Part 1: COATIS IN INDIGENOUS AMERICAN MATERIAL AND VISUAL CULTURE

RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMANS:

As endemic animals of the Americas, coatis have co-existed alongside Indigenous American populations for millennia. While they have never been truly domesticated, they can easily become habituated to humans, and across their range, there are long traditions in Indigenous cultures of coatis being tamed and/or kept as community or family pets which continue into the present day. They are also hunted as subsistence food.

SYMBOLISM / ASSOCIATED WITH:

Agricultural fertility; ritual clowning; squash/gourd (chilacayote); male virility; gluttony (as told in the Florentine Codex); named in the Popol Vuh (the creation story of the Kʼicheʼ Maya people) as the daytime animal avatar of the creator grandmother Xmacane, and plays an important role in the ball game story (origin of the chilacayote association)

COATI CERAMICS: EXAMPLES AND ICONOGRAPHY RESEARCH NOTES (regularly updated with new finds and information)

last update 5 Jan 2025

➡️Coati or opossum?

There is a lot of confusion and conflation of coati and opossum effigies, due not only to the significant overlap in not only geographic range and basic physical features (including face masking), but also an overlap in regional cultural associations and iconography, especially the common “paws-to-snout” gesture (more on that below). Generally, if it looks like there was a clear effort made to distinguish it as a coati via a longer, narrower, upturned snout and smaller, rounder ears, we should be more inclined to identify it as such, as seen in the examples here. However, there is also the possibility that some were meant to be composite figures, representing some essence of both animals (and perhaps raccoons too?).

➡️“Paws-to-snout” gesture

The “paws-to-snout” gesture seen in multiple examples is commonly found on coati and opossum vessels, as well as armadillo ones, though its meaning remains uncertain. Elka Weinstein observes that “these animals have relatively agile fingers and hands which they use for eating and grooming…but the action which is depicted on the ceramics does not seem to be either eating or grooming. The purpose of this action is therefore somewhat perplexing” (pp.188-9). Weinstein suggests one possibility is that it is meant to represent the animal playing its nose like a flute, citing South American myths which include this action. In fact, some of these ceramics did function as small instruments such as flutes, oracinas, and rattles. Additionally, the Ethnological Museum of Berlin has in its collection two “coati skull flutes” said to have been acquired from the Cubeo people of Columbia in 1908 (see VB6374 and VB6375). Rebecca Stone-Miller offers a few additional ideas, including simply drawing attention to the snout as a prominent physical feature; to represent eating (though it should be noted that these animals don’t generally eat in this way in real life); or as a playful gesture referencing ritual clowning (which both coatis and opossums were associated with) (pp.130-1).

➡️Upright posture /anthropomorphic features

Hardly unique to coati figures, it is common to see representations of animals in Indigenous art of the Americas in anthropomorphic, upright postures. Depending on the context, this could indicate a shaman in transformation, a deity in its animal avatar form, a human in an animal costume, etc. For the piece above, the museum offers the following note:

The charm of [its] pose and [its] big eyes cannot obscure that [it] stands like a person and may really be a shaman turn into its coati counterpart. Thus, while seeming to fall into the category of attractive little musical instruments, we must guard against trivializing these expressions of the shamanic worldview. Stone-Miller, p. 131

➡️Tripod Feet / Adornos

Central American ceramic bowls often have three supports that take animal form. The animals are not always easy to identify, but in some cases they appear to be coatis who sometimes forage around the bases of trees; with its long nose down to the ground, the animal has the shape of a support. Elizabeth Benson, in Birds and Beasts of Ancient Latin America, pp. 44-5

➡️Mimbres pottery misidentification

Some of the most beautiful images of coati on pottery come from the southwest U.S. The most common and dramatic examples come from the funereal bowls of the Mimbres peoples that used to live near what is now the Gila wilderness in southwestern New Mexico.
…
The first coati-like image I saw was one of the ones on the next page [see image above]. It was described in several sources as a mountain lion, based on the white-tipped tail (where this attribution came from, I do not know, as mountain lions do not have white-tipped tails). However, it is a nearly perfect image of a coati: long snout with elongated lower canines, a long boy with relatively short legs, an exceptionally long tail, a mask on the face, small, rounded ears, and five toes on each foot (mountain lions only have four toes on each hind foot) As I began to research Mimbres pots, I found quite a few more images, usually identifed as mountain lions or “unknown quadruped,” that appeared to be coatis.Christine C. Hass, in Nosey Beasts, pp. 218-19

➡️Maya cylinder vessels

Coatis sometimes appear in Maya ceramics as effigy vessels or on cylinder vessels depicting ritual scenes, likely due to their connection to the Popol Vuh.

➡️Gran Coclé (Panama) polychrome effigy vessels

The identification of established iconographic elements, including kennings, coloration, spout articulation, and posture, all support these vessels’ association with shamanistic symbolism, likely related to fertility and fecundity of the life assemblage, while the stylized black eye masks and paws-to-snout gestures relate these vessels to a wider regional iconography. Zoological analysis of the morphology and anatomy depicted cross-referenced with biogeography records suggests that the most likely animal associations are the coati, opossum, and raccoon. The articulation of the distinctive snout makes the coati the most likely choice among these three…IF we are to assume that it was indeed a single animal meant to be represented by these vessels. However, we must also acknowledge that, given the prevalence of composite animal imagery in Gran Coclé ceramics, this zoomorph may also be an amalgamation of two or even all three creatures. While there was surely knowledge of the uniqueness of each of these animals, one must also remember that Indigenous cultures work within their own taxonomic systems, which are under no obligation to conform to our modern Linnean system. This means that while modern science recognizes procyonid coatis and raccoons as only distantly related to marsupial opossums, and thus places them in separate clades, it is also quite reasonable to accept that since this trio also shares a number of key ecological, morphological, and behavioral traits, they could have been sensibly classified together under this particular culture’s ethnozoological system. This, in turn, could support the idea that these effigies were perhaps meant to represent some essence of any combination of two or three of these masked and mischievous native mammals.

➡️A Nicoya coati drum

➡️An Inca coati!

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COATI WEBZIBIT NAVIGATION:

➡️MAIN PAGE

➡️INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS A COATI?

➡️COATIS IN INDIGENOUS AMERICAN MATERIAL AND VISUAL CULTURE

➡️COATIS IN EARLY MODERN EUROPEAN MENAGERIES

➡️REFERENCES

➡️APPENDIX: COATI HISTORICAL NATURAL HISTORY ART & SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATION (16TH-EARLY 20TH CENTURIES) IMAGE BANK

➡️COATIS IN MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART coming soon!