This life force they speak of flows through everything. They say the rocks are our bones, the riber is our blood. It's the stewardship that they feel. The Huichol, who have lived for centuries in the remote reaches of the Sierra Madre mountains, are one of the most purely preserved pre-Columbian cultures in North America, McGee said. In return, they believe, the spirits heal the wounds of Earth and keep nature in balance.
Book recounts tribe's efforts to live in harmony.
In recent years, however, decimation of the deer by outside hunters and encroaching development meant that the Indians could not perform the sacrificail ceremony. The Huichol believe that the nature spirits took revenge and wrought Mexico's environmental problems. The Indians asked the Mexican government for one white-tailed deer to perform a ceremony they believed would correct the imbalance of nature. But when the director of the Mexico City zoo offered them 20, the Huichol decided to take them back to their mountain homeland for breeding so that future generations could perform the ceremony and ensure Earth's balance. McGee said the Mexican government and private agencies paid for the deer to be flown on a DC-3 cargo plane to the closest airfield in the Sierra Madres.