Mountain Lion plays a central role in origin and other stories of many of our peoples across Indian Country. Indigenous to both North and South America, the great cat once stalked the lands of both continents. Now, it’s extinct in some areas, and greatly endangered in others.
It’s something else we have in common with our animal relatives. As colonizers continue to invade the homeland and habitat of others, setting up both house and shop, including vast profit-seeking schemes and revenue-generating operations, part and parcel of their colonization is an attempt to neutralize any threat to those revenues. Just as we were inconveniently in the way, so, too are our animals brothers and sisters. There was a time when, in places like this, they could retreat to the safety and solitude of the mountains, but encroaching development, coupled with human-driven climate change, is increasingly forcing them out of their recently-safe spaces and into more populated areas (areas that were, of course, their natural habitat not so long ago). And when that happens, the colonial mindset seeks extirpation, not coexistence.
Mountain Lion is no exception.
The indigenous northeastern subspecies of mountain lion is thought to be entirely gone now, despite one recent report of an alleged sighting in Connecticut. In that part of the country, it’s as likely to be an escapee from one of those ghastly exotic-animal farms that dot the suburban landscape there as anything else.
There are still a few mountain lions to be found in the wilds of the Upper Midwest and the South (very south; Florida, actually). There are still larger concentrations of them here in the West, but their survival even here is no sure thing. Here in New Mexico, they can be hunted (with permits) year-round, and “destruction of property” and “loss of profit” are legal grounds for killing them. How very capitalist (and colonial): property and profits before life.
And life it is. Mountain lions are — have always been — an essential part of the regional ecosystem. Their size and speed and power keeps other predators in check; it also prevents overpopulation by largely-benign species such as deer and elk that, left to breed unchecked, will nonetheless destroy the habitat via sheer numbers of mouths and hooves.
Especially sickening is the fact that Mountain Lion is one of the wild creatures the state allows trophy “hunters” to pursue for sport and profit, including on so called “big-game ranches” where the “sport” is nonexistent, and wealthy weekend warrior-wannabes armed with military-grade firepower engage in the big-game equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.
For peoples for whom the animal is sacred, or is regarded as a relative, it’s painful knowledge.
Among Pueblo peoples, Mountain Lion has a role, but those stories are not mine to tell. Other peoples have made their stories public over the centuries, and a recurring theme is the animal’s awe-inspiring strength and power. Among my own, he manifests as Mishibizhiw, the Underwater Panther, a powerfully elemental form of the water serpent whose story I’ve told here before. There is nothing benign about the forces he embodies, but he is a guardian, and he provided a gift to the people, if not, perhaps, intentionally.
To the Zuni, he is likewise a guardian — in their case, of one of their Six Sacred Directions. He is thus a popular model for fetish carving, and makes an appearance in the “directional sets” of fetishes for which the Zuni are known. Like other important fetishes, he is given food and other offerings. According to some accounts (which I regard as unverifiable, because the Zuni rightly hold their traditions close and it’s unclear how much of what is written is simply a white person’s interpretation or invention), Mountain Lion is the keeper of the North, and considered elder brother to Bear. He is supposed to be represented by the color yellow, which certainly fits the color of his coat.
In today’s featured piece, however, Mountain Lion appears in a hybrid form, synthesized perhaps from multiple traditions, but manifesting in the unique vision of one Taos Pueblo artisan. The bowl shown above and below was created by Camille Bernal, to whom we introduced you a couple of months ago. She is Wings’s niece, the eldest daughter of his beloved late brother, and although she comes from a long artistic tradition, she’s a brilliant artist wholly in her own right, with an incredible innate talent for her chosen medium. She has taken Pueblo pottery in a new direction, blending styles and influences and stories with fundamentally traditional designs and practices to create something entirely new that yet pays tribute to traditions very, very old.
Of her pieces that we have in inventory, the largest and most spectacular is this one, her tribute to Mountain Lion. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery Gallery here on the site:
Mountain Lion makes an appearance at each of the Four Directions on this old-style square bowl, flared and flowing open into something new and wholly alive. By Camille Bernal (Taos Pueblo), the bowl is hand-coiled red clay, with a pale yet warm slip. Mountain Lion is painted petroglyph-style on each side in soft Laguna Blue-Gray outlined in red, his tail extended up over his back. Bowl stands 4″ high by 8″ across at the widest point, with a flared opening of 9.5″ across at the lip (dimensions approximate). Another view shown below.
Tewa clay; plant-based paints
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
The design honors without appropriating from multiple traditions: the directional element, with Mountain Lion as a guardian or keeper of North, East, South, and West; the tail extended over the back that evokes old-style Zuni carvings, a people and tradition with which Camille has worked professionally for years; the delicate plant fronds extending upward behind the animal at either end, evocative of Taos Pueblo’s own eponymous red willow. And all of it is brought together in one singular style that is hers alone, combining old colors in new ways on a bowl shaped by hand to look simultaneously irregularly ancient and purposefully post-modern.
It’s classic Camille: complex, colorful, and completely compelling.
Come to think of it, that’s a good description for Mountain Lion, too.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
