Ethnoscience, Genetics, and Huichol Origins

Ethnohistory
Four Huichol shamans oversee religious paraphernalia arranged on shamans’

chairs, ca. 1890s. Photo by Carl Lumholtz, American Museum of Natural His-
tory, image 43777
Published by Duke University Press

Ethnohistory
Ethnoscience, Genetics, and Huichol Origins:

New Evidence Provides Congruence
C. Jill Grady, Santa Fe Laboratory of Anthropology

Peter T. Furst, State University of New York, Albany
Abstract. Recent genetic research regarding Mexico’s Huichol Indians has revealed
DNA evidence that suggests that the tribe’s historical origins lie in Mexico’s north-
eastern desert near San Luis Potosí, thereby affirming Huichol migration theories
previously asserted by the majority of ethnoscientific and linguistic studies. This
article illustrates the value of adhering to the scholarly method of reliance upon
weighted evidence in order to achieve congruent results between multiple types of
research data.
Introduction
Most ethnoscientific Huichol studies support a northeastern desert origin

for these indigenous people of Mexico. As J. Alden Mason (1936) noted:
“Ever since the earliest Spanish days the Huichol have been regarded as con-
nected with the extinct Guachichil far to the east of the present Huichol ter-
ritory, and the fact that the latter make long journeys into former Guachichil
territory to gather peyote that does not grow in their present habitat affords
ethnological corroboration of the close relationship” (191). The preponder-
ance of scholarly evidence continues to support Mason’s conclusions and
recent genetic research now suggests a Huichol-Guachichil desert connec-
tion (Páez-Riberos et al. 2006; Rangel-Villalobos et al. 2008; Reséndez and
Kemp 2005). Analyses of Huichol DNA suggest that Huichols now living in
the Sierra Madre Occidental have a dual origin. Páez-Riberos et al. report,
“Our results reveal the presence of two principal Y-chromosome lineages
in Huichols, one ancestral derived from A-24 and one more recent lineage
derived from A-25” (2006: 225). Huichol mtDNA analyses also confirm
Ethnohistory 58:2 (Spring 2011) DOI 10.1215/00141801-1163037

Copyright 2011 by American Society for Ethnohistory

Ethnohistory
264 C. Jill Grady and Peter T. Furst
the existence of two principal lineages with nearly equivalent amounts

of haplogroup A, found predominately in Nahuatl-speaking people from
Mesoamerica’s central plateau, and haplogroup B, found predominately
among indigenous peoples from the southwestern United States (Reséndez
and Kemp 2005: 290). Andrés Reséndez and Brian M. Kemp assert: “Our
long-term goal is to add sufficient detail to the rough genetic map to enable
scholars to pinpoint instances in which haplogroup-A-bearing Mesoameri-
can groups made inroads into the Southwest and, conversely, identify cases
where haplogroup-B-bearing peoples of the Southwest (conceivably Chi-
chimecs, Teochichimecs, and their forebears) migrated south into the core
regions of Mesoamerica” (293). Additional research by Rangel-Villalobos
et al. (2008), using Y-linked haplotypes, suggests that within their sample
of 314 males of Western Jalisco, Huichol patterns demonstrate the lowest
percentages of genetic admixture (451), which they attribute to Huichols’
geographic isolation (455). These scientists conclude that the Huichol have
existed in geographic isolation with minimal admixing from surrounding
populations of regional complex chiefdoms (459).
Reséndez and Kemp (2005) caution scholars not to rely completely on
DNA analyses to the exclusion of other evidence: “We do not take the view
that DNA data should take precedence over other kinds of textual, linguis-
tic, or archaeological evidence. . . . Instead, we advocate a brand of method-
ological eclecticism in which different lines of evidence are cross-checked
against each other and used to advance interpretations consistent with mul-
tiple sources of data” (284).
What follows here is such a cross-check, a survey of different lines of
evidence in congruence with the recent biological evidence relating the Hui-
chols to Teochichimec desert peoples of Mexico. The data span centuries
and include multidisciplinary sources of scholarship, including linguistic,
historical, ethnohistorical, ethnological, and ethnographical documenta-
tions coming together with support from new genetic evidence.
The Earliest Ethnohistory
The search for Huichols’ historic origins begins within the earliest ethno-
historical descriptions of indigenous cultures residing in northern Mexico.
Accounts of ancient Chichimec culture have been compared to those of con-
temporary Huichol (Davis 1997: 74 [citing Richard Shultes]; Furst 1973;
Furst and Myerhoff 1966; Myerhoff 1974; Seler et al. 1993 [1901]). Two
germane sources of such comparisons are the Florentine Codex (Sahagún
1981 [1561]) and the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 (Carrasco and Sessions
2007).

Ethnohistory
Ethnoscience, Genetics, and Huichol Origins 265
In 1561, Franciscan Friar Bernardino de Sahagún compiled ethnohis-

tories of Chichimec desert people living north of Mexico City. With picto-
graphic examples, he transcribed and translated Nahuatl descriptions of
Chichimec indigenous life in book 10 of the Florentine Codex (1981 [1561]).
Eduard Seler was the first ethnologist to compare these Chichimec descrip-
tions with contemporary Huichols (Seler et al. 1993 [1901]). He noted that
the peyote customs and material culture of Huichol people “offer many par-
allels to what we read in the histories of the ancient Mexicans” (180).
Northern Mexico’s indigenous tribes were known collectively as Chi-
chimecas but consisted of numerous individual groups of desert nomads
(Powell 1975: 33; Behar 1987: 134n1; Gradie 1994: 68). Sahagún’s infor-
mants distinguished several groups: Zacachichimeca, Otomi, and Teochi-
chimeca (1981 [1561]: 171). The Teochichimeca lived in “forests, the grassy
plains, the deserts” (ibid.), as nomadic hunters always carrying bows and
arrows (173). They were familiar with all the roots and herbs, and “the
so-called peyote was their discovery. These, when they ate peyote, esteemed
it above wine or mushrooms. They assembled together somewhere in the
desert; they came together; there they danced, they sang all night, all day.
And on the morrow, once more they assembled together. They wept; they
wept exceedingly” (ibid).
Seler concluded that Sahagún’s Teochichimec information corre-
sponded closely with Huichol peyote ideas recorded in 1898 by Carl S.
Lumholtz. Seler outlined the analogies, including close geographic prox-
imity; closely related peyote rituals; both groups assemble in the desert to
gather peyote; Huichols gather peyote as hunters, stalking the plant with
bows and arrows (Seler et al. 1993 [1901]: 180–81).
Seler relied on Lumholtz’s earliest publications for comparison, “The
Huichol Indians of Mexico” (1898) and “Symbolism of the Huichol Indi-
ans” (1900). Lumholtz did not observe or write about the weeping asso-
ciated with Sahagún’s peyote gathering. Thus Seler was unaware of this sig-
nificant analogy. It was 1966 before Peter T. Furst and Barbara G. Myerhoff,
the first scholars to accompany Huichols on a peyote pilgrimage, witnessed
a continuum of what Sahagún transcribed in 1561: “The peyote gatherers
are described here [Florentine Codex, book 10] as circling the peyote and
weeping profusely as they do so, which is precisely what the modern Hui-
chols do . . .” (Furst and Myerhoff (1966: 27). Huichol ceremonial weep-
ing was previously documented (Klineberg 1934: 459; Preuss 1996 [1907]:
108; Zingg 1938: lxii), but not connected to Teochichimecas’ ritual peyote
gathering.
Other correspondences documented for the Teochichimec and
Huichol include descriptions of identically woven yucca sandals worn

Ethnohistory
by both groups (Furst 1997: 268–72; Lumholtz 1900: 183, 1902: 2:212;
Sahagún 1981 [1561]: 173; Zingg 1938: 611–14). A well-documented style
of ancient northern desert footwear (Diguet 1992 [1899]: 126; Zingg 1940)
was described by Lumholtz as “sandals of the ancient pattern . . . made from
twine of palm-leaf, plaited so as to form a matting somewhat similar to the
shape of the foot” (1900: 183). Further, Sahagún’s informants (1981 [1561]:
173) describe Teochichimec clothing as being made from the skins of deer,
coyote, fox, and squirrel. Lumholtz (1900: 192–94, 1902: 2:35) and Zingg
(1938: 306–7, 583–86, 702–3) describe equivalent Huichol usages for such
skins. The Codex denotes a Teochichimeca use of mirrors: “Also they under-
stood very well about mirrors, for all used mirrors” (Sahagún: 173). Glass
mirrors replaced pre-Columbian obsidian mirrors and today continue to be
vital Huichol artifacts (Anguiano Fernández 1996: 378, 382; Diguet 1992
[1899]: 142; Eger Valadéz 1996: 1, 280; Lemaistre 1996: 326n3; Lumholtz
1900: 108, 1902: 2:142; Schaefer 1996: 156; Zingg 1938: 702).
Sahagún’s Nahuatl speakers recounted another distinctive Teochichi-
meca trait: “As they went, as they climbed mountains, it was as if they were
carried by the wind, for they were lean—they had no folds of fat—so that
nothing impeded them” (Sahagún 1981 [1561]: 174). Everyone who has trav-
eled with modern Huichols remarks how distinctly they move with speed,
alacrity and commonly with bare feet over the rugged Sierra (Collings 1973:
130; Grady 1998: 106–9; Lewis 1957: 15; Lumholtz 1902: 2:165).
The Mapa de Cuauhtinchan
Cave, City, and Eagle’s Nest: An Interpretive Journey through the Mapa de
Cuauhtinchan No. 2 is a far-reaching Harvard University research project
involving Chichimec culture (Carrasco and Sessions 2007). Contribut-
ing ethnohistorians offer analyses and interpretations of the painted map
known as the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2. The mapa was created in the
middle 1500s by native pictographic specialists to support their indigenous
claims to lands in the town of Cuauhtinchan (1). It depicts the “migration
and settlement of Chichimec ancestors who pass through ritual ordeals,
awesome landscapes, a monumental city, and what seems to be wide open
spaces” (ibid.). Here again, scholars draw analogies between Huichol and
Chichimec cultures.
For thirty years Keiko Yoneda has researched and published on Chi-
chimec culture and representations within this mapa, along with related
historic maps and documents (2007: 456). Yoneda concurs that the annual
peregrination of the Huichol peyoteros “may have a close relation to the
autochthonous historiography of northern Mexico and Mesoamerica”

Ethnohistory
(199n82), further asserting that the Chichimeca depicted in the mapa were
hunter-gatherers who associated with sedentary agriculturists and “also had
the experience of practicing agriculture in some places where they had tem-
porarily settled” (161), as do the modern Huichols (see also Hrdlicka 1908:
17, 25, 266; and Hard and Merrill 1992: 616, on mobile agriculturalists).
Ethnobotanists Robert A. Bye and Edelmira Linares (2007) correlate
mapa depictions of hallucinogenic plants with Huichols’ ongoing ritual use
of such plants. They analyze the cosmic struggle between peyote and solan-
dra illustrated in the mapa (268) with present-day Huichol tension that
identifies hikuri (peyote) with “purity, order, value, and prestige, while kieri
[solandra] is associated with contamination, disorder, cowardice, com-
merce, and power” (ibid., citing Aedo Gajardo 2001; see also Knab 1977).
These authors equate mapa depictions of Chichimeca people shooting
arrows into prickly pear and other cacti with today’s Huichol who “shoot
ceremonial arrows at the peyote cactus” (269) when “hunting” it.
Jace Weaver and Laura Adams Weaver (2007) conclude the mapa’s
narratives of Chichimec ancestor migration from their origins to their new
home served to solidify and identify the Cuauhtinchan indigenes as a legiti-
mate culture in support of their land claims against the Spanish (346; see
also Gradie 1994: 75). Like J. A. Mason in 1936, Weaver and Weaver (2007)
determine that today’s annual Huichol peyote pilgrimage serves similar
purposes, undertaken after migrating to and sequestering themselves in the
Sierra (346). The Huichols’ annual return to desert origins is perceived as
so wholly legitimizing and sacred that participants accomplish and survive
it only by being transformed into ancestor gods who once lived there (348).
The Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2 and the Florentine Codex share
numerous material and cultural correspondences between contemporary
Huichols and desert Chichimecs at the time of contact. Ethnohistorians
consistently suggest that ancient desert traditions continue through the
Huichols. DNA studies have begun to provide objective confirmation of a
biological continuity.
Huichol Mythological Origins
The Huichols say they “originated in the south; as they wandered north-
ward, they got lost under the earth, but reappeared in the country of the
hikuli; that is the central mesa of Mexico to the east of their present home”
(Lumholtz 1902: 2:23). Most transcribed Huichol origin myths express
similar details, including the emergence of the Huichols into this middle
world, at Huicuripa near the country of hikuli or peyote, in San Luis Potosí
(Diguet 1992 [1899]: 122; Furst and Anguiano 1976: 106; Myerhoff 1974:

Ethnohistory
Figure 1. The Gran Chichimeca. From Powell (1975). Drawn by Philip Wayne
Powell. Courtesy of Diana Fornas and Lilia Rochester, Powell Family heirs
53–58; Preuss 1996 [1907]: 113, 115, 125, 126; Shelton 1986: 367). Their
annual pilgrimage to Huicuripa has been analyzed as their symbolic emer-
gence into and migration from their place of origin (Carrasco 1990: 138–42;
Myerhoff 1974: 258–64; Weaver and Weaver 2007: 352).
The first scholar to merge Huichol mythology with their historical ori-
gins was Léon Diguet. After visiting and researching cultures in northwest
Mexico in the late 1800s, Diguet concluded that Huichols were the surviv-
ing descendants of a group of Chichimecas who became known as the Gua-
chichiles (1992 [1899]: 121, 148; 1992 [1911]: 161–62; see also Furst 1996:
39–45; J. A. Mason 1944: 119). Diguet combined his data from Huichol
myths about Great Grandfather Deer Tail with data on Huichol linguistics
and physical measurements. He concluded that the combined data revealed
a migration into the Sierra Madre Occidental from the northeastern desert
of Mexico near San Luis Potosí after an upheaval of civil unrest. Accord-
ing to Diguet (1992 [1899]), Huichol were led to their current mountain
refuge by Great Grandfather Deer Tail, or Majakuagy (112). Diguet fur-
ther concluded that Huichol physical characteristics incorporated at least

Ethnohistory
two distinct ancestral populations (122). Diguet’s early documentations of

Huichol migration and population admixture are receiving support from
genetic studies that indeed cite Diguet’s previous research (Páez-Riberos
et al. 2006: 224; Rangel-Villalobos et al. 2008: 459).1
In 1996, Furst (29) acknowledged Diguet’s recognition of mythology
as history, concurring with his conclusions on Huichol and Guachichil con-
nections. Furst strengthened Diguet’s conclusions with additional ethno-
historical and linguistic evidence. Referencing numerous coterminous writ-
ings (Alonso Ponce in 1587 [published in 1873], Manuel Orozco y Berra in
1864, Matías Moto Padilla in 1870, Francisco Frejes in 1878, Ales Hrdlicka
in 1903 and 1911, Cyrus Thomas in 1911, J. Alden Mason in 1918, 1936, and
1952, Carl O. Sauer in 1934, Alfred L. Kroeber in 1934, France Scholes in
1935, Lyle Campbell in 1979, Peter Gerhard in 1982, and Wick R. Miller in
1983), Furst underscored that Diguet’s conclusions on Huichol connections
to the Guachichil have been repeatedly upheld by most Huichol studies.
Like Diguet, Furst studied numerous links between Huichol mythology
and history (1967; 1968; 1969; 1972; 1973; 1975; 1978; 1989; 1996; Furst
and Anguiano 1976). He found that certain mythological mandates became
historical realities: “Huichols constantly stress the ‘purity of our Huichol
blood’ and there is a general agreement that Huichols should only marry
among themselves” (1967: 63n20). This emerges from the mythology of
Great Grandfather Deer Tail: “Be vigilant to not allow strangers into my
domain . . . whatever stranger appears, you must take prisoner . . . and
women you wish to marry must agree to be naturalized Huichol or be
condemned” (Diguet 1992 [1899]: 113; see also Zingg 1938: 139–40). In
Mexico, recent DNA studies show that “genetic homogeneity was dem-
onstrated among Mexican ethnic groups from Mesoamerica, suggesting a
high Pre-Hispanic migration rate in this region. Conversely, genetic hetero-
geneity was attributable to isolated ethnic, mountain and canyon-dwelling
groups of the Sierra Madre. . . . results pointed to Nahuas and Huichols as
the most and least admixed groups respectively” (Rangel-Villalobos et al.
2008: 459). While geneticists attribute this to geographic isolation (455),
cultural constraints also affect genetic admixing.2
Sixteenth-Century Ethnohistorical Accounts
Diguet’s Guachichil-Huichol ties are reinforced in Robert Barlow and

George Smisor’s (1943) publication of early Nahuatl documents suggesting
ethnological and geographic connections between the two groups. Mexica-
nero Indians assisted the Spanish in overcoming Chichimec resistance dur-
ing the founding of the town of Nombre de Dios, in the state of Durango,

Ethnohistory
in 1562 (xvii). During the Chichimec War, raids and rebellions were per-
petrated by Chichimecas known as “Zacatecs, Guachichiles, Satatiles and
other groups” (3). The editors translated a reference to Guachichil: “This
name Guachichil is applied by the Mexicans, being composed of head and
red colored. They say that it was given them because they tatoo [sic] them-
selves most commonly with red and dye their hair with it, or because some
of them wear little peaked bonnets (bonetillos agudos) of red leather . . .”
(43n47). Phillip Wayne Powell (1975) concurs: “The name Guachichil, given
them by the Mexicans meant head colored red because they were distin-
guished by red feathered headdresses, by painting themselves red (espe-
cially the hair), or by wearing head coverings (bonetillos) made of hides and
painted red” (35).
Several centuries later, Lumholtz discovered an updated version of
such a peaked red bonnet: “I secured during my stay among the Huichols
a head-dress called Wipí (net), which carries one back to pre-Columbian
times. It is an oval network of fiber, adorned at each end with a modern
attachment, a rectangular piece of red flannel” (1902: 2:60). Not only did
this fresh version of a pre-Columbian red bonnet continue to be produced
by Huichols in 1898, but modern Huichols continue to paint their faces and
hair red (Diguet 1992 [1911]: 162; Lewis 1957: 6, 15, 39; Pruess 1996 [1907]:
106). Lumholtz (1902) observed Cora Indians trading “red face-paint” to
the Huichol during his stay in the Sierra (1:492), and in the same year,
physical anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka recovered a red-painted human skull
from a Huichol burial site (Darling 2009). This occurred during Lumholtz
and Hrdlicka’s joint expedition into the Huichol Sierra, which Hrdlicka
defines as the “Guachichil Sierra” (1903: 385).
Barlow and Smisor note that by 1608 the Spanish and Mexicaneros
successfully eliminated the Guachichil groups from Nombre de Dios: “The
border had been pushed back again” (xvii). They explain this “border”
between the Spanish and the Guachichil in footnotes and several attached
appendixes as follows: “Huachichil” captives and raiders of Nombre de
Dios repeatedly escaped to the west, up into the Sierra Madre Occiden-
tal (“subido a la sierra” [82]), from where they continued to conduct raids
upon the settlements below, including Nombre de Dios (xix n12; 83–85;
see also Blosser 2007: 293; Gerhard 1993 [1982]: 234; and Powell 1975:
173). Charlotte M. Gradie’s historical sources concur that Chichimec tribes
moved women and children to safer locations within the desert and into the
Sierra where they could live off the land and where soldiers on horseback
could not pursue them (1994: 82).
Also relying on historical documents, Allen R. Franz (1996) writes that
the Guachichil had close relations with people living in the Sierra during the

Ethnohistory
Figure 2. Huichol ancient bonnet headdress of woven fibers and red flannel. Image
by Carl Lumholtz. American Museum of Natural History Library, rare books col-
lection, B-57
Chichimec War (69). He notes that the 1587 account of Fray Alonso Ponce
describes “striking similarities” between the dress and ritual offerings of
the “Chichimeca of the Sierra” with those of the contemporary Huichol
(ibid.). Ponce’s informants clearly located the Huichol in their present ter-
ritory toward the end of the Chichimec War (ibid.; see also Diguet 1992
[1903]: 95–107).
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Accounts
Following the Chichimec War in 1590, the blanket term Chichimec fell
into disuse and began to be replaced by individual indigenous tribal names
(Gradie 1994: 87; Griffen 1969: 114–15). Another blanket term—Guachichil,
applied to the largest segment of the Chichimec tribes—declined but did
not entirely disappear. It was subsequently phonetically corrupted through-
out the Spanish historical record, as Huachichil, Cuachichil, Huachil, Gua-
chila, Huichola, or Guichol (Diguet 1992 [1911]: 162; Furst 1996: 41; Jaquith

Ethnohistory
1970: 28–29, 34–35). Historian William B. Griffen (1969) asserts that, in

north-central Mexico, “One of the changes during the European contact
period was the extinction and amalgamation of individual bands” (vi). He
concludes that group names provided in Spanish reports are made more
difficult by Spaniards’ use of vague or generic nation/band names, possibly
including the names of Spanish allies (115–16). Such documentation prac-
tices may have contributed to scholarly beliefs that, along with the disap-
pearance of the term Guachichiles, tribal members had disappeared or died
out or had intermarried and been absorbed (Van Young 2000; Frye 2000).
However, the group name Guachichiles survived in the ethnohistorical lit-
erature addressing the Sierra Madre Occidental into the 1800s and early
1900s (Hrdlicka 1903; Mayer 1853; Portillo 1984 [1888]; Thompson 1812).
Earlier in 1673, Franciscan friar Antonio Arias de Saavedra sent a
report to superiors from the Catholic Doctrina of Acaponeta, now in the
state of Nayarit (1975 [1673]: 194). The report provides a glimpse of indige-
nous life near the western Sierra where Arias de Saavedra lived for twenty
years, attempting to convert Indians seeking refuge there. He traveled
through the coastal communities and foothills of the Sierra, crossing the
mountains twice, going as far as the San Pedro River guided by “Christian
Indians of the Tepehuan nation . . . to where the Chora Nayalita nation
begins” (197–98).
Appropriately for those times, his “official” tribal distinctions are
unclear. He reported that the Sierra consisted of four provinces wherein
the following people lived: first was Hahuanica; second was the area of the
Chimaltitecos, Ixcattecos, and Xamuca, also called Hueitzolme. The third
province was home for Tzaicumuta, and the fourth was that of the Mim-
bres. The term Hueitzolme may have been an attempt to spell Hue[W]ixa-
rika, the name Huichol people use for themselves; or it may have been an
attempt to phonetically write Guicholes, a corruption of the term Guachi-
chiles. According to Arias de Saavedra, the Hueitzolmes “inhabit that bend
in the sierra which is made by the San Pedro River” (ibid.). That river bend is
located to the northwest of Nombre de Dios, documented earlier as a Gua-
chichil refuge.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sporadic accounts
of the Guachichil-Huichol came from Catholic missionaries, Spanish
explorers, and travelers. Franciscan historian Peter Gerhard laments that
during these decades, “Even for the non-Indian population there is an annoy-
ing paucity of data” (1993 [1982]: 236) on Northern Mexico. The Guachi-
chiles declined during the 1600s, and, forced from their lands, “many died
from disease and other causes and others moved on to the wilder areas”
(236). Gerhard continues: “Still, it is clear that by the early decades of the

Ethnohistory
seventeenth century the native population east of the Sierra Madre Occiden-
tal was fast approaching extinction. . . . Only the Tarahumar country and
other parts of the high Sierra were to remain predominately Indian” (172).
Available accounts offer few details and little understanding about
what the Church and non-Indians were witnessing. During these years, the
Spanish imposition of the “devil” frequently served as the only explanation
for cultural differences between the colonists and the multitudes of north-
ern indigenous peoples (Griffen 1969: 129–30). However, the Huichol and
neighboring Sierra peoples were not totally isolated. They were witnessed
to be traveling to the coast to trade (Franz 1996: 69), traveling to work in
the mines and agricultural fields on both sides of the Sierra (Arias de Saave-
dra 1975 [1673]: 200), and using peyote (211) attainable only by travel to its
natural habitat near San Luis Potosí (Schaefer and Furst 1996: 86n2).
Trade and travel were confirmed in a rare Indian Inquisition trial. In
1789, several Cora Indians were brought before the Inquisition for idolatry
and superstition. Their crime was trading maize with their Huichol neigh-
bors in exchange for outlawed idols and pagan ceremonial objects (Franz
1996: 86n4; Schaefer and Furst 1996: 449). One such object was a votive
gourd bowl decorated with glass beads that Huichols continue to make and
revere today.
To the east of the Sierra, raiding and rebelling continued from 1590 into
the 1700s (Franz 1996; Gerhard 1993 [1982]; Griffen 1969; Powell 1975,
1950). Raids on Saltillo by Guachichiles from the Sierra were reported as
late as 1888 (Portillo 1984 [1888]). Ensconced in mountain enclaves, non-
pacified Indians attacked surrounding lower settlements and retreated into
the mountains. Lower settlements were protected by groups of flecheros,
Indians recruited by the Spanish to help put down wild indigenous rebel-
lions (Blosser 2007: 289–309). “For most of the Colonial period, flechero
troops constituted the only military force within Fronteras de Colotlán and
adjacent jurisdictions” (305). Frequently, these troops consisted of Chichi-
mec tribes themselves who were “pacified” and then became cogs in the
Spanish military (Powell 1950: 247).
Bret Blosser (2007) examined historical records for evidence that
Huichol Indians were flecheros who helped the Spanish defeat neighbor-
ing tribes in exchange for land grants and/or tax exemptions (291). Blos-
ser concludes that Huichols fought against an alliance of Sierra rebels and
were thus able to secure tracts of land and defend their communal territory
from invasion by colonists (309). This transpired 200 years after the Con-
quest and 132 years after the Chichimec War. Franciscan missions were then
established in the Huichol Sierra at San Andrés, Santa Catarina, and San
Sebastián (Franz 1996: 79); however, failed conversion efforts allowed Hui-

Ethnohistory
chols to continue their “pagan” religion and peyote worship into the present
(Furst 1996, 2006; Furst and Myerhoff 1966; Klineberg 1934; Lewis 1957:
30; Lumholtz 1902: 2:22; Myerhoff 1974; Zingg 1938: 3–73).
The Ongoing Use of Peyote
As Indians were excluded from the Inquisition, indigenous use of pey-

ote was prosecuted by civil courts during early colonization. Ruth Behar
(1987) provides an ethnohistorical example from a 1599 trial before a secu-
lar criminal court in San Luis Potosí.3 A Guachichil woman was accused of
using peyote to provoke visions and prophecies. In one day she was tried,
convicted, and hanged as a witch because her visions directed her to encour-
age both Christian and non-converted Guachichiles to overthrow the Span-
ish invaders and the converted indigenous settlers who had been brought
into the area, along with their false Christian gods.
During the trial, this “witch” and her defense council denied accusa-
tions of peyote use, pleading to a lesser crime of alcohol intoxication (Behar
1987: 129–32). This was her best defense, because popular opinion against
peyote had increased during the previous decade due to beliefs that it sus-
tained “pagan” ideas that were resistant to conversion (Leonard 1942: 324).
The accused had encouraged Guachichiles in San Luis Potosí to escape into
“La Laguna” (Behar 1987: 126), a region of refuge in the northwestern
Sierra (Griffen 1969: 140; Powell 1975: 39) near where Guachichiles were
fleeing in 1585 (Barlow and Simsor 1943: 82).
At contact, peyote use was widespread throughout northern Mexico
with effects described as visions enabling one “to foresee and to predict
things” (Stewart 1987: 19). Usage was rampant among Indians, not only
“barbaric” Chichimec groups north of Mexico City but also “civilized”
Aztecs and Tlaxcalans who traded near San Luis Potosí, peyote’s locale.
By 1620, the Spanish focused on eliminating its use and issued an edict:
“Inasmuch as the use of the herb or root called peyote has been introduced
into these Provinces for the purpose of detecting thefts, of divining other
happenings, and of foretelling future events, it is an act of superstition con-
demned as opposed to the purity and integrity of our Holy Catholic Faith”
(Stewart 1987 [quoting Leonard]: 20–21).
The Inquisition hearings on peyote occupied the Church for “much of
the next two centuries” (Stewart 1987: 21). Ironically, the Spanish conver-
sion process was responsible for increased peyote use among the Indians:
“Missionaries used converted Indians from peyote areas to help start new
missions in areas beyond peyote’s natural habitat” (26); and converted Indi-

Ethnohistory
ans helped introduce not only Catholicism, but peyote. Over time, Church
persecution dissipated the widespread use of peyote.
Throughout these years, Guachichil-Huichol descendants secluded
in the Sierra continued their pre-Conquest peyote religion without inter-
ference from missionaries or the Inquisition. They persisted in traveling
to San Luis Potosí to gather the plant as they had done before the Span-
ish imposition there of what Behar calls “genocide” (1987: 117). Eventu-
ally, neighboring tribes, such as the Tepehuano, Tepecano, and Cora, dis-
continued their peyote cults while the Huichol persisted (Lumholtz 1902:
2:125). By the late 1800s, Lumholtz noted that among the Huichol pey-
ote played a much more significant role than among the Tarahumara, plus
Huichol peyote worship was much more elaborate (1902: 1:356–57). The
Huichol restricted their use to San Luis Potosí peyote while the Tarahu-
mara used several sources (ibid.). After Lumholtz, J. A. Mason (1918: 3)
compared “people of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the Huichol, Cora,
Tepehuan and Tarahumara,” concluding that Huichol religion appeared
distinctly “specialized” while those of the other groups appeared basically
the same.
The earliest assertions regarding foreseeing and prophesying under the
influence of peyote (Behar 1987: 131; Stewart 1987: 19) persist among Hui-
chols. “The Huichol shamans use the intoxicated state to make prophesies
[during ceremonies]. . . . The indication of a true ‘singing shaman’ is when
these prophesies noted by all who attend, come true” (Collings 1973: 132).
For Huichols, peyote appears to remain a “material vehicle” (Ries 2009)
that has reinforced and preserved their traditional desert identity through-
out years of resistance to outside-imposed ideas.
Travelers’ Accounts from the 1800s
From 1812 to 1815, George Alexander Thompson, a British traveling

scholar, translated the works of Colonel Don Antonio de Alcedo (1786–
88), updating them with “modern voyages and travels.” Thompson wrote
about the Sierra Madre Occidental, “The Indians of the area are inclined to
idleness and never work, but by compulsion. . . . The principal commerce
of this kingdom consists in its silver mines; and the Indians who inhabit it,
and who are from the nations of the Cazcanes, Guachichiles and Gumares
[sic], all speaking different idioms, let themselves out to hire for loading and
carrying effects” (1812: 126).
Though officially declared extinct as a group within the historical
record after the early 1600s (Behar 1987; Frye 2000; Gerhard 1993 [1982];

Ethnohistory
Powell 1950, 1975), the designation Guachichiles continued in use in 1812

with regard to the western Sierra.
Thompson described Guachichiles with details that applied equally to
Huicholes:
Their dress consists of a cotton shirt and a square mantle . . . their shoes
are merely soles attached to their feet by thongs and their beds are mats
of reeds and cotton blankets. They adorn their necks, arms and legs
with strings of green glass beads and small shells. They have great plea-
sure in dancing the whole day long with a drum which is made of an
[sic] hollow piece of wood . . . then it is that they particularly paint and
deck themselves out in feathers of different colors. (1812: 126)
A similar description was given by British captain Basil Hall while
visiting the city of Tepíc in 1822. In a local market, Hall came upon a group
of “native Mexican Indians” whom he detailed as follows:
Each of them carried a bow and about two dozen of arrows and wore
in his girdle, a long broad knife. . . . Their dress was a coarse cotton
shirt made of cloth manufactured by themselves; and a pair of leather
small clothes, loose at the knees and fringed with a line of tassels. . . .
The most striking circumstance, however, was that all these Indians
wore feathers round their heads which embellish the old accounts of
the conquest. Some had tied round their straw hats, a circle of red
flowers so much resembling feathers that it was not easy to distinguish
between the two. . . . At first they were rather alarmed at the interest
we took in their appearance and as they did not understand Spanish,
they shrank back from us . . . it was with great reluctance they parted
with their bows and arrows and feathered ornaments . . . neither could
we induce them to sell at any price that part of their dress to which the
inventory of their goods and chattels was appended [the leather “small
clothes” or shorts] (1824: 223).
Hall’s description of these native Mexicans is indeed similar to old con-
quest accounts of Teochichimecas attired in leather and Guachichil red
headdresses.
A third British traveler wrote about natives he observed in Bolaños,
another town near the Sierra. Captain G. F. Lyon (1828) described an
encounter with twenty “Guichola Indians, of the same race as those seen by
Captain Basil Hall of Tepíc” (293). Hall’s account did not name any “race”
of Indians. Lyon’s usage of Guichola, a synonym for Guachichil, must have
been acquired elsewhere. Lyon’s Guichola men carried bows and loose
arrows stuck into their belts along with well-stocked quivers of deerskin

Ethnohistory
Figure 3. A young Huichol couple with baby strike a pose for the photographer,
ca. late 1890s. Photo by Carl Lumholtz, American Museum of Natural History,
image 43970

Ethnohistory
or sealskin on their backs. Most of the arrows were light slender bamboo,
“generally fitted with a long point of some hard wood” (ibid.). They wore
breeches of deerskin or goatskin, ill-dressed and deprived of hair, but “not
even descending to the knee” (294). All were barefoot while walking from
the Sierra to the coast and to Bolaños.
Wooden arrow points were also documented for Chichimecas during
the 1500s (O. T. Mason 1894: 661, 663; Powell 1975: 49). They were hard-
ened by fire, just as Huichols continue making brazil-wood arrow points
today (Zingg 1938: 704–5). Zingg (n.d.) described them: “Arrows made
with dull hardwood shaft points . . . instead of metal or stone . . . mounted
on cane” (see also Lumholtz 1902: 2:83–84, 1900: 86). Huichol mythology
admonishes against using stone points: “The stone point remained in the
deer. . . . But the gods did not like this offering because of the stone point”
(Zingg 1938: 528–29). Additionally, Lyon described Guichola quivers,
rolled from deerskin to form a cylinder, hung down the back, and always
kept full of arrows. His 1828 description matches both sixteenth-century
documentations of Chichimec quivers (Powell 1975: 49) and Huichol
quivers made today.
After meeting Guicholas in Bolaños, Lyon reflected further on apply-
ing a new term to these people he met: “The Guicholes are in fact the only
neighbouring people who still live entirely distinct from those around them,
cherishing their own language and studiously resisting all endeavours to
draw them over to the customs of their conquerors” (1828: 321). Here, Gui-
cholas became Guicholes. He enumerates the Guicholes’ settlements in
the Sierra: San Sebastián, Santa Catalina and “San Andrés Coasmatl [sic]”
(322), firmly establishing that these people were Huichol.
One other mid-1800s encounter with Guachichil-Huicholes was pub-
lished by Brantz Mayer, U.S. secretary of legation to Mexico, who lived in
Mexico from 1841 through 1844. In his account of service, Mayer (1853)
writes about aborigines living in the newly created state of Jalisco:
The aborigines of Jalisco, formerly warlike and devoted to a bloody
religion, belong to the tribes of the Cazcanes, Guachichiles and Gua-
mares. . . . The manners and customs of the Guachichiles are in many
respects peculiar. They still use the bow and arrow as weapons. Their
quivers are made of deer and shark skins, and the points of their reed
arrows are formed of a hard wood and rarely of copper. The garments
of the men consist of a kind of short tunic, roughly made by themselves
of blue or brown cotton material, with a girdle hanging down in front
and behind, to which is generally added a pair of trousers of tanned
goat or deer skin. (295)

Ethnohistory
While it is evident that Mayer borrowed from the previous publications, he

did not borrow Lyon’s synonyms, Guichola or Guicholes. He chose Gua-
chichiles. This could not have been an oversight, as Mayer later quotes ver-
batim from Lyon’s account (317). His choice of Guachichil over Guichola or
Guicholes indicates an accepted interchangeability of the terms. From 1812
to 1853, Guachichiles, Guicholas, Guicholes, and again Guachichiles were
used for the same people, known as Huichol. Mayer included an index of
“Indian Tribes or Races in Mexico” (37–38), showing populations of Gua-
chichiles in Guanajuato and Jalisco during his years as secretary of legation.
After the 1800s, Diguet (1992 [1911]: 162) concurred that huichol,
huichola, Guichol, and Guachichil were used interchangeably within many
accounts: by Matias de la Mota Padilla in 1742; by Francisco Frejes in 1878;
and guichol and guisol in seventeenth-century letters published by Alberto
Santoscoy in 1899. According to Beatriz Rojas, the word Guichola was
first applied to the Huichol in approximately 1790 by Felix Calleja (Rojas
1992: 107), though Sauer noted its application in an earlier 1653 document
(1934: 5). In other accounts, people in the same area of the Sierra were
known variously as “xurutes, usares, vizuritas” (Rojas 1992: 23) and defined
as cannibals. Tribal naming changed dramatically over time (Griffen 1969),
but numerous known facts sustained a Huichol-Guachichil connection.
Linguistics
The earliest scholars to examine Huichol linguistics were the ethnogra-

phers/ethnologists who visited during the late 1800s (Diguet 1992 [1899],
1992 [1911]; Hrdlicka 1903, 1908; Lumholtz 1898, 1900, 1902, 1906; Preuss
1996 [1907]). They studied in European universities4 and learned to speak
Nahuatl in preparation for fieldwork among Uto-Aztecan-speaking people.
After some months of sustained interaction within Huichol communities,
each was able to converse in Huichol.
Diguet was the first to systematize the Huichol language while simulta-
neously surveying Mexican ethnohistory and living among the Huichol. He
concluded that Huichol was linguistically connected to Guachichil (1992
[1911]: 161–62).
Lumholtz was in Mexico simultaneously with Diguet. He wrote that
little is known about the origin of Huichol language; however, “it is thought
that the Huichols are remnants of the ancient Cuachichiles” (Lumholtz
1898 [quoting Orozco y Berra]: 2). Hrdlicka joined Lumholtz in the Sierra
and was later quoted by Cyrus Thomas as saying that “the most intelligent
man among the Huichol told him that Guachichil was the ancient name of

Ethnohistory
his tribe” (Thomas 1911 [quoting Hrdlicka]: 22). Thomas adds, “This fact
would account for Orosco y Berra’s puzzle in not finding Huichol referred
to in the early narratives” (41).
Preuss lived with the Huichols for nine months during 1905 (Preuss
1996 [1907]: 99–93). A small portion of his Huichol work survived the
bombings of World War II. He sought to connect mythologies between
Sierra Madre cultures and the ancient Aztecs (Alocer 2008: 76).
Beyond these scholars, few learned to speak the Huichol language.
One exception is Joseph E. Grimes, a linguist who resided in the Sierra
over twelve years. Grimes learned Huichol and published two dictionaries,
one in 1954 (Grimes and McIntosh) and a second in 1981. As did earlier
fieldworkers, Grimes suggested a northeast-to-southwest migration route
for the Huichol (Dutton 1962: 6n2; Grimes 1964: 13; Grimes and Hinton
1969: 792). In a recent personal communication, Grimes writes:
The evidence for Huichol migration is not very strong, but it is sugges-
tive. A few things come to mind:
• Artifacts like prayer arrows fit more with groups to the north than
to the south or west;
• The ritual center is in [sic] near the desert in San Luis Potosi, days
to the east of where the Huichols live. Every child learns the names
of significant places there. That is where the peyote is collected;
• The concentration of places considered sacred to deities is in the
central and eastern ranges of the Sierra Madre. Relatively few
deities (Puu.warika and Kieri Tewa.yaari are the only ones I can
think of) are worshipped in the western range. Haaraa.mara, the
Pacific Ocean, is about the only deity worshipped west of the
Santiago River. Keewii.muuka, a deity who brings rain in from
the west, is associated with the west, but I think is actually wor-
shipped between Jesus Maria and Santa Catarina. (2008)
Grimes published two taxonomies of Huichol words for plant and ani-
mal life (1980a, 1980b). Both consist of plants and animals found primarily
in the Sierra and eastern desert. Fewer names exist for ocean creatures or
coastal plants, except for shore birds and other beach dwellers such as
crabs (1980a: 192–96). Additional taxonomies collected by David P. Price
in 1967 and Diguet in 1911 contain few references to coastal flora or fauna.
Huichol lexical affinities skew toward the northeast.
Moreover, Lumholtz (1906) noted the absence of a Huichol name for
a much revered sea bird: “The bird in question is the snake bird or water
turkey (Anahinga anahinga). . . . The plumes are highly prized, and are sup-
posed to be endowed with much knowledge besides being capable of per-

Ethnohistory
forming magic feats, such as causing grains of corn or coins to fall from
heaven to earth” (319). He puzzled why such a significant avian had no
Huichol name. He also published taxonomic names for Huichol sacred ani-
mals, none of which reside near the Pacific Ocean or its coast (1900: 66–9).
As Grimes communicated above, Huichols’ deified geography sug-
gests an eastern emphasis, extending from the Sierra as far as Wirikuta near
San Luis Potosí where Huichols originated. More deities reside within and
between the Sierra and Wirikuta, along with more named plants and ani-
mals. “Huichol spatial mythology, which suffuses the entire hunting ritual,
describes a territory extending like a star toward large parts of the states
of Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Durango” (Lemaistre 1996: 314). Sacred sites
lying to the west and south number less and are excluded from sacred ritual
hunting.
Most Uto-Aztecan linguists draw connections between Huichol lan-
guage and that of eastern desert dwellers. Kroeber (1934: 8–9) groups
Huichol language with Guachichil. Sauer (1934) classifies Huichol with
Tecual and Guachichil, geographically and linguistically. Norman A.
McQuown (1955, 1960: 321) classifies Huichol with the extinct Tecual and
Guachichil. Grimes (1964: 13), “having learned Huichol and listening to
Cora,” finds McQuown’s classification “reasonable.” H. R. Harvey (1972:
300n3) writes that given the linguistic affinities of desert languages, Gua-
chichil and Huichol are related in that “a modern linguist would recog-
nize its [Guachichil’s] obvious affinities to Huichol. This particular dialect
could well represent a relic of Guachichil or some other language in the
area.” There exist word lists of Guachichil place-names and proper names
for comparing linguistic affinities (see Padrón Puyou 1995: 12–13).
Wick Miller found that most “Uto-Aztecan peoples were interior
people who had learned to utilize the resources of desert and mountains . . .
and did not utilize the resources of the sea to the same extent” (1983a: 333).
Within Uto-Aztecan languages that survived the Proto-Sonoran breakup,
Miller classifies languages aligned with the Southern Sonoran branch of
Uto-Aztecan to be “Totorame with Cora, and Tecual and Guachichil with
Huichol” (1983b: 122). Miller concludes that, of the Sonoran groups, “those
living in the mountains seemed to have a sparser and less settled population,
creating conditions more like that found for their Numic and Takic rela-
tives” (1984: 21).
Linguistic historian Terrence Kaufman (2001) has studied Nahuatl
language for over five decades and concludes that loan words within the
Nahuatl language indicate the following: “From 400 BCE until 500 CE we
may postulate a stomping-ground for the pre-Nawas [Nahuas] between the
Kora-Wichols [Cora-Huichols] and the Wastekos [Huastecos], say, around

Ethnohistory
the area of the city of San Luis Potosí” (6), shared geography of the Guachi-
chiles and Huicholes.
It is not known what Guachichiles called themselves. Both Guachichil
and Huichol are terms imposed by outside populations. Both terms share
obvious phonetic similarities that are more salient than other corrupted
Huichol names. Using a broad phonetic transcription, the two names,
/Gu/a/ch/i/ch/i/l/ and /Hu/i/ch/o/l/, share four allophones/phonemes: Gu-Hu/
ch/i/l. Other names that have been suggested for the pre-Hispanic Huichol,
such as xurute, xurutequane, usare, vizurita, tecuale, otomi, huizare, naya-
rita, nayare, hueitzolme, or usilique, share fewer than four or none.
Discussion
Conspicuously absent from Huichol studies is archaeology. No archeologi-

cal excavation exists for the Huichol-Guachichil Sierra, no identification or
location of a complex archeological ruin, no carbon dating of found materi-
als, and no pottery sequencing. Attempts have been made to apply Huichol
cultural affiliations onto regional archaeological excavations. The ruins of
ancient, socially stratified architecture surround the Huichol Sierra but pro-
vide no cultural affiliations with the Huichols’ well-documented, less com-
plex social structure (Nelson 2009: 63–65). Huichol architecture contains
no palatial features of political power and no status differentiation between
dwellings (ibid.), further supporting an absence of genetic admixing with
the outside surrounding region.
Few prehistoric artifacts have been found in the Sierra. One fluted
stone projectile point found near the community of San Sebastián was inter-
preted to have been reused and relocated in the Sierra over time (Weigand
1970). Like ethnohistory and the majority of eclectic scholarly evidence,
archaeological evidence must also seek the congruence provided by DNA
regarding population replacement, extinction, growth, and migration in
order to ascertain valid Huichol historic origins.
As previously stated, most ethnoscientific and linguistic studies of
the Huichol support a northeastern desert origin. This desert origin has
been continuously advanced for Huichols because of abundant Chichimec-
Guachichil correlations in linguistics, ethnology, and ethnohistory. Resén-
dez and Kemp (2005: 284) recommend cross-checking all evidence when
including DNA results. Many cultural shifts cannot be “directly addressed
by archaeology, linguistics or history, since cultural shifts are not always
congruent with population replacement, extinction, growth, migration,
etc.” (Gonzáles-José et al. 2007: 682). The foregoing cross-check of mul-
tiple sources of Huichol data with new DNA data provides such congru-

Ethnohistory
ence across studies regarding Huichol migration out of the desert and low
genetic admixing.
Notes
1 Two decades of research by Susana Eger Valadéz (1996) reveals an ongoing North
American presence of wolf nagualism among Huichol shamans, “another example
of the multiplicity of Huichol origin mythology, reflecting heterogeneous histori-
cal origins” (Schaefer and Furst 1996: 264; see also Lumholtz 1902: 2:261; Zingg
1938: 529).
2 In addition to the Huichol constraint against marrying outsiders, Ales Hrdlicka
(1908) documented other constraints in an 1898 survey of abortion and infanti-
cide practices of indigenes in northern Mexico and the southwest United States,
including Huichols. He found that all tribes practiced abortion and many exclu-
sively eliminated progeny fathered by “whites” and other outsiders until Catholic
conversion interceded (163–66).
3 Intoxicating effects of peyote were recognized as the “work of the Devil” by the
Spanish Inquisition as early as 1591 when Juan Cárdenas published Primero parte
de los secretos maravillosos de las Indias (Leonard 1942: 325). Sahagún sent his final
revision of the Florentine Codex to the Holy Office in Spain in 1585 with descrip-
tions of indigenous peyote use. While popular awareness was growing on pey-
ote usage among Chichimecas, including Guachichiles, native people were not
allowed to be tried by the Inquisition until 1621 (ibid.: 324).
4 Léon Diguet graduated from the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Ales
Hrdlicka was a Czechoslovakian immigrant who graduated from the Eclectic
Medical College of the City of New York, received an advanced degree from the
New York Homeopathic Medical College, then studied for a year in Paris with
Leon Manouvrier, a student of Pierre Paul Broca. Carl S. Lumholtz graduated in
theology from the University of Christiania, now the University of Oslo; Konrad
Theodor Preuss received his doctoral degree from the University of Krönigsberg
in eastern Prussia.
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Four Huichol shamans oversee religious paraphernalia arranged on shamans’

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