1799 Le Barbier Large Antique Print Consecration of Cora to the Sun Cult, Mexico

Cartographer :Jean Jacques Francois Le Barbier

Description:
This beautifully engraved large original antique print of the Consecration of Cora to the Sun Cult after Jean Jacques Francois Le Barbier was engraved by Louis-François Marriage in ca 1799.

Louis-François Mariage is a French dotted engraver who was active in Paris between 1785 and 1828. He sometimes signed his inverted surname, Egairam .

General Definitions:
Paper thickness and quality: - Heavy and stable
Paper color : - off white
Age of map color: -
Colors used: -
General color appearance: -
Paper size: - 21in x 18 1/2in (535mm x 470mm)
Plate size: - 21in x 18 1/2in (535mm x 470mm)
Margins: - Min 1/2in (12mm)

Imperfections:
Margins: - Light soiling, small re-join to bottom margin
Plate area: - Small repair to top of image, no loss
Verso: - Light soiling

Background: 
The Cora are an indigenous ethnic group of Western Central Mexico which live in the municipality El Nayar in the Mexican state of Nayarit and in a few settlements in the neighboring state of Jalisco. They call themselves náayerite whence the name of the present day Mexican state of Nayarit.
The Cora live in the rugged mountain and canyon country of Nayarit and across the border in neighboring Jalisco, Durango, and Sinaloa. In the early 18th century they were an anomaly in that they had never permitted Catholic missionaries to live in their country. They had become a pagan island in a sea of Christian Indians and Hispanic culture. In 1716, a Spanish expedition to attempt to bring the Cora under Spanish control failed. However, in 1722, the Spanish returned in force and the Cora yielded. According to Spanish accounts many of them became Christian and practice, up until the present, Catholic-derived customs.
The Cora religion is a syncretism between the pre-Conquest religion and Catholicism.
The ancestral Cora religion has three principal divinities. The supreme god is the sun god, Tayau, our father. He travels across the sky during the day, sitting down in his golden throne at noon. Clouds are believed to be smoke from his pipe. In earlier times the priests of Tayau, the tonatí, were the highest authority of the Cora communities. His wife is Tetewan, the underworld goddess associated with the moon, rain, and the west. Her alternate names are Hurima and Nasisa. Their son, Sautari, the flower picker, is associated with maize and the afternoon. Other names for him are Hatsikan, big brother, Tahás, and Ora. He is also associated with Jesus Christ.
Some Cora myths clearly have Mesoamerican origins; for example, the myth of the creation of the fifth sun. Others are shared with the geographically and linguistically adjacent Huichol; for example, the myth of the human race being the offspring of a man and a dog-woman who were the only survivors of a mythical cataclysmic deluge.

$650.00