Native American Nations in Mexico

At least 60 separate Native Mexican American Nations (Mexicas, in their own language) have lived in Mexico. The Indigenous Peoples of Mexico still living there today are called Purepecha, Tarascan, and Huichol.

The Huichol are a very interesting people. Huichol Indians live in the Sierra Madre Mountain Range in Mexico. They are well known for wonderful intricate yarn paintings and for their beautiful bead work.

Before doing one of their yarn paintings, they take peyote, a drug made naturally in a cactus type plat. Thsi hallucinogen is so powerful that it allows them to have an alternate experience in which they travel with spirits and speak with them about their art.

For the Huichol that has taken the drug peyote in this manner, it is a goal to have the vision of a reindeer in their travels with the spirits. This is unusual since there are no reindeer in Mexico.

To envision a reindeer while under the influence of peyote as a spiritual experience means that they have made with their Gods and that their communications with them are all sacred. From all of this, the artist uses what was seen in the alternate experience to make their paintings.

I have read Russian poets refer to this experience as the Other World. Australian aborigines call part of it The Dreamtime. Christian mystics have experienced visions of Jesus Christ. We must not belittle these experiences as important or useful to the people. How interesting it is that the reindeer pulls up the sun each morning in the legends of the People of the North in Russia and the reindeer becomes a Dragon in the East, then becomes a reindeer again in Mexico. Such stories can be a marker for these civilizations to be closely related in culture and DNA/RNA. This lends credence to the beliefs that the People of the North migrated through Northeast Asia, into Alaska, Canada, what is now USA, and southward all the way to the tip of south America - and probably back up into the Ohio Valley.

This is mind boggling. I may have dentine the research I found in1996 that indicated that the Iroquois Confederation (at least one member nation) is closely related to the Zulu in Africa. One marker for this was the same word for "cousin" existing in both languages. I could not pronounce it.

The Huichol Indians wanted to populate their forests with deer, because they believed the reindeer once roamed free there. The Mexico City Zoo gave then 20 blue deer in 1986 and the people started a new wild herd.

Two years after the project began, in 1988 the Mexican government recognized the Indians' re-population of forests with deer by giving them the National Ecology Prize. The government of the state of Nayarit, Mexico, where the Huichol live, signed an agreement with the Cousteau Society to preserve their area for ecologically safe tourism: The blue deer is the intuition that speaks to their heart, if they just listen.

The Purepecha live in the Sierra Madres in the State of Michoacan. They still speak their native Indian language and keep many ancient customs.

They make sculptures from local clay and paint. They combine Catholicism with their native beliefs in surreal and imaginative folk art.

Purépecha ared also called Tarascans or Tarscos,and Porhé. Their ancient empire rivaled the Aztec Empire during the Fifteenth and early Sixteenth Centuries (1400 - 1500 AD).

Their language is classified as an isolated language, spoken along southern fringes of south Jalisco.

These folks make colorful cars that are riden by skeletons and devils, in order to warn about the dangers inherent in reckless driving.