5.3 Purpose and Audience in Indigenous American Art

In many Indigenous American cultures, an object was thought to hold or pass on life force, not just show a picture. A mask came alive when danced; a temple worked when rituals happened on it. Audiences ranged from huge crowds in plazas to a few priests in a small shrine, and sometimes the intended audience was the gods or the dead. When you explain purpose and audience here, describe the work in use.

Templo Mayor (Main Temple) (Tenochtitlan, modern Mexico City, Mexico; Mexica (Aztec); 1375–1520 CE; stone (temple); volcanic stone (The Coyolxauhqui Stone); jadeite (Olmec-style mask); basalt (Calendar Stone)). The temple stood at the center of Tenochtitlan's walled sacred precinct, where the city's four quarters met. A stepped pyramid held two shrines on top, with two staircases. The south shrine honored Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun and war; the north shrine honored Tlaloc, god of rain and farming. Together they stood for the Mexica economy: war and tribute on one side, water and crops on the other. The Mexica enlarged it about seven times, each new temple built over the last.

The Huitzilopochtli side stood for Coatepec, 'Serpent Mountain,' in the god's birth myth. His sister Coyolxauhqui led their siblings in an attack on their mother; Huitzilopochtli was born fully armed, killed Coyolxauhqui and threw her body down the mountain, where it broke apart. Captives sacrificed at the top were thrown down the stairs, re-enacting the myth for the crowds below.

The Coyolxauhqui Stone is a round relief, about 3.25 m across, showing the goddess beheaded and dismembered, with her limbs arranged around her body. It lay at the foot of Huitzilopochtli's stairs, exactly where the myth said she fell, as a warning to enemies. Electrical workers found it in 1978, which set off the large-scale excavation of the temple.

The Olmec-style mask is a jadeite face made about 2,000 years earlier, which the Mexica buried as an offering in the temple. It shows they collected and honored much older Mesoamerican objects, perhaps to link themselves to an ancient past.

The Calendar Stone (also called the Sun Stone) is a basalt disk about 3.6 m across, found in 1790 in Mexico City's main square. A central face, often identified as the sun god Tonatiuh (some scholars argue for an earth deity), is framed by four panels for the four earlier eras the Mexica believed had been destroyed. Together they form the sign for the date on which the current era would end. A ring of the 20 day signs surrounds them.

Transformation mask (Kwakwaka'wakw, Northwest coast of Canada; late 19th century CE; wood, paint, and string). The closed mask shows a creature's face. During a dance, the performer pulls strings and the outer face splits open into hinged panels, revealing a second face inside, often human. In firelight this was a dramatic surprise, showing that a being could transform or had another identity. The bold black and red curving shapes follow Northwest Coast formline design. The CED's example is in the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

Masks like this were danced at potlatches. A potlatch is a ceremony where a host family marks an event, such as a marriage, naming or memorial, by hosting guests, performing its inherited dances and giving away gifts. The guests' presence confirms the family's rank and rights. Canada banned the potlatch from 1885 to 1951, and officials confiscated regalia, including after a 1921 potlatch. Some of it has since been returned to Kwakwaka'wakw communities.