In the track of the deer.

• Author: Uribe, Carlos Rios
• Position: Huichol Indian artwork

Despite recent efforts to market their exquisite artwork commercially, the Huichol Indians of north-central Mexico remain rooted in an ancient, life-sustaining, mystical tradition

Pablo Taizan is known in his village of Mesa de Tirador, in the arid mountains of Mexico's western Sierra Madre, as maraca'ame, which, in his native Huichol, means medicine man. "God gave me everything. . . . I asked Tacutzi Nakahue [the mother of all gods] to teach me to sing, to bead, and to cure. This was many years ago. I am still bound by a promise to God, and every year I come with my family to Wirikuta to hunt the Blue Deer [peyote] and make my offering."

Taizan's artwork is reminiscent of prehistoric paintings. His beadwork is decorated in strong colors with symbolic figures of the Huichol cosmogony. Snakes, lizards, scorpions, and eagles - animals that the Huichol associate with curing - also animate his designs.

Today numbering some fifty thousand, the Huichol people live primarily in remote mountain communities in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit, in north-central Mexico; in recent years many Huichol have been obliged to move to areas where they could more readily find work, such as in the tobacco fields on the coast or in cities such as Guadalajara. Their original home was the central plateau, near San Luis Potosi, and it is to this region they regularly return, on pilgrimages to Wirikuta, their most important natural sanctuary.

The word Huichol is derived from Wirrarika, the people's original name, which means soothsayer or medicine man. Although the Huichol were converted to Christianity during the colonial period by the Franciscan missionaries who founded their largest settlements - San Andres Coamiata, Santa Catarina, and San Sebastian - they have kept alive their shamanistic and artistic tradition.

Manifesting their religious fervor in heavily symbolic, esoteric art, the Huichol not only sing their myths, but they also embroider them on clothes and carve them on masks and gourds and on their musical instruments. Masters of highly decorative, intricate artworks, they express their spirituality and virtuosity using beads, yarn, and wood as their basic materials. Eagles, deer, peyote, flowers, corn, and snakes are depicted symbolically in a symmetrical, harmonious, and sensitive style.

The art of the Huichol conveys a mysticism that transcends their poverty and marginalization. For they also inhabit another world, a legacy from their ancestors...