by Hope MacLean
Eligio may not know the myth recorded by Zingg, or he may have been taught a different origin story. Zingg’s myth came from the southern community of Tuxpan, while Eligio’s family came from San Andrés. There can be considerable variation in lore between communities and between different shamans and storytellers.
In his description, Eligio seemed to refer to preexisting rock carvings that the Huichol copied—or he may have meant that the Huichol shamans envisioned these designs from the stones of sacred sites. I will return to this ambiguity below.
In another reference to preexisting designs in rocks, Eligio described two huge stone serpents in the cave of Aariwameta. The cave, a sacred site near San Andrés, contains a spring of water. I do not know whether the serpents were carved by people or are a natural rock formation. I have never visited this sacred site and so I must rely on his description. (The Huichol are protective of their sacred sites, and one must wait for an invitation to visit them.)
ELIGIO: There in that place of Aariwama, there exist among the rocks, designs (Sp.: dibujos) of the serpent.
HOPE: In the rocks themselves?
ELIGIO: There, that is where they are. Aariwameta. There are two serpents. This big [holds his hand about three feet (one meter) from the ground]. They are in the cave. But those things, I don’t know who made them. They were born there. Among the rocks. That’s how they are. They look like serpents. . . . It is like a huge cave, a huge rock. You go down below, and there they are. And the water is there also. And there are many things [offerings] that they bring there, nierikate, arrows, feathers—well [everything]. And for that one.
HOPE: And what power does it give?
ELIGIO: The power there? To become a shaman.
HOPE: Of a shaman?
ELIGIO: And to know how to paint also. Everything. Also to know, to know the study [of shamanism] also. It is good for everything, that one.
Aariwama is a rain-mother goddess whom Lumholtz called Mother East-Water (1900, 163). I have spelled her name as Eligio pronounced it. Some authors have transcribed her name as “Nu’aariwame” or “Ne’ariwama.”
Zingg (2004, 157–160) recorded a myth of Aariwama (which he renders as “Na’aliwaeme”) that seems to refer to the same cave as Eligio describes. Na’aliwaeme goes to live in a cave, where she makes designs of a snake.
The girl spat in the centre of the cave, and there was a teapáli [god disk]. She spat again and this time a snake appeared on the top of the teapáli. Then she painted marks on the walls of the cave. . . . This cave is [N]a’aliwaeme kokalita, and is near Santa Catarina. . . . In the cave the water-goddess had a large water jar about twelve inches high. It was painted with five snakes. . . . [The people] were to have a ceremonial bath in the waters of the cave, pray, and take candles to her cave.
The myth goes on to describe offerings to the goddess that are to be left in the cave, and how she gives increase of money, cattle, and other animals.
Eligio’s references to designs and carvings in rocks are intriguing. The origins of the designs are, of course, lost in time—but it is interesting that Huichol oral history has preserved this account of them.
I puzzled over Eligio’s cryptic references to designs in rocks. I was not certain whether he was talking about actual designs in rock or something envisioned with shamanic vision. Several years later, I returned to Mexico and asked him for more details about the sources of the designs in rocks. This time, he spoke about his own experiences in receiving designs or images from the gods. He seems to be speaking about designs that come from the rocks, and perhaps from the rocks of the sacred caves. He clarified that he was talking about shamanic vision, but I was still not certain to what extent these were preexisting designs that he began to understand the deeper meaning of, or whether these were visions stimulated by the designs or sent by the gods.
HOPE: Before, you said to me that the Huichol . . . that the designs in the yarn paintings were designs in the rocks. That the shamans saw designs in the rocks.
ELIGIO: Yes.
HOPE: And that afterward they put them into the yarn paintings. And was it that the mara’akate saw with shamanic vision? With vision? Or did they see the real design, as though it was painted or something?
ELIGIO: Well, those things . . . during the years that I have spent learning to become a shaman. Well, I never wanted to become a shaman or anything like that. I wanted to learn to make designs. To know how to make yarn paintings. To know a lot. So that a lot of visions would come to my mind. That’s what I wanted. I spent about ten years, and then I began to receive a lot of visions. Through the rocks, I saw many designs. But I understood that they spoke as a design. Well. What it is that they meant. But those designs are words of the gods. From long ago—I don’t know when. I don’t know what they may be. But they exist. And I began to base myself in that, in those designs, to teach myself to make designs, yarn paintings. From there, I began to draw out designs, to make up designs. Now I have the ability to understand the designs, what they mean. They are a part of some things.
He went on to say that the ability to see the designs was linked to knowledge of shamanism. He often describes shamanism as a study that has no end.
ELIGIO: Not everyone can do designs. It is something very big. It doesn’t have an end. It is something that is thus. It will not give you any ending, of the designs that there are. And different words, many words. It is very difficult to understand them. . . .
No one taught me. My father never said to me what was in this world. Of those things in the world, no one said anything, nor my mother either. Nor my grandfather. He was a shaman, but he never said anything to me. Nor the other grandfather, who was also a shaman. They never told me what it is that the shamans see, what they are seeing because they are shamans. They never told me that. All by myself, I caught on. But by visiting [those places], in that way. The sacred sites. And then, in order to learn, I went by myself. But my mind-heart [Sp.: pensamiento] alone knew what I was doing. I wanted to learn something. And for that reason, I know a lot of things. I know them. But those things came to me. God gave me that. His mind [Sp.: mente], and here I have it in me. And that is what is helping me work, nothing else.
Once again, I tried to clarify whether this was an ability unique to shamans or those who could exercise shamanic vision. He agreed that only those who believed or had faith were likely to receive the designs and their meaning from the gods. However, he went on to say that even though other shamans might share his experience, they did not necessarily translate it into art. Some did not really pay attention to what the gods were telling them, nor did they use it. They did not focus on that other reality. Eligio speculates that he may have gained insight into understanding these images because he specifically asked the gods to make him a painter.
HOPE: So then, it is not every person who can see these designs in the rocks? It is only someone . . . a person who has learned about shamanism?
ELIGIO: Yes.
HOPE: If another person goes to a cave, he will not see anything?
ELIGIO: No, that one won’t. Only those to whom it has been given. Not everyone. For that reason, . . . I was saying to my wife, . . . “There are a lot of shamans. There are lots of shamans. Why don’t they do any kind of work [like painting]? Because they know, they know very well. And I don’t know—perhaps they are lost. Or is it because the voices of the gods also come to their ears? They hear them. Their voices, the words, the [shamans] hear them. But only some of my comrades base themselves in that. They are never looking at what there is, what the lessons from the past are, of the gods. But I, perhaps I was different because I asked to know how to paint designs. That was all I asked, was to know how to paint. I wanted that. But through that, on the basis of that, I received a lot of things. I learned how to be a shaman, all of that.
HOPE: Because you asked to know the designs, they have showed you the designs?
ELIGIO: Original images [Sp.: muestras] of the gods. Yes, that is it.
/> The Huichol often use the word “muestra” to refer to a pattern, template, or an original image. For example, they may copy the pattern from a beaded bracelet and refer to the original as the muestra. Eligio seems to have the same concept in mind when he said that the gods showed him designs or templates for yarn paintings.
Eligio’s answer still seems to leave open the relationship between designs in rock and their use as images in painting. To be frank, it is not always possible for an academic asking questions to receive crystal-clear answers from an indigenous consultant. Eligio took my questions in his own direction and answered according to his own priorities. Therefore, I have included here a discussion of rock carvings in the Huichol Sierra. It may well be possible that some Huichol imagery derives from these carvings, or that the carvings and offerings come out of a common source.
The only reference to a link between rock carvings and the designs of yarn-painted nierikate is a brief reference in Lumholtz (1900, 108): “It [nierika] may be said to the Indian expression for a picture, therefore rock carvings are called neali’ka.” Lumholtz did not expand on the link further and seemed not to have deemed it significant.
Perhaps the huellas, or signs, Eligio referred to are petroglyphs or rock paintings and engravings. Lumholtz was particularly interested in petroglyphs and wrote about examples he discovered as he journeyed through the Sierra Madre. In eastern Sonora, he recorded finding petroglyphs similar to those found in Arizona, including ones of deified dragonflies, concentric circles, spirals, and meander designs, as well as deities drawn with “their hands and feet defined with 3 radiating lines like a bird track” (1891, 392). He found the petroglyphs in association with deserted pueblos that included square stone houses, fortified hilltops, and terracing. Perhaps these ruins were remnants of the Chalchihuites or other cultures that had occupied the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre.
Lumholtz (1902, 2:305) saw other petroglyphs south of Ixtlán del Rĺo, in what may have been Huichol territory when the Spanish arrived. The petroglyphs depicted two small deer with an arrow point above each, and a large coiled serpent. Lumholtz (1902, 2:109) located another group of “pickings” in two caves on Mesa del Nayar. The figures represented mainly snakes, suns, and female genitalia, and he concluded that the artists were Huichol, although his reasons for this conclusion are not given. While he noted that the Huichol had, until recently, owned the country, he also referred to the ruins of a small pueblo that he concluded could not have belonged to the Huichol tribe.
Hrdlička (1903, 392–394) found many petroglyphs three miles (4.8 kilometers) south of Nostic in the Bolaños canyon. The petroglyphs consisted of broad, deep grooves, principally curves, cup-shaped hollows in grooves, many coil shapes, and humanlike figures with headdresses or striae radiating from their heads. (The last image sounds strikingly similar to depictions of kupuri, or life-energy, in commercial yarn paintings.)
The uncertainty about the artists could be significant. Hrdlička, who saw petroglyphs in Santa Catarina in 1902, said that the Huichol “could offer no explanation except that they were made by ‘other people’” (quoted in P. Furst 1996, 48; Furst goes on to discuss the problem of who the other people might be). This explanation supports Eligio’s statement that the Huichol shamans found the designs in rocks already in place.
The Huichol themselves told Zingg (1938, 355–357) that they were not the earliest inhabitants of the Sierra, and that a semimythical people called the Hewi preceded them. The Hewi may have been a northern extension of a Mesoamerican culture such as the Juchipila-Bolaños or Chalchihuites cultures. Or, as Peter Furst postulates, the Hewi may have been a group of Uto-Aztecans who were related to the Pima and Papago of Arizona and moved back to the South along the spine of the Sierra Madre after the great droughts of the thirteenth century, surviving as the historic Tepehuane and Tepecano. A third possibility is that the rock carvings may date from even earlier. They could be from the original wave of Uto-Aztecans who moved northward around 2500 BC. Any one of these cultures could have been the artists of the designs in the rocks.
Possibility 1: Mesoamerican Cultures Moving Northward between about 100 BC and AD 1350
Some archaeologists have theorized that the Chalchihuites culture was a northern extension of the great Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. The archaeological ruins of Teotihuacán are famous for magnificent fresco paintings of subjects such as the paradise of Tlaloc, the rain god. Snakes are an important theme in temples of this region. It is quite possible that such a culture also produced the designs painted or carved on rocks in the Huichol Sierra. A later arrival was the Malpaso culture, which may have been derived from the Toltec culture. Snakes were also prominent in Toltec architecture.
Could the snakes in the cave of Aariwama come from a Mesoamerican source?
Possibility 2: Uto-Aztecans Moving Southward after AD 1300
The Tepehuane/Tepecano undoubtedly brought their artistic knowledge and designs with them when they moved southward. There are concentrations of petroglyphs in the American Southwest and in northern Mexico. The Tepehuane/Tepecano could have brought the designs and an interest in rock carvings with them. This might account for the petroglyphs observed by Hrdlička in the Bolaños canyon, which was occupied by the Tepecano in historic times. Hrdlička also saw petroglyphs near the Huichol community of Santa Catarina, which at one time was occupied by the Tepecano.
Possibility 3: Proto-Uto-Aztecans Moving Northward about 2500 BC
Petroglyphs are closely associated with what were probably early Uto-Aztecan cultures, such as the Anasazi of the Four Corners region (some of whom later became the Hopi) and the Fremont culture in southern Utah. It is likely that proto-Uto-Aztecans migrated northward in a relatively short time. They may have taken a sophisticated system of designs with them and left their carvings on the walls of rocks and caves. As a Uto-Aztecan culture, the Huichol may have shared the knowledge of these designs,
I have seen some striking similarities between designs found in petroglyphs of the Southwest, Huichol sacred yarn paintings and other offerings, and contemporary yarn paintings. For example, one common theme is the coiled spiral—defined either as a spiral or as representing a coiled snake. I have discussed the coiled serpent as a Huichol image sacred to Aariwama and as the subject of petroglyphs at San Blas. I have seen a very similar coiled serpent used in a Navajo sand painting and in Huichol commercial yarn paintings.
Even more striking is the similarity between Fremont culture rock carvings of magnificently dressed people and the goddess Tateituli Iwiekame (Flower Skirt) as depicted in a commercial yarn painting. Domingo González, the Huichol artist who made the painting, emphasized to me that he had shown the goddess with all her accoutrements, including her earrings, her arrows (stripes on her shoulders), and her uxa, or paintings, which shine like the sun (star-shaped figures). Kupuri, or life energy, rises in wavy lines from her body. The same features, such as jewelry and overall shape, are lovingly detailed in Fremont petroglyphs. The petroglyph figures may be divine, since one includes deer horns, which the Huichol often use to indicate shamanic powers. The Fremont culture was located in southern Utah and dates from around AD 400 to 1300 (López Austin and López Luhan 2001, 21). Its members were sedentary agriculturalists who lived at the northern edge of pre-Puebloan cultures and whose links to modern peoples are uncertain (Dubin 1999, 313).
Use of the god’s eye (or thread cross) and prayer arrows or plumes as prayer offerings is shared by the Huichol and the Puebloan peoples in the Southwest (Bandelier 1971, 100). A dart shaft almost identical to a modern Huichol prayer arrow was found in Gypsum Cave, in southern Nevada; it had a notched top and was painted red and green, with solid bands alternating with vertical zigzag lines (Tanner 1973, 15). Painted designs similar to modern Huichol embroidery—such as the lobed peyote with rounded edges, also called the tutu flower—are found in Mimbres Classic black-on-white pottery from around AD 1000 (Giammatei and Greer Reichert 1975, plates
16, 28). There are also striking similarities between traditional clothing of the Huichol and that worn by members of a Puebloan culture, such as the routine placement of embroidery on the shoulder, upper arm, and wrist (Howard and Pardue 1996, 9).
I think it likely that these similarities are ancient, because of their wide geographic distribution and deep embeddedness in Huichol thought. The similarities probably stem from the Uto-Aztecan migration northward, rather than from having been diffused during the comparatively recent migration of Uto-Aztecan Tepehuane and Tepecano back south. Future research may reveal even more overlap between Huichol nierikate and petroglyphs.
Another interesting question is whether sacred yarn paintings are unique to the Huichol or are found elsewhere. Do any other Southwestern or Uto-Aztecan cultures make them as offerings? So far, yarn paintings made by applying thread to boards with wax seem to be found only among the Huichol. The uniqueness is rather odd, since other Uto-Aztecan sacred offerings, such as prayer arrows, thread crosses, and the nierikate known as front-shields, are more widespread. All of these are found among related cultures, such as the Cora, the Tepehuane/Tepecano, and the Puebloan cultures of the Southwest. So why not yarn painting?
Fig. 5.4. Life-size effigy petroglyphs from Dry Fork Canyon, Utah; Fremont Culture, c. AD 950. Photo credit: Cat. #70. 1/365. Reagan Collection. Archives, Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe.
Fig. 5.5. Domingo González Robles, a yarn painting of the earth goddess (Tatei Ituli Iwiekame), 1996. 12” x 12” (30 x 30 cm). Photo credit: Adrienne Herron.
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There is remarkable similarity between this petroglyph from the Fremont culture of Utah and a modern Huichol yarn painting, perhaps reflecting the proto-Uto-Aztecan roots of each. Notice the similarities in the shapes of the heads and bodies, as well as the emphasis on earrings. Antlers, seen in one petroglyph, are an indicator of shamanic power in Huichol culture, and they resemble the straight lines of kupuri around the head of the Huichol goddess.
