CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA--IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING CAVE AND CLIFF
DWELLERS--THE TARAHUMARI INDIANS, CIVILIZED AND SAVAGE.
I propose to devote the greater portion of this chapter to a
consideration of the Tarahumari Indians of Central and Southwestern
Chihuahua, a tribe of aborigines that I have occasionally seen
mentioned in works and articles on Mexico (especially its northern
part), but of which I can find no detailed account anywhere in the
literature I possess of this region. The fact of my having been in that
country for some time, seeing and investigating some of their most
curious habitations and customs, coupled with what information I could
get from a few hardy Mexican pioneers in the fastnesses of the great
Sierra Madre range, who corroborate each other, constitutes the basis
of my comments.
Although the Tarahumari tribe of Indians are not at all well known--for
I doubt if many of my readers have ever heard of them--they are,
nevertheless, a very numerous people, and were they in the United
States or Canada, where statistics of even the savages are much better
kept than in Mexico, they would have an almost world-wide reputation.
On account of this utter lack of statistics it is impossible to state
with close approximation the number of Tarahumari Indians in this part
of the country. So I will have to rely on the estimates (really broad
guesses) of those best informed, giving my readers the benefit of my
own researches as a check, although not claiming they will make a very
good one, to the wide range of estimates made by others. In a previous
chapter I spoke of the number of these Indians, but really am inclined,
from all I could learn of them, to estimate their number at twenty
thousand or thereabouts. An Indian tribe of twenty thousand people in
our own country would be heard of often enough in press and public to
become a household word; but the isolation of the Tarahumari Indians
from the beaten lines of travel, and the little interest taken in them
by local and governmental officials (especially the interest which
would make their habitations, habits, and customs known to the world)
have thrown a veil over them both dark and mysterious. Some tribes of
no greater strength in the interior of Africa are better known to us
at home than are these Tarahumaris of the Sierra Madre Mountains of
Mexico. They are now seldom seen in the city of Chihuahua, or even on
the diligence lines radiating to the many western points which draw
their supplies from this town; and it is only when the mule trails to
the deeply hidden mountain mines are taken that they are seen at all.
Still better, if one cuts loose from these too, he will be yet more
likely to find them in all their rugged primitiveness. Those usually
seen by the white traveler to these parts are called civilized, and
live in log huts, tilling a bit of mountain slope, not unlike the lower
classes of Mexico, whom they copy in their departure from established
habits. It is no wonder, therefore, that little has been said about
them more than to mention occasionally where they once lived in a
country now held by a higher civilization.
[Illustration: A CIVILIZED TARAHUMARI HOUSE.]
Even the word "Chihuahua" itself is a Tarahumari word, and was applied
to the site of the present city of Chihuahua; its meaning is "the
place where our best wares were made." The territory lying between
the line of the Mexican Central Railway (which cuts through a small
part of their ancient country) and the Sierra Madres proper, or where
diligences cease to go and all transportation is done on mule-back or
with donkeys, the Tarahumaris have abandoned to invading civilization,
or have obeyed its mandates and become civilized themselves. They are
only found in a primitive state in the Sierra Madres, with the far
greater excess on the eastern slopes of the wide range. Beyond the
Tarahumaris to the west are the Mayo and Yaqui tribes of Indians, on
the rich and level slopes of the Mexican States of Sinaloa and Sonora;
while on the north they come in contact with the omnipresent and widely
feared Apache, whose hand was against everyone and everyone's hand
against him.
Though a peaceful tribe of Indians, as far as their relations with
Mexico have been concerned, they nevertheless were not wanting in the
elements that made them good defenders of their land; and the Apaches,
so dreaded by others, gave the mountainous country of the Tarahumaris
a wide berth when on their raids in this direction. The Tarahumaris,
equally armed, which they seldom were, were more than a match for these
Bedouins of the boundary line between our own country and Mexico. One
who had ever seen a group of the wild Tarahumaris would not credit them
with a warlike or aggressive disposition, or even with much of the
defensive combativeness that is necessary to fight for one's country.
Even the semi-civilized among them are shy and bashful to a point of
childishness that I have never seen elsewhere among Indians or other
savages; and I have lived among nine-tenths of the Indian tribes of the
United States and a great number outside of our domains. Heretofore the
Eskimo of North Hudson Bay I deemed the most modest of savages, but
they are brigands compared with the Tarahumari natives. If they have
the least intimation of a white man's approach, he stands as little
show of seeing them as if they were some timid animal fleeing for life.
A Mexican gentleman who owns a part interest in a rich silver mine in
the great broken Barrancas leading out from the Sierra Madre toward the
Pacific side, or into the States of Sinaloa and Sonora (but who always
reached his mine by way of Chihuahua), told me that he had several
times passed over the mountain trail on mule-back, when with a pack
train, and not seen a single Tarahumari, although the trip occupied a
number of days in their country, and took him where he should have seen
two or three hundred if they had made no effort to escape his notice.
The country thereabouts is well wooded and often heavily timbered, and
the timid native, hearing the clang of the mule shoes on the rough,
rocky trail, will at once retire to the seclusion of the nearest thick
brush, and there wait until the intruder is out of sight.
They do not fly like a flock of quails suddenly surprised by the
hunter, however, for, if caught, they generally stand and stare it
out rather than seem to run from the white man while directly in
his presence; but if the latter is vigilant and keeps his eyes wide
open, he will often see them skulking away among the trees or behind
the rocks as he is approaching their houses, or the caves or cliff
dwellings wherein they abide. Of course, as one would naturally expect,
the more savage Tarahumari natives, or those living in the rocks,
cliffs, and caves, or brush jacals, are much wilder and more timid than
those pretending to adopt the forms and duties of civilization. It
is this peculiarity that has made it so hard to understand or learn
anything about them, and this too in a land where so little interest is
taken in gaining knowledge of the subject.
[Illustration: AN INDIAN HOME BETWEEN ROCK PILLAR AND TREE.]
In my wanderings through this portion of the Sierra Madres (and right
here I might state that on some Mexican maps this portion of the
great range is occasionally labeled as the _Sierra de Tarahumari_,
about the only place we ran across the name) I was more fortunate in
seeing a large number of them engaged in more nearly all the labors
and duties they are known to follow than is usually the case: the
civilized Tarahumari, living in rough stone and adobe houses, with
brush fences around his cultivated fields; and the most savage of the
race, acknowledging none of the Mexican laws or customs, and living
in caves in the rocks or under the huge bowlders, or in cliffs high up
the almost perpendicular faces of the rock, where they probably tend a
few goats and plant their corn on steep slopes, using pointed sticks to
make the holes in the ground into which the grains are deposited.
In appearance the Tarahumari savage is, I think, a little above the
average height of our own Indians in the Southwest. They are well
built, and very muscular, while the skin of the cave and cliff dweller
is of the darkest hue of any American native I have ever seen, being
almost a mixture of the Guinea negro with the average copper-colored
aborigine that we are so accustomed to see in the western parts of the
United States. The civilized Tarahumaris are generally noticeably
lighter in hue. The Mayos and Yaquis on the west, the Apaches to the
north, the Tepehuanes to the south, and the Comanches to the east
are lighter in their complexions than the cave- and cliff-dwelling
Tarahumaris, although they live in much warmer climates than the
latter. There is every opportunity to inspect the skin of the savage
Tarahumari, as they wear only a breechclout and a pair of rawhide
sandals; and if it be a little chilly--as it always is at evening, at
night time, and morning on the elevated plateau land or mountainous
regions of Mexico--they may add a _serape_ of mountain goat's wool over
their naked shoulders. Their faces generally wear a mild, pleasing
expression, and their women are not bad-looking for savages, although
the older women break rapidly in appearance after passing thirty to
thirty-five years, as nearly as I could judge their ages. The savage
branch of the Tarahumaris is of course the more interesting as the most
nearly representing our own Indians of fifty to one hundred years ago,
or before white men came among them. The civilized are not unlike those
we have cultivating the soil in a rude way around the western agencies;
although those of Mexico have no governmental aid such as we so often
and so lavishly pour into the laps of our copper-colored brethren of
the North.
The savage Tarahumari lives generally off all lines of communication,
shunning even the mountain mule trails if he can. His abode is a cave
in the mountain side or under the curving interior of some huge bowlder
on the ground.
The Sierra Madre Mountains, where they live, are extremely picturesque
in their rock formation, giving thousands of shapes I have never see
elsewhere--battlements, towers, turrets, bastions, buttresses and
flying buttresses, great arches and architraves, while everything from
a camel to a saddle can be descried in the many projecting forms. It is
natural that in such formation--a curious blending of limestone pierced
by more recent upheavals of eruptive rock--many caves should be found,
and also that the huge, irregular, granitic and gneissoid bowlders,
left on the ground by the dissolving away of the softer limestone,
should often lie so that their concavities could be taken advantage of
by these earth-burrowing savages.
The first cliff dwellers I saw were on the Bacochic River, the first
day out on mule-back from Carichic. These cliff dwellers had taken a
huge cave in the limestone rock, some seventy-five feet above the water
and almost overhanging the picturesque stream. They had walled up its
outward face nearly to the top, leaving the latter for ventilation
probably, as rain could not beat in over the crest of the butting
cliff. It had but one door, closed by an old torn goat hide, through
which the inhabitants had to crawl, like the Eskimo into their snow
huts or _igloos_, rather than any other form of entrance I can liken
it to. The only person we saw was a "wild man of the woods," who, with
a bow and arrows in his hand and the skin of a wild animal around his
loins for a breechclout, was skulking along the big bowlders near the
foot of the cliff. A dozen determined men inside this cliff dwelling
ought to have kept away an army corps not furnished with artillery,
although I doubt if the occupants hold these caves on account of
their defensive qualities, but rather for their convenience as places
of habitation, needing but little work to make them subserve their
rude and simple wants. My Mexican guide said they would only fly if
we visited them, leaving a little parched corn, a rough _metate_ or
stone for grinding it, an unburned _olla_ to hold their water, and
some skins, and, perchance, worn-out native blankets for bedding; so
I desisted from such a useless trip as getting over to their eyrie to
inspect it.
About three months before my first expedition into Mexico, I saw a
notice going the rounds of the press that living cliff dwellers had
been seen in the San Mateo Mountains of New Mexico, and that as soon
as the snow melted a mounted party would be organized to pursue and
capture them; but I have heard nothing from it, beyond the little
stir created at the time, and which the finding of any living cliff
dwellers anywhere would be likely to create. Yet here are people of
that description, of whom the world seems to have heard nothing. How
many there are of them, as I have already said, it seems hard to tell.
We saw at least five to six hundred scattered around in the fastnesses
of this grand old mountain chain, and could probably have trebled this
if we had been looking for cave and cliff dwellers alone along and
off our line of travel. Let us place them at only three thousand in
strength, and we would have enough to write a huge book upon, giving as
startling developments as one could probably make from the interior of
some wholly unknown continent--in fact more curious; for the public is
somewhat prepared for such a story by the large number of old deserted
cliff dwellings found in Arizona and New Mexico, which have often been
assigned to a people older than the ruins of the Toltec or Aztec races.
That there is some relation between these old cliff dwellers and the
new ones I think more than likely; and I believe that most writers who
have seen both, or rather the ruins of the former and much of the life
of the latter, as I have, would agree with me in this view.
It is pretty clearly settled that the Apaches are Athabascans, and
came from the far north; and it seems not unlikely that they drove
southward or exterminated the northern cliff dwellers, leaving only
these here as representatives, although numerous beyond belief, of
a most curious race generally supposed to be extinct. The Pueblo
Indians, of the same locality, by living in larger communities and
stronger abodes were better able to resist these Indian Northmen,
and consequently some of their towns still exist; but the old cliff
dwellers, like the new ones, could in many cases be cut off from
water by a persistent and aggressive enemy, such as the Apaches must
have been then, when just fresh from their northern excursion. It is
still more probable, however, that they drove them southward until the
retreating cliff dwellers became so powerful by being massed upon
their southern brothers that they could resist further aggression, and
therefore give successful battle to their old foe, as we know they
have been able to do recently when the Apaches were performing such
destructive work in this part of the country.
It is a well-known fact in archæology that a badly defeated people,
driven from their country by a superior force of numbers, and occupying
a new and less desirable tract, will generally reproduce their
habitations, implements of the chase, and all other things which they
may be called upon to construct in a much less perfect manner than
when in their own country; and I found the cave and cliff dwellings of
the wild Tarahumaris in the Sierra Madre Mountains to be in general
less perfect than the cliff dwellings far to the north, as those near
Flagstaff, Ariz., the cave and cliff dwellings in the Mancos Cañon,
and many others I could mention in our own Southwest. Whatever may be
the relation between the dead and departed northern cliff dwellers and
their southern living representatives, it seems to me that it would
well pay some scientist to devote a few years to their thorough study,
as Catlin did so well among the Sioux, Cushing with the Zunis, and many
others I could mention.
All these Tarahumaris, whether civilized to the extent of agriculture,
living in houses, and having the other arts in a crude degree, and
embracing Christianity, or whether in the most savage state, naked to
the skin except rawhide sandals, and living in caves or cliffs, while
still worshiping the sun, and hoping for the return of Montezuma some
day, all are to a great extent independent of the Mexican Government,
much more than are any of the peaceable Indians of the United States
from our own government, unless it be a few almost unknown tribes in
the interior of Alaska. If a Tarahumari commits a crime against, or
does an injury to, a Mexican or foreigner, the Mexican Government
takes notice of it and tries to punish the offender; but between
themselves, except in a few cases of flagrant murder, they can conduct
all administration of justice, as well as other matters, wholly by
officers of their own selection and by their own codes and customs. The
very wild ones--the cliff and cave dwellers--know nothing of Mexican
affairs, and in fact fly from all white people like so many quails
when they approach. The more civilized elect their own chiefs and
obey their executive mandates so well, as a general thing, that there
is really very little reason for the Mexicans to force their officials
upon them, if their only object is a maintenance of peace. Still the
half-wild tribes of some parts of the mountains even war against each
other without asking the Mexican Government yes or no, and conclude
their own treaties as a result of such quarrels on their own basis. I
was informed by Mr. Alberto Mendoza, a perfect master of both Spanish
and English, and an interpreter at one of the big Sierra Madres
silver mines, where there also was employed an excellent Tarahumari
interpreter, that such a war as I have described recently broke out and
was carried on by two factions in adjoining parts of the mountains. It
was a very strange affair, of course, but I doubt if its existence was
even known in any other part of Mexico.
[Illustration: METHODS OF WARFARE]
Singularly enough, the badge of office of the self-governing tribes
is a scepter, if an ornamented stick held in the hand can be called a
scepter. These black savages of the sierras obey it more implicitly,
however, than if it were a loaded Gatling gun trained on them. Whenever
a government official or justice seizes this mace of the Madre
Mountains, and holds it aloft, every person in sight is quelled more
effectually than if it were a stick of giant powder that would explode
if they did not obey. Its name among them, translated, is "God's
Justice," and certainly no superstitious people ever obeyed a mandate
more readily and completely than do they this mute expression of their
own laws, and without which they would often be lawless under the same
circumstances.
An almost ludicrous case was told me of a foul murder having been
committed by the wild Tarahumaris on the person of a civilized one,
the murderers holding possession of the body. It was natural that the
civilized faction should want the corpse for burial, and they demanded
it, but it was refused. The civilized natives then went to the boundary
line of the two factions, hoping to get the chief of the wild savages
to assist them. Here they found some four or five hundred of the latter
drawn up in battle array, with bows and arrows, to dispute their
passage into their own land. The chief was absent and refused to come
to the assistance of the others, although demanded in the name of the
Mexican law, with corresponding punishment. The civilized natives then
conceived the idea of a small body of picked men going in a roundabout
way to compel his attendance, which was done, although he still refused
to exercise his authority to compel his own band to give up the corpse
of the dead Tarahumari. The forcing of the wild chief into the dispute
was about to bring on a collision between the two factions, when one
of the civilized natives wrenched his scepter from his hand, waved
it aloft, and demanded of the wild ones that they cease all hostile
demonstrations and bring in the body of the murdered man, all of which
they did in the name of "God's Justice."
Nearly all the civilized Tarahumaris are Christianized, while the
wild ones living in cliffs and caves are--if they can be called
anything--still worshipers of the sun and believers in the return of
Montezuma; so this "God's Justice," as represented so effectually by
the mace or scepter, cannot mean solely the Christian God or that of
the Tarahumaris, for in either case it would have no effect on the
other. There can be only one conclusion that I can see, and that is
that this badge of authority is as old as the Tarahumaris themselves,
or at least antedates the conversion of the civilized ones by the old
Jesuits, or the conquering of the country by the Spaniards from Europe.
The Mexicans use nothing of the kind except, probably, in their state
and federal legislatures, as we do in some of ours, and it is not at
all likely that these natives, especially the wild ones, would have
borrowed it from so distant and almost never visited a source.
The civilized Tarahumaris have their own elections, patterned after the
Mexicans in a crude way, while the wilder ones have their chiefs, but
whether they are elected or hereditary I was not able to ascertain; I
am inclined to think it is the former.
The wildest known of the Tarahumari cliff and cave dwellers are
probably those of the Barranca del Cobre, which can be seen from the
Grand Barranca of the Urique, as one skirts its dizzy cliffs, being in
fact a spur of the Grand Barranca leading out to the east. There are
undoubtedly many other, but unknown, places where these savages dwell,
if possible more primitive than those of the Barranca del Cobre. In
this cañon the cliff dwellers are often stark naked, except for a pair
of _guarraches_, or rawhide sandals, these protecting the soles of the
feet from the flint-like broken rocks of this part of the country, and
without which even their tough hides would soon be disabled. Upon the
approach of whites they fly to their birdlike houses in the precipitous
cliffs like so many timid animals seeking their burrows.
The next nearest grade of these people goes so far as to ornament the
person with breechclouts after the latest fashion set by Adam and Eve,
the more savage of these again using the skins of wild animals for this
purpose, while the better grade manages to secure some dirty clothes
from the others to finish out this necessary part of their wardrobe.
When it is reflected that the winters are quite severe on the higher
parts of these sierras, the snow being some winters two and three feet
deep, it is quite easy to conceive what constitutional toughness these
fellows must have in their scanty attire.
An Eskimo would long to get back to the Arctic if he were here, so he
could sit on an iceberg and get warm.
On the great mountain trails their feats of endurance are almost of a
marvelous character. The semi-civilized are often employed as couriers,
mail carriers, etc., and in all cases they invariably make from three
to five times the distance covered by the whites in the same time,
while there is no known domesticated animal that can possibly keep pace
with them in the mountains.
It takes six or seven hours of fairly continuous climbing to make, by
mule-back, from the mine in a deep gulch to the "cumbra," or crest of
the Barranca del Cobre, by a most difficult mountain trail, the ascent
made being five thousand to six thousand feet. It takes four hours
to descend in the same way. A message was sent from "la cumbra" by a
Tarahumari foot runner to a person at the mine and an answer received
in an hour and twenty minutes, the same messenger carrying the letter
both ways, or making the round trip.
One day a Tarahumari carrier passed us just after we had gone into
camp about three o'clock in the afternoon, bound for the same point we
expected to reach in three days' hard travel by mule-back. I wanted to
send a message by him to this place, and on ascertaining when he would
reach it was, as my hearers will easily infer, somewhat astonished to
find out that he expected to make it that night, and I was afterward
informed that he had done so.
Not a great many years ago the mail from Chihuahua to Batopilas was
carried by a courier on his back, who made the distance over the
Sierra Madre range, a good 250 miles, and return, or a total of 500
miles, in six days. Here he rested one day and repeated his trip, his
contract being for weekly service. Alongside of this the best records
ever made in the many six days' "go-as-you-please" contests that are
heard of in the great cities of the United States sink into almost
contemptible insignificance. I could give a dozen other instances, but
these are enough. Of course these runners make many "cut offs" from the
established mule trails when their course is along them, and they thus
save distance, but making all such allowance their endurance is still
phenomenal.