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)

9781108033596, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 October 2011

566 pages, 222 b/w illus. 9 colour illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 3.2 x 15.2 cm, 0.82 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 2 focuses mainly on the neighbouring Huichols people, their daily life, and their religious practices, including shamanism.

1. Reception at San Andres
2. Name and history of the Huichols
3. Another excursion
4. Trip to Bastita
5. Votive bowls
6. The first census of the Huichol country
7. Our procession excites the wonderment of the Mexicans
8. Return to the Sierra
9. A satisfactory meeting with the principal men
10. Practising self-control
11. Huichol gods
12. How to become a shaman
13. Native authorities, civil and ecclesiastical
14. Pablo and I separate
15. Getting ready for the great Hikuli feast
16. Leaving the Huichol country for the coast
17. On the road again
18. Archaeology versus theology
19. Oriental rain-cloak
20. A mound of metates
21. Arrival in the country of the Tarascos
22. Antiquities
23. Paracho
24. Tribal name of the Tarascos
25. Zacapu
26. Uruapan, 'The Paradise of Michoacan'
27. In the city of Mexico again
Conclusion
Appendix
Index.

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