Generally they train their children from a very early age to help in their agricultural labor such as their forefathers did before the conquest, or else they teach them light manual labor, such as weaving little mats or matting in general, making small bags, baskets of all kinds and sizes, leather bands such as are used by the native porters, sacks, hammocks, ropes, to prepare henequen from agave fiber, to make straw hats, and so forth. In some villages they are taught to make common pottery, and in places near the coast they are shown how to extract salt, to fish, and seamanship in general. It is very rare that they are taught other arts and crafts or trades, with the exception perhaps in cities or principal towns, where, especially when they have been reared and educated in the households of white people, they may become efficient in the art of quarrying stone, though quite primitively, or they qualify as masons, shoemakers, tailors, muleteers, drivers, and cowboys. They also provide the town with firewood, charcoal, and fodder.
With regard to their marriage customs, there is little else to say except that the daughter-in-law goes to live in the house of her father-in-law, and the son-in-law goes to live with his wife's parents, which is at present the most usual way, because an episcopal edict had to be issued prohibiting the first-mentioned to avoid the very frequent abuses committed on the bride by her father-in-law and brothers-in-law. At a very early age young men marry, without repugnance, women who are much older, widows, and even girls who have children born out of wedlock. To remonstrances made by those who wish to dissuade them in view of such conditions, they will reply, "Why should I care? This happened before my time!" It is to be supposed that conjugal fidelity is not regarded very scrupulously by such couples. Their most common diseases depend largely on the seasons, and recur regularly. During summer and fall, when fresh food is abundant, the Indians are very immoderate in its use, consequently they suffer from diarrhea and vomiting. In spring and summer they have tabardillo, which is a burning fever, and dysentery, both of which are caused by too much exposure to the hot sun; and in winter obstinate constipation, colds, and affections of the throat and lungs. Their curative methods consist merely of abstinence and of bleeding, which they perform with a thorn or a fish-bone, and they cool their blood by drinking sour pozole or boiled lemonade, or else a decoction of a plant called xhantumbú. They never use emetics nor cathartics.
Ordinarily they eat two meals a day, one on rising and another in the evening. If they go to work in the field, after having breakfasted on tortillas and atole, they take with them a large lump of pozole which they use as a refreshment at noon by diluting it in water. At sunset they leave work, and, returning home, eat the second meal, generally after having taken their bath. Their usual food consists of boiled vegetables seasoned with salt, chile, and sometimes with the juice of oranges (the sour orange is used for this) or of lemons. On Sundays, if they are able to do so, they buy beef or pork; these are the only days when they eat meat, except when they kill a wild bird or a creature of the woods while hunting. Such meat they cook by baking it in a special way in the earth, or else in pib. The very poor among them live all the year round on tortillas and chile, and a bowlful of pozole or atole. Even the wealthiest content themselves with only one dish. This does not interfere with their being big eaters, nor devouring all they can get when it does not cost them anything.
Their usual beverage is called pitarrilia, consisting of the bark of a plant called balché which they put in soak in fresh water and honey and let it ferment. After fermentation it becomes strong enough to be intoxicating. They are also very fond of liquor, and there are very few among them who do not become intoxicated occasionally, at least on Sundays.
Experience, and to a certain extent tradition, are their only guides for telling the different seasons of the year; they have not the slightest remembrance of their ancient calendar system. They are accustomed to hear clocks strike where such exist, but otherwise, simply from the course of the sun, moon, and stars, they are able to regulate the hours of the day and night, more or less. They also know when an eclipse of the moon is approaching, attributing this phenomenon to an intention of the sun to destroy his satellite, and they therefore are prepared to make a fearful racket with sticks, mitotes, whistles or horns (fotutos[2]), shotguns, and other instruments during the eclipse, believing that by so doing they can avoid the catastrophe.
They sleep from early evening until four o'clock in the morning. Their working hours, if it is at all necessary for them to go to work, last from sunrise to sunset. If they are paid, they walk or travel at all hours, even with a load.
There are a few among them who are trustworthy and faithful in their contracts, and know how to keep their word and promises; but there is a greater number who absolutely lack all of these virtues, with the exception, perhaps, of the solemn promises they make to their saints, in the fulfilment of which they are scrupulously punctual.
They lie easily and very frequently, although they are aware that lies are prohibited. Generally they evade, whenever possible, a truthful answer which is to the point and fully satisfies the question.
Their principal vices are lasciviousness among both sexes, and drunkenness among the men. To do them justice though, we might as well acknowledge that it is more than probable that if other races and tribes had to live as they do, almost naked, in the complete liberty and isolation of country places, all members of one family, males and females, grownups and minors, the married and the single ones sleeping together in those little huts without any, or at best, very scant, knowledge of religion, of modesty and honor, without any fear of the consequences of unchastity to the women, without any intellectual enjoyment, reduced to the merest essentials—to satisfy hunger, thirst, sleep, and the intercourse of the two sexes, might they not be guilty of worse crimes?