The following commentary offers an archaeological and historical reconstruction of the antecedents of Huichol society before the arrival of the Spanish, culminating in a discussion of the political significance of the kawiterutsixi and the tukipa (ceremonial elders and temple district) for colonial Huichol society. The discussion considers the predecessors of contemporary Huichol people in terms of the Mesoamerican world before 1519 and of the Spanish colonial order after contact but before the Nayarita zone was incorporated into the European world system. We use the term Nayarita in its colonial-period sense to refer to most of the unconquered native groups that resided north of the Rio Grande de Santiago, west of the Caxcan conquest states, south of the Tepehuans, and east of Pacific coastal towns such as Acaponeta, Centispac, and Ixcuintla (figure 1). The term included the Cora and Huichol area as well as the settlements of the Tepecanos, the Tecuals and, frequently, the Guaynamotecas.

Given the state of historical and archaeological knowledge from the study zone, this reconstruction will be quite problematic and very provisional for two reasons. First, there is a serious dearth of reliable archaeological data for the Nayarita zone, although there are a few high-quality publications and manuscripts. Second, there is a shortage of extensive and reliable colonial documents addressing the social, political, and economic organization of the Nayarita zone in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nonetheless, several excellent documents pertaining to the Nayarita area have recently been published or republished by Calvo (1990). The informes (missionary reports) of Fray Francisco del Barrio (1990 [1604]) and Padre Antonio Arias y Saavedra (1990 [1673]) are the most notable in this collection (cf. McCarty and Matson 1975 and Archivo General de las Indias, Audiencia de Guadalajara, Leg. 7., 66-5-16).

CARTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATIONS

Our first observations concern two of the most valuable maps depicting the study zone, both rendered during the sixteenth century: La Pintura del Nuevo Reino de Galicia, dating from ca. 1542 by an anonymous cartographer (figure 2) and Hispaniae Novae Sivae Magnae, Recens et Vers Descritio, drawn by the Dutch cartographer Ortelius in 1579 (figure 3).

The Pintura has many touches of Mesoamerican codical art, but the ample geographical data it offers arc quite accurate in a Western cartographic sense as well. In the Pintura, we see that the Nayarita zone was comprised of a number of groups at war with one another, and that none of them had yet been conquered by the Spanish. In the north are the "Tepeguanes" (Tepehuans) and a group that carries the name of "Tenamaztle" (Tenamaxtli), the famous Caxcan leader of the Nueva Galicia rebellion (also known as the Mixton revolt--eds.; cf. Weigand and Garcia de Weigand 1995, 1996). To the west is the representation of a formal settlement, "Cora." To the east are the "Rio de Tepeque" (Bolanos River) and the Caxcan towns, including Teul. To the southeast are the "Tecoles de guerra" (warring Tecuals) and to the southwest are the Tecuals. To the south are the towns of Guaxicar, another...