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, usáka = 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 anticipation 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 assisted them in spreading the gospel.
Tarahumare Indians from Pino Gordo.
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 assembled 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 noble 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 passed, 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 passed. The small canes are not carried in the hand, but stuck in the girdle on the left side. Nobody 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.
Tarahumare Court in Session at Cusarare.
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 assemblage 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 cañon. 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 mass 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 altitude 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 mass 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.
Barranca de Urique.
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. Nobody 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 passed around among us, they offered the flavouring, coarse salt and some small chile (Spanish peppers), which vegetable is cultivated and much relished by the Tarahumares.
Our Tarahumare Carriers and the Gobernador.
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 assumes 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.
Tarahumare Men.
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 coarse, 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.
Tarahumare Woman.
The women’s toilet is just as simple. A scrimpy woollen skirt is tied around the waist with a girdle, and over the shoulders is worn a short tunic, with which, however, many dispense when at home in the barranca. The women, too, have blankets, though with them they are not so much the rule as with the men. Still, mothers with babies always wear blankets, to support the little ones in an upright position on their backs, the blanket being tightly wrapped around mother and child. The women nowadays generally wear sandals of the usual Mexican cowhide pattern, like the men; but there is ample evidence to prove that such was not the case in former times.
The people are, for Indians, not especially fond of ornaments, and it is a peculiar fact that mirrors have no special attraction for them. They do not like to look at themselves. The women often wear ear-ornaments made of triangular pieces of shell attached to bead strings, or deck themselves with strings of glass beads, of which the large red and blue ones are favourites; and necklaces made from the seed of the Coix Lachryma-Jobi are used by both sexes, chiefly for medicinal purposes. The men wear only single strings of these seeds, while the necklaces of the women are wound several times around the neck. The shaman, or medicine-man—a priest and doctor combined—is never without such a necklace when officiating at a feast. The seed is believed to possess many medicinal qualities, and for this reason children, too, often wear it.
Tarahumare Ear-Ornament: one seed Coix Lachryma-Jobi at top. Natural size.
Peasant women in Italy and Spain use the same seed as a protection against evil, and even American women have been known to put strings of them on teething children as a soothing remedy.
Necklace of Seeds of Coix Lachryma-Jobi.
Tarahumare Ranch near Barranca de Cobre, showing ploughed rid supported by stone walls.
An important fact I established is that the Indians in the barrancas, in this part of the country, use something like trincheras for the cultivation of their little crops. To obtain arable land on the mountain slopes the stones are cleared from a convenient spot and utilised in the construction of a wall below the field thus made. The soil is apt to be washed away by heavy rains, and the wall not only prevents what little earth there is on the place from being carried off, but also catches what may come from above, and in this way secures sufficient ground to yield a small crop. Fields thus made can even be ploughed. On the slopes of one arroyo I counted six such terraces, and in the mountainous country on the Rio Fuerte, toward the State of Sinaloa, chile, beans, squashes, Coix Lachryma-Jobi, and bananas are raised on trincheras placed across the arroyos that run down the hills. There they have the form of small terraces, and remind one of similar ones found farther north as ancient ruins, to such an extent that one might suppose that the Tarahumares have made use of the relics of antiquity. Mr. Hartman in one long arroyo thereabouts observed four at some distance from one another. They were from four to ten feet high, and as broad as the little arroyo itself, some eight to sixteen feet.
Tarahumare Ranch near Barranca de Cobre, showing agriculture on terraces.