The notion that the social being of men was made by the public recognition of an unfolding destiny was widespread among Amerindians. Transformations in appearance transformed the social being. The Mexica spoke of the ‘apparel’ laid out by the sacred powers for the yet unborn child, which with time and fortune he would win as his own. The formulation of ‘face’ had to do with the public award of socially ratified signs of changes in status, and the pride taken in the new image of the public self: when the young lad's nape lock was shorn, so making him a warrior, he was said to have ‘taken another face’. Thus the award and adornings with specified garments and insignia could be interpreted as the actualization of an always immanent destiny.

The actualization was not irreversible. What was made could be unmade. The first markings in the flesh which declared one male or female were fixed, but all later markings, like those identifying occupation and rank, were not. We have seen the violent unmaking visited on the warrior or the priest when their peers judged them no longer worthy of their rank. ‘Faces’, sufficiently hard to win, were harder to maintain, and impossible to defend: if honours could be won only by individual action, the individual was helpless to act when those honours were threatened or attacked.