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Journey to the South

I posted earlier about my encounter with macaws in the context of Mimbres culture and how it seemed to offer a framework to structure a New Mexico to Chihuahua bike ride around. I’ve spent the morning reading RITUAL CHANGE AND THE DISTANT: MESOAMERICAN ICONOGRAPHY, SCARLET MACAWS, AND GREAT KIVAS IN THE MIMBRES REGION OF SOUTHWESTERN NEW MEXICO and 1) my mind is blown and 2) it’s an incredible framework and needs to be a longer ride.

Enlarge the photo and check out the bowl with the macaws and people – note the info on the tag!

The paper argues, well, I’ll let them say it…

Additional points:

• given that women are most often depicted handling macaws, was this a woman’s quest to the south?
• I was thinking trade routes, but trade – perhaps turquoise for birds or something similar- may not have been the point. It may have been about esoteric knowledge and the birds that symbolized it with nothing given in exchange except religious alleigance.
• the Hopi have a story of Tiyo, who journeyed south and returned with ritual knowledge of the Snake Dance – another case of ‘listen to what the people tell you about their history’?

I’n going to keep investigating , but this is exciting stuff! And for those who didn’t recognize it immediately, the title is a riff on Journey to the West. “The novel is an extended account of the legendary pilgrimage of the Tang dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang who traveled to the “Western Regions”, that is, Central Asia and India, to obtain Buddhist sacred texts (sutras) and returned after many trials and much suffering.”* Appropriate, I think.