Wixárikas

The Wixáritari, whom the Spanish called Huichol, are an Indigenous people of the Sierra Madre Occidental canyons and highlands, across Nayarit, Jalisco and neighbouring states. Their Corachol language is close to the Nahuan languages.

Their oral history traces them to San Luis Potosí, where they were part of the Guachichil nation; in the sixteenth century, as Spanish mines, epidemics and encomiendas overran it, they took refuge in the remote Bolaños Canyon among the Tepecano, intermarrying and fighting Spanish incursions. In 1587 the friar Alonso Ponce recorded them raiding Spanish settlements and caravans with Guachichil war parties.

Sheltered by the mountains, they kept their ancestral faith with little Catholic imprint: families lived in dispersed ranchos grouped into temple districts under councils of elder shamans, the kawiterutsixi, and yearly pilgrims walked east to Wirikuta to gather the peyote cactus central to their rituals.