When passing one of our guide’s ranches—and he had three within sight—I noticed near the track a small jacal about 100 yards off. The man told me that he was a shaman and that here he kept his musical outfit, ceremonial arrows, etc.; though he appeared to be an open-hearted young man, I could not induce him to show me this private chapel of his, and we had to go on. He parted from us on the summit, but described the road so well that we encountered no difficulty during the remaining two days of our journey.
I was glad to be once more up on the highlands, the more so that we succeeded in finding there arroyos with water and grass. On reaching the top of the cordon we had been following, we came upon a camino real running between the villages of San Francisco and Santa Teresa, and now we were in the Sierra del Nayarit. I was rather surprised to find another barranca close by, parallel with the one we had just left. As far as I could make out, this new gorge begins near the pueblo of Santa Maria Ocotan, high up in the Sierra; at least my old Mexican informed me that the river which waters it rises at that place and passes the Cora pueblos of Guasamota and Jesus Maria. We travelled along the western edge of this barranca, within which there are some Aztec, but mainly Cora villages. There is still another barranca to the east of and parallel to this, and in this the Huichols live.
What is called Sierra del Nayarit is in the beginning a rather level and often narrow cordon, and the track south leads near the edge of the Barranca de Jesus Maria for ten or twelve miles. Along this ridge hardly any other kind of tree is to be seen than Pinus Lumholtzii. A variety of pine which resembles this very much, but is much larger, and which I think may also be a new species, was observed after leaving Pueblo Nuevo.
The cordon gradually widens, and open, grass-covered places appear among the pines, which now are of the usual kinds, and throughout the Sierra del Nayarit are high, but never large. A few Coras passed us leading mules loaded with panoche, to be exchanged in Santa Maria Ocotan for mescal.
The most conspicuous things in the Cora’s travelling outfit are his rifle and one or two home-made pouches which he slings over his shoulder. There is an air of manliness and independence about these Indians, and this first impression is confirmed by the entire history of the tribe.
We passed a few ranches on the road, and at last reached the little llano on which Santa Teresa is situated. It is always disagreeable to approach a strange Indian pueblo, where you have to make your camp, knowing how little the people like to see you, and here I was among a tribe who had never heard of me, and who looked upon me with much suspicion as I made my entry.
There were many people in town preparing for the Easter festival, practising their parts in certain entertainments in vogue at that season. At last I met a man willing to show me where I could find water. He led me outside of the village to some deep and narrow clefts in the red earth, from which a rivulet was issuing. I selected my camping-place near by, at the foot of some low pine-covered hills, and then returned to the pueblo.
“Amigo!” shouted a man as he came running toward me from his house. It was the alcalde, a tall, slender Indian with a slight beard and a very sympathetic voice. I told him that we were entirely out of corn, to which he replied that we could not get any in the pueblo, only on the ranches in the neighbourhood. I asked him if he wanted us to die from starvation, and then another man offered me half a fanega. I inquired of the judge whether he did not want to see my papers. “We do not understand papers,” he replied. Still it was agreed that the Indians should meet me next morning, and that my chief man, the Tepehuane, should read my letters from the Government, because the preceptor of the village was away in the city of Tepic, and no one else was able to read.
Cora Men and Women from Santa Teresa.