Mesoamerican indigenous peoples

Encyclopedia of World Cultures The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Further reading

Tarahumara

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. | 2011 | Copyright

Tarahumara , indigenous people of N Mexico, mostly in Chihuahua state. About 60,000 strong, they live for the most part in the barren wilderness of the Sierra Madre Occidental, subsisting largely by hunting and practicing rudimentary agriculture. They are renowned for their ability to run down deer and horses, but are known chiefly for their religious practices, in which consumption of the peyote cactus figures prominently. The visions and ecstasies produced by mescalin, the active ingredient of this plant, are the culmination of Tarahumara ceremonies. The Mexican poet Alfonso Reyes dedicated to the Tarahumara one of his finest works, Yerbas del Tarahumara (1934; tr. Tarahumara Herbs, 1958).

Bibliography: See W. C. Bennett and R. M. Zingg, The Tarahumara (1935); C. W. Pennington, The Tarahumar of Mexico (1963, repr. 1969).

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Free newspaper and magazine articles

	Profile: Holy Week ceremony of the Tarahumara Indians Transcript from: NPR Morning Edition; 3/25/2005
	The failed assimilation of the Tarahumara in postrevolutionary Mexico. Magazine article from: Journal of the Southwest; 9/22/2003
	The Tarahumara frog: return of a native.(Arizona) Newspaper article from: Endangered Species Update; 11/1/2002