Tarahumare Baskets.
Height, 16 cm.
Height, 18.5 cm.
About sunset the husband returns, bringing a squirrel or rabbit, which he carries concealed in his blanket, that no neighbour may see it and expect an invitation to help to eat it. As he goes and comes he never salutes his wife or children. He enters in silence and takes his seat near the fire. The animal he caught he throws toward her where she is kneeling before the metate, so that it falls on her skirt. She ejaculates “Sssssssssss!” in approval and admiration, and, picking it up, praises its good points extravagantly: “What a big mouth! What large claws!” etc. He tells her how hard he worked to get that squirrel, how it had run up the tree, and he had to cut down that tree, till finally the dog caught it. “The dog is beginning to be very good at hunting,” he says. “And now I am very tired.” She spreads before him a generous supper of beans, herbs, and maize porridge, which she has ready for him. And while he eats she goes industriously to work removing the fur from the game, but leaving on the skin, not only because it keeps the meat together while it is boiling, but mainly because she thinks there is a good deal of nourishment in it, which it would be a shame to waste.
When the man is at home, and neither sleeping nor eating, he may sit down and make a bow or some arrows; or, stretched out on his back, he may resort to his favourite amusement, playing his home-made violin. Like all Indians of Mexico, the Tarahumares are fond of music and have a good ear for it. When the Spaniards first came, they found no musical instruments among the Tarahumares except the short reed flute, so common to many Mexican tribes, the shaman’s rattle, and the rasping stick. But they soon introduced the violin and even the guitar, and throughout Mexico the Indians now make these instruments themselves, using pine wood and other indigenous material in their construction, sometimes with remarkable skill and ingenuity, and for glue the juice of a certain lily root. Having no idea of the value of money, they frequently sell a tolerably good instrument for fifty or even twenty-five cents.
Toward evening the Tarahumare father of a family gets more talkative and chats with his wife, and then
“The day is done, and the darkness
Drops from the wings of night
As a feather is wafted downward