I was told that three years ago two travelling Mexican peddlers arrived here, and after having done a little trading went away without informing the authorities of their departure. This aroused the suspicion of the Indians, who began to look around to see what was missing. Two cows, it seemed, had disappeared, and in two days the peddlers were overtaken, brought back, put in the stocks, and held in prison for eight days, and three times a day they received a thrashing. They had very little food. They were finally taken to Durango.
Once two cows and an ox were stolen from Crescencio, and the Indians followed the tracks of the thieves, their leader frequently touching the earth with his hands to assure himself by the smell that they were going in the right direction. After a while two Tepehuanes and their accomplice, the “neighbour” who had put them up to the crime, were caught. The “neighbour,” as soon as he arrived in the village, was given twenty-five lashes, and for two hours was subjected to the agonizing torture of having his head and his feet in the stocks at the same time. Next day he was given ten lashes, and the following day five, and eight days later they took him to Durango. His two Indian associates, father and son, were also put in the stocks, and for two weeks each of them got daily four lashes and very little food; besides which their blankets were taken away from them.
Although the Tepehuanes keep up their ancient rites and beliefs along with the new religion, they strictly comply with the external form of Christianity, paying due attention to all the Christian feasts and observances. Every day the bells of the old church are rung, and the saints “are put to bed,” as the Indians express it. When Crescencio first came here he found the people on Sundays in the church, the men sitting on benches and the women on the floor. They had gathered there from habit, though nobody knew how to pray, and they sat around talking and laughing all the time. It was their Christian worship. Crescencio has now taught them to say prayers.
The teachings of Christianity, however, are for the most part forgotten. No trace of the religion of charity remains among them, but the severity of the early missionaries survives, and their mediæval system of punishment. Evidently the tribe always entertained extreme views regarding the relation of the two sexes toward each other, or else the spirit of the new law would never have been imbibed so eagerly. “The slightest want of modesty or exhibition of frivolity is sufficient reason for a husband to leave his wife, and for young women never to marry,” says Padre Juan Fonte, of the Tepehuane Indians. There is no sign of relaxation in their strictness, or of any inclination to adopt more modern views on marital misdemeanour.
In the greater number of cases husband and wife live happily together “till death doth them part.” If either should prove unfaithful, they immediately separate, the wife leaving the children with the husband and going to her parents. Then the guilty one and the correspondent are punished by being put in the stocks and given a public whipping daily for one or two weeks. Neither of the parties thus separated is permitted to marry again.
If a girl or widow has loved “not wisely, but too well,” she is not interfered with until her child is born. A day or two after that she and the baby are put into prison for eight or ten days, and she is compelled to divulge the name of her partner. The man is then arrested and not only put into prison, but in the stocks besides. There are no stocks for women, only two horizontal bars to which their hands are tied, if they refuse to betray their lovers. The two culprits are kept separate, and their families bring them food. Twice a day messengers are sent through the village to announce that the punishment is about to be executed, and many people come to witness it. The judges and the parents of the delinquents reprimand the unfortunate couple, then from two to four lashes are on each occasion inflicted, first upon the man and then upon the woman. These are applied to an unmentionable part of the back, which is bared, the poor wretches standing with their hands tied to the pole. The executioner is given mescal that he may be in proper spirit to strike hard. The woman has to look on while the man is being punished, just as he afterward has to witness his sweetheart’s chastisement. She opens her eyes “like a cow,” as my informant expressed it, while the man generally looks down.
Many times the judges are ashamed to go through this performance, the character of which is below the standard of propriety of most primitive tribes; but, strange to say, the parents themselves compel them to let the law have its course. Afterward the girl is handed over to her lover in order that they may become officially married by the Church the next time the priest arrives. This may not happen for two or three years, but the two are meanwhile allowed to live together, the girl going to her lover’s home. To avert all the misery in store for her, an unfortunate woman may try to doctor herself by secretly taking a decoction of the leaves of the chalate, a kind of fig-tree.
Sometimes punishment is dealt out to young people for being found talking together. Outside of her home a woman is absolutely forbidden to speak to any man who does not belong to her own immediate family. When fetching water, or out on any other errand, she must under no circumstances dally for a chat with a “gentleman friend.” Even at the dancing-place it is against the law for her to step aside to exchange a few words with any young man. If discovered in such a compromising position, both offenders are immediately arrested, and their least punishment is two days’ imprisonment. If their examination by the judges proves that their conversation was on the forbidden topic of love, they get a whipping and may be compelled to marry.
Some of the boys and girls who have been punished for talking together in this manner, are so frightened that they never want to marry in Lajas, but the more defiant ones deliberately allow themselves to be caught, in order to hasten their union and steal a march on their parents. For these Indians are by no means beyond the darts of Cupid, and both men and women are known to have arranged with a shaman to influence the objects of their tender thoughts, and have paid him for such service. A woman may give a shaman a wad of cotton, which he manages to put into the hand of the young man for whom it is intended. Afterward the shaman keeps the cotton in his house, the affection having been transmitted by it.
On the other hand, men and women, to subdue their natural instincts, go into the fields and grasp the branches of certain sensitive plants. As the plant closes its leaves, the girls pray that they may be able to shut themselves up in themselves. There are two kinds of sensitive plants growing in the neighbourhood of Lajas (Mimosa florribunda, var. albida, and Mimosa invisa), and recourse may be had to either of them. Many men emigrate to other pueblos, though they may in time return. Others remain bachelors all their lives, and the judges in vain offer them wives. “Why should we take them?” they say. “You have thrashed us once, and it is not possible to endure it again.” The legitimate way of contracting marriage is to let the parents make the match. When the old folks have settled the matter between themselves, they ask the judges to arrest the boy and girl in question, whereupon the young people are put into prison for three days. The final arrangements are made before the authorities, and then the girl goes to the home of the boy to await the arrival of the priest.