Unknown Mexico

by Lumholtz, Carl

• ISBN13: 9781108033589
• ISBN10: 110803358X
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-10-20
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Carl Lumholtz (1851-1922) was a Norwegian ethnographer and explorer who, soon after publishing an influential study of Australian Aborigines (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), spent five years researching native peoples in Mexico. This two-volume work, published in 1903, describes his expeditions to remote parts of north-west Mexico, inspired by reports about indigenous peoples who lived in cliff dwellings along mountainsides. While in the US in 1890 on a lecture tour, Lumholtz was able to raise sufficient funds for the expedition. He arrived in Mexico City that summer, and after meeting the president, Porfirio Diaz, he set off with a team of scientists for the Sierra Madre del Norte mountains in the north-west of Mexico, to find the cave-dwelling Tarahumare Indians. Volume 2 focuses mainly on the neighbouring Huichols people, their daily life, and their religious practices, including shamanism.

Table of Contents

Preface

Preparations for the start

A remarkable antique piece

Camping at Upper Bavispe River

A splendid field prepared for us by the ancient agriculturists of Cave Valley

Second expedition

Fossils, and one way of utilising them

The uncontaminated Tarahumares

The houses of the Tarahumares

Arrival at Batopilas

Nice-looking natives

A priest and his family make the wilderness comfortable for us

The Tarahumares still afraid of me

The Tarahumares physique

Politeness, and the demands of etiquette

Many kinds of games among the Tarahumares

Religion

The shamans or wise men of the tribe

Relation of man to nature

Plant-worship

The Tarahumare's firm belief in a future life

Three weeks on foot through the Barranca

Resumption of the journey southward

Cerro de Muinora, the highest mountain in Chihuahua

On to Morelos

Winter in the High Sierra

Pueblo Viejo

Inexperienced help

A glimpse of the Pacific from the High Sierra

A cordial reception at San Francisco

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