Symposium Overview Symposium Director - Peter T. Furst

Long before recorded history, for tens of thousands of years, humans, especially those that mediate between ordinary and non-ordinary realities, those we know as "shamans," have made and worn masks. They have done so not to disguise or hide their identities, but to dramatize oneness with the animal world and the spirits of nature, and to give visible form to the higher powers they encountered in ecstatic dreams and spirit journeys.

Outsiders admire such masks and special markings as works of art, and indeed, some are among the greatest and most moving images produced by Native Americans. But for the Native artists themselves, and their indigenous audiences, the mask is itself a living being, not merely the likeness of an animal or spirit but the spirit itself.

Northwest Coast Indians were given masks of the spirits and the right to carry them and wear them as gifts from superior powers of the sea and the forest they encountered in out-of-body spirit journeys. Among some peoples of the Plains and Plateau, the dreamer of a vision would even share it with his war horse, adorning it with a mask depicting his dream.

The Iroquois represented forest and vegetation spirits in masks of wood and woven corn husk that were used to cure illness. Their Cherokee cousins danced with wooden masks to ridicule whites, minimize their economic and political power, and drive away disease spirits.

Amazonian Indians made masks of wood and bark cloth embodying the spirits of fish, birds, and game animals to assure their plentiful reproduction and assuage their spirits. Stylized masks of beaten gold preserved the image and power of nobles and priests of the great Moche civilization of Peru. In ancient Mexico, masks worn by celebrants and priests in the great calendrical ceremonies depicted the inner life force, the tonál, of the wearer as well as of gods and spirits. Maya jade funerary mask, dated circa 700 CE, from Petén, Guatemala.

Peter T. Furst, Ph.D. has published extensively on Native American art, shamanism, mythology, the ritual use of hallucinogenic plants, and on Huichol religion, myth, ritual, and art. His most recent book, co-edited with Stacy B. Schaefer, Ph.D., is People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian History, Religion, and Survival (UNM Press, 1996).

He is professor emeritus of Anthropology and Latin American Studies at the State University of New York at Albany; a research associate of the Laboratory of Anthropology and Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe; and a member of the research staff at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He is also author of the illustrated guide book accompanying the exhibition of precolumbian art at the Palace of the Governors, Museum of New Mexico.

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