

In February 1908, Preuss began to arrange for funds to publishthe results of his expedition. At that time, he was planning anopus in five volumes: 1. Cora texts, 2. Huichol texts, 3. Mexi-

canero texts, 4. Grammars and vocabularies, 5. An account of

his journey and a description of intellectual and material culture

(religion, art and sociology, and so forth) in context, taking into

account parallels with the ancient Mexican culture.

In 1912, the first of the books about his Mexican research

was published in Leipzig, with the title Die Nayarit-Expedition:

Textaufnahmen und Beobachtungen unter mexikahischen Indi-anern 1. Die Religion der Cora-Indianer in Texten nebst Wörter-

buch Cora-Deutsch (Expedition to Nayarit: Records of Texts and

Observations about Mexican Indians. I. e Coras’ Religion

through eir Texts, with a Cora-German Dictionary).

In the introduction he points out characteristics of the Cora

religion. Based on the philological analysis of the words to songs

from the mitote ceremony,