Arrival at Batopilas--Ascent from Batopilas to the Highlands of the
Sierra--A Tarahumare who had been in Chicago--An Old-timer--Flight
of Our Native Guide and its Disastrous Consequences--Indians
Burn the Grass All Over the Country--Travelling Becomes too
Difficult for the Animals--Mr. Taylor and I Go to Zapuri--Its
Surroundings--The Pithaya in Season.
We continued our way toward the south, crossing Barranca de Cobre
where it is 3,300 feet deep. The track we followed was fairly good,
but led along several dangerous precipices, over which two burros
rolled and were killed. The highest point we reached on the track over
the highlands south of the barranca was 8,300 feet. There seemed to
be a divide here, the climate being cool and moist, and the farthest
ranges toward the south and west enveloped in mist and fog. Although
Barranca de Batopilas is not as narrow and impressive as the barranca
we had just left, still the mighty gap, as we looked into its hazy
bottom from the highlands, presented an imposing, awe-inspiring sight.
Following the windings of the well-laid-out road we descended into the
canon and made camp a few miles this side of the town of Batopilas. The
silver mines here, which are old and famous, were discovered in the
seventeenth century. I was cordially received by Mr. A. R. Shepherd,
the well-known mining expert, whose courtesy and kindness were much
appreciated by the members of the expedition.
My recent experience had convinced me that the only way to study
the natives properly was to live among them for a length of time,
and as such a thing was out of the question with so large a party
as I still had with me, I made up my mind to discharge as soon as
possible everybody and to remain alone.
The country was now suffering from a relentlessly scorching sun. The
heat increased as the wet season approached, and, as the animals were
getting weaker and weaker, I disposed here of about half of them, and
the number of attendants and the amount of baggage were correspondingly
reduced. On continuing the journey with the weak and hungry mules,
we found the ascent of the southern side of Barranca de Batopilas
quite laborious; but on the crest we enjoyed the fresh breeze, the
more gratefully after the enervating heat in the bottom of the canon.
Thus we arrived at the village of Yoquibo (yoki = bluebird; ivo =
mesa: bluebird on the mesa). Here I had to stop for a few days to
reconnoitre the road. I was told that the grass had been burned
by the Indians almost as far as the ranches of Guachochic, our
main objective point. The Indians at that time (May) always burn
the grass, and the entire country is wrapped in smoke. This, they
think, is necessary to produce rain; smoke-clouds and rain-clouds,
in their opinion, bringing about the same ultimate result. But it is
exceedingly trying for travellers, man and beast. Only by accident is
some little spot of grass spared here and there, and progress becomes
almost an impossibility.
Immediately upon our arrival I went to see the gobernador, and,
strange to say, I found him engaged in teaching his young wife how
to weave. Three months ago his first wife had died of smallpox. Old
bachelors and widowers have a hard time in getting wives, because
the Tarahumare belles have a decided preference for young men. But
the wifeless Indian feels very unhappy, as it means that he has to
do all the woman's housework, which is very laborious, and therefore
thoroughly distasteful to him. By way of fascinating this young girl,
the gobernador had to exert himself to the extent of teaching her
how to make girdles and wearing apparel.
The next day this gentleman returned my call, carrying his bow
and arrows. I had already learned in Batopilas that the party of
Indians who, about two years ago, had been exhibited by a now deceased
traveller as representative cave-dwellers, had been gathered mainly in
the neighbourhood of Yoquibo. My visitor had been one of the troupe,
and I was eager to find out what impression the civilised world had
made on this child of nature, who had never known anything but his
woods and his mountains. Therefore, almost my first question was,
"How did you like Chicago?" "It looks very much like here," was the
unexpected reply. What most impressed him, it seemed, was neither the
size of the city nor its sky-scrapers, though he remembered these,
but the big water near which those people dwelt. He had liked riding
in the railroad cars, but complained that he had not had enough to
eat on the journey.
His experience on the trip had familiarised him with the white man
and his queer, incomprehensible ways, and made him something of a
philosopher. I wanted him to accompany me on my visits to the few
houses here, as the people were very shy and timid. Although he was
very much engaged, as I could see, having to look after his animals
as well as his wife, he obligingly went with me to two houses. We
saw a woman with twins; one of them a miserable-looking specimen,
suffering from lack of food.
There were also some cave-dwellings near Yoquibo, one or two of
which were occupied. In the afternoon, when I went out alone, the
people all disappeared the moment they saw me approaching, except one
group of strangers who had come to beg and did not pay any attention
to me. They were too busily engaged in making ready for the pot a
certain kind of larvae, by extracting them from the cocoon, a small
white sac of silky texture found on the strawberry tree.
The guide told me that Indians like these, who beg for food, always
return, to those who give them alms, the amount of the gift, as soon
as their circumstances allow.
Here in Yoquibo I met one of those Mexican adventurers who under
one pretext or another manage to get into the Indian villages and
cannot be routed out again. Certain of them ply some little trade,
generally that of a blacksmith, others act as "secretaries," writing
what few communications the Indians may have to send to the government
authorities; some conduct a little barter trade, exchanging cheap
cotton cloth, beads, etc., for sheep and cattle; but most of them
supply the Indians with Mexican brandy, mescal. The one in Yoquibo had
established himself in the only room left intact in the old dilapidated
vicarage, and eked out a living by selling mescal to the Indians.
This fellow's appearance, especially his unsteady, lurking eyes,
suggested the bandit. No doubt, like most of his class, he was
in hiding from the government authorities. He was something of a
hypochondriac, and among other ailments he thought he had an animal
in his stomach, which he got in there by way of a knife-stab he
had received some time ago. When he came to me to get some remedy,
he carried a rather fine rifle, and in spite of all his suffering,
real or imaginary, the bandit nature asserted itself, when I made
some complimentary remark regarding his weapon. His half-closed eyes
slurred in a crafty, guileful manner from side to side as he drawled:
"_Despues de Dios, mi rifle!"_ ("Next to God, my rifle!")
After considerable looking about, I at last found an Indian willing
to act as guide for the next stage of our journey. He was an elderly
man, and at dusk he was quietly sitting near the camp fire, eating
his supper, when the tall figure of Mr. Hartman appeared on the scene,
wrapped in a military overcoat. He probably looked to the Indian very
martial and threatening as he approached through the twilight. At any
rate, his appearance had a most unexpected effect on our guide. I
suddenly heard a noise behind me, and on looking around, I saw him
running as fast as his legs would carry him, leaving his supper,
dropping his blanket, splashing through the creek and disappearing in
the night, never to be seen again by us. He imagined that a soldier
was coming to seize and kill him; that the meat-pot in which he
was to be cooked was already on the fire, while the skulls of other
unfortunates that had been eaten were lying in a heap near one of the
tents. He alluded apparently to four skulls which I had taken out of
an ancient burial cave. In explanation I will say that some time ago
he had been arrested for some crime and had broken away from jail;
soldiers, or rather, the police, were after him, and he mistook
Mr. Hartman for one of his pursuers and ran for safety.
The incident proved somewhat unfortunate for us. In consequence
of the wild stories he told about us, the Indians, of a suspicious
nature anyway, sent messengers all over the sierra, warning the people
against the man-eaters that were coming. Our strange proceedings in
Cusarare, namely, the photographing, had already been reported and
made the Indians uneasy. The terrible experience of our runaway guide
seemed to confirm their wildest apprehensions, and the alarm spread
like wildfire, growing in terror, like an avalanche, the farther it
went. We found the ranches deserted on every hand, women and children
hiding and screaming whenever they caught a glimpse of us. At every
turn our progress was impeded. Wherever I came I was abhorred as
the man who subsisted on babies and green corn, and the prospect
of my ever gaining the confidence of the Indians was exceedingly
discouraging for the next four or five months.
Though it was impossible to secure a new guide, I still made a start
next day, following a fairly good track which leads south toward
Guachochic. Yet further obstacles presented themselves. The animals
began to give out. It was the season of the year when they change their
coats, and are in poor condition even under the best circumstances,
and mine were exhausted from lack of food. They would not eat the dry
grass, and the green pasture was still too scanty to suffice for their
maintenance. The information that the natives had burned all the grass
proved correct to its fullest extent, so there was nothing for me to
do but to establish a camp, scarcely a day's journey off, at Tasajisa,
where there was some pasture along the ridges that had as yet escaped
the fire of the Indians. Leaving the larger part of my outfit and
about half of my mules in charge of my chief packer, Mr. Taylor and
I continued the journey with the best and strongest of the animals,
making a circuitous tour to the little mining town of Zapuri, in the
neighbourhood of which were some caves I wanted to investigate.
After a day's journey we turned westward and got beyond the range
of the fires. Turkeys were seen close to our camp and appeared
plentiful; I also saw a giant woodpecker, but just as I got ready
to shoot, it flew away with a great whirr of its wings. We soon
began to descend, and after a long and fatiguing day's travel over
cordons and sierras, and through a wide barranca surrounded by
magnificent towering mountains, we arrived, late in the afternoon,
at Zapuri. The superintendent of the mine, to whom I brought a letter
of introduction from the owner of the property, received us with
cordial hospitality. Here the climate was splendid; the nights were
just pleasantly cool, the mornings deliciously calm; they were all
the more enjoyed after the windy weather of the sierra.
Immediately upon my arrival here I had a chance, through the courtesy
of the superintendent, to secure a Mexican and some strong mules,
which took Mr. Taylor over to Parral on his way back to the United
States. Mr. Hartman remained with the expedition two months longer,
to join me again the following year for a few months. I also got a
guide for myself and made an excursion to the caves in the neighbouring
barrancas. After we had gone some ten miles over very bad roads, we
came to the home of an old Tarahumare woman, who was reputed to be very
rich. Knowing Mexican exaggeration in this regard, I computed that the
twelve bushels of pesos she was supposed to have hidden might amount,
perhaps, to $50 or $100 Mexican money. Whatever her wealth was, she
showed it only in a lavish display of glass beads around her scrawny
neck; they must have weighed at least six or eight pounds. But then,
her homestead was composed mainly of four or five substantial circular
store-houses.
The wealth of the Tarahumare consists in his cattle. He is well
off when he has three or four head of cattle and a dozen sheep and
goats. There is one instance where a man had as many as forty head
of cattle, but this was a rare exception. They rarely keep horses,
and never pigs, which destroy their cornfields; and are believed,
besides, to be Spaniards (_Gachupines_). Pork, though sometimes eaten,
is never sacrificed. No tame turkeys are kept, but occasionally the
people have some hens, and in rare cases a family may keep a turtle
dove or a tame quail. When a man has oxen, he is able to plough a
large piece of land and raise enough corn to sell some. But corn is
seldom converted into money.
Here we packed the most necessary things on our best mule, and with
the guide and two Indians, who carried bundles, we descended to the
river. The road was fairly good, but as we approached the river we
came to several bad places. In one of these the mule's aparejo struck
a rock, which caused the animal to lose its foothold. Unresistingly
it slid down the steep slope for about seven yards and came against a
tree, forefeet on one side, hindfeet on the other. The boy who led it,
eager to do something, managed to get the halter off, so that there
was nothing by which to hold the animal except its ears. I held fast
to one of these, steadying myself on the loose soil by grabbing a root
sticking out of the ground. The intelligent animal lay perfectly still
over the trunk. Finally I managed to get out my bowie-knife and cut
the ropes off the pack, which rolled down the hill, while the mule,
relieved of its bulky burden, scrambled to its feet and climbed up. It
was born and bred in the barranca, otherwise it would never have been
able to accomplish this feat.
Toward evening we arrived at the section of a barranca called Ohuivo
(Ovi = return, or "the place to which they returned") on the Rio
Fuerte. The Indians here, although many of them have been affected
by the nearness of the mines, are reticent and distrustful, and our
guide evidently had not much influence with them. They refused to
be photographed, and even the gobernador ran away from the terrible
ordeal.
During the several days I remained in this valley the heat never
varied from 100 deg., day and night, which was rather trying and made
doing anything an exertion. The country looked scorched, except for
the evergreen cacti, the most prominent of which was the towering
pithaya. Its dark-green branches stand immovable to wind and storm. It
has the best wild fruit growing in the north-western part of Mexico,
and as this was just the season when it ripens, the Indians from all
around had come to gather it. It is as large as an egg and its flesh
soft, sweet, and nourishing. As the plant grows to a height of twenty
to thirty-five feet, the Indians get the fruit down with a long reed,
one end of which has four prongs, and gather it in little crates of
split bamboo, which they carry by straps on their backs. It is a sight
to see men, women, and children start out gaily at daybreak, armed
with slender sticks, climbing rugged heights with grace and agility,
to get the pithaya, which tastes better when plucked at dawn, fresh
and cool, than when gathered during the heat of the day. The fruit,
which lasts about a month, comes when it is most needed, at the height
of the dry season (June), when the people have a regular feasting-time
of it. Mexicans also appreciate the pithaya, and servants frequently
abscond at that time, in order to get the fruit. The beautiful white
flowers of the plant are never found growing on the north side of
the stem.
With the Indians, the pithaya enters, of course, into religion,
and the beautiful macaw (guacamaya), which revels in the fruit,
is associated with it in their beliefs. The bird arrives from its
migration to southern latitudes when the pithaya is in bloom, and
the Indians think that it comes to see whether there will be much
fruit; then it flies off again to the coast, to return in June,
when the fruit is ripe. The following gives the trend of one of the
guacamaya songs: "The pithaya is ripe, let us go and get it. Cut off
the reeds! [4] The guacamaya comes from the Tierra Caliente to eat
the first fruits. From far away, from the hot country, I come when
the men are cutting the reeds, and I eat the first fruits. Why do
you wish to take the first fruits from me? They are my fruits. I eat
the fruit, and I throw away the skin. I get filled with the fruit,
and I go home singing. Remain behind, little tree, waving as I alight
from you! I am going to fly in the wind, and some day I will return
and eat your pithayas, little tree!"