Unknown Mexico
A Record of Five Years' Exploration among the Tribes of the Western Sierra Madre

A two-volume account, published in 1903 by a Norwegian ethnographer, of the five years he spent among Mexican Indians.

Carl Lumholtz (Author)

9781108033589, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 October 2011

586 pages, 197 b/w illus. 6 colour illus. 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm, 0.85 kg

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 Díaz, 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 1 covers the start of the expedition and Tarahumare life, etiquette and beliefs, as well as details of the natural history of this little-explored region.

Preface
1. Preparations for the start
2. A remarkable antique piece
3. Camping at Upper Bavispe River
4. A splendid field prepared for us by the ancient agriculturists of Cave Valley
5. Second expedition
6. Fossils, and one way of utilising them
7. The uncontaminated Tarahumares
8. The houses of the Tarahumares
9. Arrival at Batopilas
10. Nice-looking natives
11. A priest and his family make the wilderness comfortable for us
12. The Tarahumares still afraid of me
13. The Tarahumares physique
14. Politeness, and the demands of etiquette
15. Many kinds of games among the Tarahumares
16. Religion
17. The shamans or wise men of the tribe
18. Relation of man to nature
19. Plant-worship
20. The Tarahumare's firm belief in a future life
21. Three weeks on foot through the Barranca
22. Resumption of the journey southward
23. Cerro de Muinora, the highest mountain in Chihuahua
24. On to Morelos
25. Winter in the High Sierra
26. Pueblo Viejo
27. Inexperienced help
28. A glimpse of the Pacific from the High Sierra
29. A cordial reception at San Francisco.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]