Unknown Mexico Part 7

I saw several small, shallow caves, and learned that many of them were utilised by the Pimas during the wet season. I also pa.s.sed a rock-shelter, which served as a permanent home. The housewife was busy making straw hats. She was very shy, as her husband was away; but I elicited the information that she gets two reales (25 cents) for each hat. The making of straw hats and mats is quite an industry among the Pimas. In the houses they have a cellar-like dug-out outside of the dwelling and covered with a conical roof of dry gra.s.s. These cellars, in many cases, serve not only as the work-rooms, but also as store-rooms for their stock in trade.

In one or two instances I found Pima families living in open inclosures, a kind of corral, made from cut-down brushwood. I noticed two small caves that had been transformed into storehouses, by planting poles along the edge and plastering these over with mud, to make a solid wall, behind which corn was stored.

In Yepachic I estimated there were about twenty Pima families. I had some difficulty in inducing them to pose before the camera; the presidente himself was afraid of the instrument, thinking it was a diabolo (devil).

There are probably not more than sixty Pima families within the State of Chihuahua, unless there are more than I think near Dolores. Some twenty-odd families of these live in caves during the wet season, and a few of them are permanent cave-dwellers. I understand that the Pimas in Sonora utilise caves in the same way.

I made an excursion from the mine of Pinos Altos (elevation 7,100 feet) to Rio Moris, about ten miles west, where there are some burial caves; but they had already been much disturbed by treasure seekers, and I could secure only a couple of skulls. An interesting feature of the landscape near Rio Moris is a row of large reddish pinnacles, which rise perpendicularly from the river-bed up along the hillside, and form a truly imposing spectacle. An excited imagination may see in them so many giants suddenly petrified while walking up the mountain. Around Pinos Altos and Jesus Maria the rock is of blue porphyry, quite hard in places, and speckled with little white patches. It is in this rock that the gold- and silver-bearing quartz occurs.

Through the courtesy of the bullion-convoy I was enabled to dispatch some of my collections via Chihuahua to the museum at New York, among other things eight fine specimens of the giant woodp.e.c.k.e.r.

Then, sending my train ahead, I made with a guide a little detour to visit the beautiful waterfall near Jesus Maria. It is formed by the River Basasiachic, which, except during the wet season, is small and insignificant. Before the fall the stream for more than a hundred yards runs in a narrow but deep channel, which in the course of ages it has worn into the hard conglomerate rock. The channel itself is full of erosions and hollowed-out places formed by the constant grinding and milling action of the rapidly rushing water, and the many large pebbles it carries. Just at the very brink of the rock, a low natural arch has been eroded, and over this the stream leaps almost perpendicularly into the deep straight-walled canon below. The height of the cascade has been measured by a mining expert at Pinos Altos, and found to be 980 feet. Set in the most picturesque, n.o.ble environments, the fall is certainly worth a visit.

I arrived at its head just as the last rays of the setting sun were gilding the tops of the mountains all around. The scenery was beautiful beyond description. Above and around towered silent, solemn old pine-trees, while: the chasm deep down was suffused with a purple glow. About midway down the water turns into spray and reaches the bottom as silently as an evening shower, but as it recovers itself forms numerous whirlpools and rapids, rushing through the narrow gorge with an incessant roar. When the river is full, during the wet season, the cascade must present a splendid sight.

I wanted to see the fall from below. The guide, an elderly man, reminded me that the sun was setting, and warned me that the distance was greater than it seemed. We should stumble and fall, he said, in the dark. But as I insisted on going, he put me on the track, and I started on a rapid run, jumping from stone to stone, zigzagging my way down the mountainside. The entire scenery, the wild, precipitous rocks, the stony, crooked path, the roaring stream below--everything reminded me of mountains in Norway, where I had run along many a _sater_ path through the twilight, alone, just as I was running now.

As luck would have it, I met an Indian boy coming up from the river, Where he had been trout fishing, and I asked him to accompany me, which he did. About half-way down we arrived at a little promontory from which the fall could be seen very well. The rock seemed to be here the same as on top, showing no sign of stratification. A few yards from the point we had reached was a spring, and here we made a fire and waited for the moon to rise. To make him more talkative, I gave the boy a cigarette. He spoke only Spanish, and he told me that he had neither father nor mother, and when his uncle died he was quite alone in the world; but a Mexican family brought him up, and he seemed to have been treated well. At present he was paying two dollars a month for his board, earning the money by selling gra.s.s in Pinos Altos.

At nine o'clock we began to ascend through the moonlit landscape. I had left my mule some hundred yards from the fall, and here I also found the guide. At two o'clock in the morning I arrived at my camp.

The road continued through rather monotonous country, the alt.i.tude varying from 6,300 to 7,700 feet. Gra.s.s began to be scarce, and the animals suffered accordingly. It is the custom with Mexican muleteers to select from among themselves a few, whose business throughout the journey it is to guard the animals at night. These men, immediately after having had their supper, drive the animals to a place where suitable pasture is found, never very far from the camp, and bring them back in the morning. They const.i.tute what is called la sabana. Comparatively few men suffice for this duty, even with a large herd, as long as they have with them a leader of the mules, a mare, preferably a white one. She may be taken along solely for this purpose, as she is often too old for any other work. The mules not infrequently show something like a fanatic attachment for their yegua, and follow blindly where they hear the tinkling of the bell, which is invariably attached to her neck. She leads the pack-train, and where she stops the mules gather around her while waiting for the men to come and relieve them of their burdens. Sometimes a horse may serve as a leader, but a mare is surer of gaining the affection of all the mules in the train. This is an important fact for travellers to bear in mind if they use mules at all. In daytime the train will move smoothly, all the mules, of their own accord, following their leader, and at night keeping close to her. In this way she prevents them from scattering and becomes indispensable to the train.

But in spite of the vigilance of the sabana and the advantage of a good yegua, it may happen, under favourable topographical and weather conditions, that robbers succeed in driving animals away. While giving the pack-train a much-needed rest of a day in a gra.s.sy spot, we woke next morning to find five of our animals missing. As three of the lot were the property of my men, they were most eagerly looked for. The track led up a steep ridge, over very rough country, which the Mexicans followed, however, until it suddenly ran up against a mountain wall; and there the mules were found in something like a natural corral.

Not until then did our guide inform me that there lived at Calaveras (skulls), only three miles from where we were stopping, a band of seven robbers and their chief, Pedro Chaparro, who was at that time well-known throughout this part of the Tarahumare country. I had no further experience with him, but later heard much of this man, who was one of a type now rapidly disappearing in Mexico. He did not confine his exploits to the Mexicans, but victimised also the Indians whenever he got an opportunity, and there are many stories in circulation about him.

On one occasion he masqueraded as a padre, a black mackintosh serving as his priestly garb. Thus attired he went to the unsophisticated Tarahumares in the more remote valleys and made them send out messengers to advise the people that he had come to baptise them, and that they were all to gather at a certain place to receive his blessings. For each baptism he charged one goat, and by the time he thought it wise to retire he had quite a respectable herd to drive home. When the Indians found out that they had been swindled, they caught him and put him into jail, intending to kill him; but unfortunately some of his Mexican confreres heard of his plight and came to his rescue. However, a few years later, this notorious highwayman, who had several murders to answer for, was caught by the government authorities and shot.

On the road, as we travelled on, we met many Tarahumares carrying on their backs trays (_huacales_) with apples, which they were taking to market. The price per tray was $2, and the apples were delicious.

At night it was very cold, the thermometer falling to 13 below the freezing point. I was sorry to learn from my men that the prospects of gra.s.s further south were small.

At the village of Bocoyna (elevation 7,100 feet) we were 400 miles from San Diego by the track we had made. Bocoyna is a corruption of the Tarahumare Ocoina (oco = pine; ina = drips; meaning Dripping Pine, or Turpentine). Here I had to stop for two days, because no less than six of us, including myself, were suffering from the grippe, which a piercing, dry, cold wind did not tend to alleviate. However, as the worst cases did not last more than five days, we soon were all well again, though the Mexicans were almost overcome by the effects of the disease.

The presidente here was a powerful-looking half-caste and very original. After I had read to him twice my letter from the governor of the state, in which the people were told, among other things, to promote the success of the expedition in every way, especially by selling us what provisions we needed and not to overcharge us, he, by way of obeying the orders of his superior, immediately ordered that not more than $6 should be charged for a fanega of corn. He also had at once four nice, fat hens killed and sold them to us at the market price.

After we pa.s.sed Bocoyna, the country for ten miles was flat, but fertile. It was gratifying to observe that here the Indians had some ranches with considerable land still left to them. We pa.s.sed several such homesteads lying close together, and as many as four yokes of oxen were ploughing, each attended by a Tarahumare, whose entire clothing consisted of a breech-cloth. The Indians here are very numerous and they are still struggling to resist the encroachments of the whites upon their land, though the ultimate result is in all cases the same.

Chapter VII

The Uncontaminated Tarahumares--A Tarahumare Court in Session--The Power of the Staff--Justice has its Course--Barrancas--Excursion to the Gentiles--Tarahumare Costumes Simple and Inexpensive--Trincheras in Use Among the Tarahumares.

We were lucky enough to secure a guide who, spoke the Tarahumare language very well, and our next stop was at the pueblo of Cusarare (a Spanish corruption of Usarare, usaka = eagle), an Indian village situated in a rather rough country full of weathered porphyry rocks. We made camp a few miles outside of the village and sent the guide to prepare the people for our coming. There had recently been considerable talk among the Mexicans of the wild people in the deep gorges, called barrancas, and it was with no little antic.i.p.ation that I approached the country now immediately before us. There were no Mexicans living in Cusarare, nor in the country ahead of us; in fact, with the exception of the small mining camp in Barranca de Cobre, there were none within fifty miles to the south, and almost an equal distance from east to west.

Indian pueblos throughout Mexico are almost abandoned for the greater part of the year. I refer, of course, only to those which have not yet become Mexican settlements. The first thing the missionaries in the early times had to do was to force the Indians to leave their scattered ranches and form a pueblo. To make a place a pueblo they had to build a church. The Indians were pressed into service to erect the building, and kept at work, if necessary, by a troop of soldiers who often accompanied the missionaries and in this way a.s.sisted them in spreading the gospel.

From the missionaries' point of view this was a very practical arrangement; but the purpose of having the Indians remain in the villages has not been accomplished to this day. Only the native-chosen authorities, who are obliged to reside there during their term of office, form something like a permanent population in the pueblos. The natives come together only on the occasion of feasts, and on Sundays, to worship in the way they understand it. Someone who knows the short prayer, generally the gobernador, mumbles it, while the congregation cross themselves from time to time. If no one present knows the prayer, the Indians stand for a while silently, then cross themselves, and the service is over.

After church they meet outside for the second purpose that brings them to the village, namely, the transaction of whatever judicial business may be on hand, generally the adjustment of a theft, a marriage, etc.

I arrived in the pueblo on a Sunday, and a great many Indians had come in. Easter was approaching, and every Sunday during Lent, according to early missionaries' custom, the so-called "Pharisees" make their appearance. These are men who play an important part in the Easter festival, which always lasts several days. They paint their faces hideously, tog themselves up with feathers on their sombreros, and carry wooden swords painted with red figures. Such ceremonies were a clever device of the Jesuits and Franciscan missionaries to wean the Indians from their native feasts by offering them something equally attractive in the new religion they were teaching. The feasts are still observed, while the teachings are forgotten.

I found the people a.s.sembled before the old adobe church, where they had just finished their service. The gobernador at once attracted my attention as he stood with his large white blanket wrapped around him, Indian fashion, up to his chin--a fine, almost n.o.ble personality, with a benign expression on his eagle face.

The Indian never allows anything to interfere with whatever business he may have on hand, be it public or private. Presently all rose, and eight men, the authorities of the pueblo, marched in two rows to the court house, followed by the rest of the people. There is always found near the church a commodious building, called La Comunidad, originally intended as city hall, court house, and hotel. In this case it was so dilapidated that the judges and officers of the court about to be held took seats outside on the lawn in front of one of the walls. They were preparing to administer justice to a couple of offenders, and as this is the only occasion on which I have seen the details of Indian judicial procedure carried out so minutely as to suggest early missionary times, I am happy to record the affair here in full.

The gobernador and four of the judges seated themselves, white man's fashion, on a bench erected for the purpose, where they looked more grand than comfortable. Two of them held in their right hands canes of red Brazil wood, the symbol of their dignity. The idea of the staff of command, sceptre, or wand, is wide spread among the Indians of Mexico; therefore, when the Spaniards conquered the various tribes, they had little difficulty in introducing their batons (_la vara_), as emblems of authority, which to this day are used by the gobernadors and other officials. They are made much in the same way as the ancient staffs, and of the same material, the heavy, red Brazil wood. Below the head of these canes there is always a hole bored, and through this a leather thong is pa.s.sed, by which the staff is hung up on the wall when not in use. Those of the highest authorities are ornamented with silver caps; the lesser officers have smaller canes, in proportion to the degrees of their dignity, while the lowest officials have only a thin stick, about a foot and a half long, through the hole of which a red ribbon is pa.s.sed. The small canes are not carried in the hand, but stuck in the girdle on the left side. n.o.body summoned before the judges by a messenger carrying a staff of red Brazil wood dares to disobey the command. The most desperate criminal meekly goes to his doom, following often a mere boy, if the latter has only a toy vara stuck in his belt with the red ribbons hanging down. It is the vara the Indians respect, not the man who carries it.

No supreme court in any civilised community is so highly respected and so implicitly obeyed as were the simple, grave men sitting in front of the crumbling adobe wall and holding on to their canes with a solemnity that would have been ridiculous, if it had not been sublime.

Four "soldiers" formed a line on each side. There was nothing to distinguish them from ordinary civilians, except their "lances,"

or bamboo sticks to which bayonet points had been fastened. These lances they planted in the ground and seated themselves. Presently the two culprits, a man and a woman, came forward, with never a suggestion in their placid faces that they were the chief actors in the drama about to be enacted. They seated themselves in front of the judges, while the witnesses took their places behind them. The mother of the woman sat close by her guilty daughter, but there was no other exhibition of sentiment. The judges did most of the talking, addressing questions to the defendants, who made a few short answers; the rest of the a.s.semblage observed a decorous silence. There were neither clerks nor lawyers.

I was, of course, not able to follow the testimony, but it was very short, and it was explained to me that the woman had run away with a married man. They had provided themselves with plenty of corn from the man's former home, and furthermore had stolen some beans, and lived very happy in a cave for a year. The man could not be captured, even though on several occasions he visited his family. But they frequently made native beer, and got drunk, and while in this condition they were caught and brought before this tribunal.

While the trial was going on, one of the "soldiers" got up and went some twenty yards off, dug a hole in the ground and planted a thick pole or post in it. No sooner had he completed his task, when the accused man rose with a queer smile on his face, half chagrined, half sarcastic.. Dropping his blanket, he walked deliberately up to the pole, flanked by two soldiers, each of whom took hold of his hands, and by putting them crosswise on the further side of the pole, made the culprit hug the pole very tightly. Now another man, wrapped closely in his blanket, stepped briskly up, drew as quick as a flash a leather whip from under his garment, and dealt four lashes over the shoulders of the prisoner, who was then released, and stolidly walked back to his seat, as if nothing had happened.

Now came the woman's turn to be punished for her part in the thefts. They took off her blanket, but left on a little white undergarment. She was marched to the pole and held in the same manner as the man; but another man acted as executioner. She, too, received four lashes, and wept a little when they struck her; but neither she nor her fellow-sufferer made any attempt at, or sign of, revolt against the sentence of the court. While the chastising went on, the audience rose and stood reverently. After returning to her seat, the woman knelt down, and both delinquents shook hands with the chief judge.

There still remained the second part of the accusation to be dealt with, the one relating to the marital complications. The man asked permission to leave his first wife, as he wanted to marry the woman with whom he ran away. But no divorce was granted to him. He was ordered to return to his legitimate spouse, who was present at the proceedings with her child in her arms. Evidently disappointed, he slowly stepped over to where she was standing and greeting him with a happy smile.

But the woman with whom he had been living had now to be provided with another husband. Who would take her? The judge addressed the question to a young man, a mere boy, standing near by, and he replied that he would marry her, if she were willing. She said yes, so he sat down beside her. Their hands were placed together, the gobernador said a few admonishing words to them, and they rose, man and wife, duly married. How was this for rapid transit to matrimonial bliss?

The next day the guide took us up along some higher ridges, and after ten or twelve miles of slow ascent, we arrived at the summit of Barranca de Cobre, where we made a comfortable camp about half a mile back of the point at which the track descends into the canon. Here we had an inspiring view; deep gorges and ravines, the result of prolonged weathering and erosion, gashing the country and forming high ridges, especially toward the south and west. In other words, here we observed for the first time barrancas, which from now on form an exceedingly characteristic feature of the topography of the Sierra Madre. These precipitous abysses, which traverse the mighty ma.s.s of the sierra like huge cracks, run, as far as Sierra Madre del Norte is concerned, mainly from east to west. In the country of the Tarahumare, that is to say, the State of Chihuahua, there are three very large barrancas. They are designated as Barranca de Cobre, Barranca de Batopilas, and Barranca de San Carlos. The Sierra Madre del Norte runs at an alt.i.tude of from 7,000 to 8,000 feet, at some points reaching even as high as 9,000 feet. It rises so gradually in the east, for instance, when entered from the direction of the city of Chihuahua, that one is surprised to be suddenly almost on top of it. The western side, however, falls off more or less abruptly, and presents the appearance of a towering, ragged wall. In accordance with this general trait of the mountain system, the beginnings of the barrancas in the east are generally slight, but they quickly grow deeper, and before they disappear in the lowlands of Sinaloa they sometimes reach a depth of from 4,000 to 5,000 feet. Of course, they do not continue equally narrow throughout their entire length, but open up gradually and become wider and less steep.

Besides these large barrancas, which impede the traveller in the highlands and necessitate a course toward the east, there are innumerable smaller ones, especially in the western part of the range, where large portions of the country are broken up into a ma.s.s of stupendous, rock-walled ridges and all but bottomless chasms. A river generally flows in the barrancas between narrow banks, which occasionally disappear alltogether, leaving the water to rush between abruptly ascending mountain sides.

As far as the first of the large barrancas was concerned, near the top of which we were standing, we could for some little distance follow its windings toward the west, and its several tributaries could be made out in the landscape by the contours of the ridges. Barranca de Cobre is known in its course by different names. Near the mine of Urique (the Tarahumare word for barranca), it is called Barranca de Urique, and here its yawning chasm is over 4,000 feet deep. Even the intrepid Jesuit missionaries at first gave up the idea of descending into it, and the Indians told them that only the birds knew how deep it was. The traveller as he stands at the edge of such gaps wonders whether it is possible to get across them. They can in a few places be crossed, even with animals if these are lightly loaded, but it is a task hard upon flesh and blood.

It was in these barrancas, that I was to find the gentile (pagan) Indians I was so anxious to meet. From where I stood looking at it the country seemed forgotten, lonely, untouched by human hand. Shrubs and trees were clinging to the rocky brows of the barrancas, and vegetation, could be seen wherever there was sufficient earth on the mountain and the sides of the ravines; but, on the whole, the country looked rather barren and lifeless.

Still, it did not take us long to find traces of human beings. Our tents were pitched on an old trinchera. Cut deep into a rough ledge not far off was the rough carving of a serpent, sixty feet long, that must have been left here by a race antecedent to the Tarahumares. And a little further off we came upon the ruins of a modern Tarahumare house. It seems as if the Indians must extract a living out of the rocks and stones; though when we got down into the barranca and into the ravines we came upon patches of land that could be cultivated; and there were some small areas of pasture, although extremely precipitous.

The first thing to do was to despatch the guide into the valleys and gorges below, which from our camping place could not be seen, only surmised, that he might persuade some Tarahumares to act as carriers on an excursion I contemplated making through the region. In a couple of days a party was made up, consisting, besides myself, of Mr. Taylor, the guide, two Mexicans, and five Tarahumares with their gobernador. Bundles weighing from forty to seventy-five pounds were placed on the backs of the Indians and the Mexicans; even the guide took a small pack, though it would have been beneath the dignity of the gobernador to take a load upon himself. But his company was valuable on account of his great influence with his people.

It was an exceedingly interesting excursion of several days'

duration. Owing to the presence of the gobernador the Indians received us well. n.o.body ran away, though all were extremely shy and bashful, and the women turned their backs towards us. But after a while they would offer us beans from a pot cooking over the fire. They served them in earthenware bowls with a couple of tortillas (corn cakes). In another vessel, which they pa.s.sed around among us, they offered the flavouring, coa.r.s.e salt and some small chile (Spanish peppers), which vegetable is cultivated and much relished by the Tarahumares.

But the most interesting dish was iskiate, which I now tasted for the first time. It is made from toasted corn, which is mixed with water while being ground on the metate until it a.s.sumes the consistency of a thick soup. Owing to certain fresh herbs that are often added to the corn, it may be of a greenish color, but it is always cool and tempting. After having tramped for several days over many miles of exceedingly rough country, I arrived late one afternoon at a cave where a woman was just making this drink. I was very tired and at a loss how to climb the mountain-side to my camp, some 2,000 feet above; but after having satisfied my hunger and thirst with some iskiate, offered by the hospitable Indians, I at once felt new strength, and, to my own astonishment, climbed the great height without much effort. After this I always found iskiate a friend in need, so strengthening and refreshing that I may almost claim it as a discovery, interesting to mountain climbers and others exposed to great physical exertions. The preparation does not, however, agree with a sedentary life, as it is rather indigestible.

The dress of the Tarahumare is always very scanty, even where he comes in contact with the whites. One may see the Indians in the mining camps, and even in the streets of the city of Chihuahua, walking about naked, except for a breech-cloth of coa.r.s.e, home-spun woollen material, held up around the waist with a girdle woven in characteristic designs. Some may supplement this national costume with a tunic, or short poncho; and it is only right to add that most of the men are provided with well-made blankets, which their women weave for them, and in which they wrap themselves when they go to feasts and dances. The hair, when not worn loose, is held together with a home-woven ribbon, or a piece of cotton cloth rolled into a band; or with a strip of palm leaf. Often men and women gather the hair in the back of the head, and men may also make a braid of it.