Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Record of Five Years' Exploration Among the Tribes of the Western Sierra Madre; In the Tierra Caliente of Tepic and Jalisco; and Among the Tarascos of Michoacan

by Carl Lumholtz

Chapter XXIX

A Cordial Reception at San Francisco—Mexicans in the Employ of Indians —The Morning Star, the Great God of the Coras—The Beginning of the World—How the Rain-clouds were First Secured—The Rabbit and the Deer—Aphorisms of a Cora Shaman—An Eventful Night—Hunting for Skulls—My Progress Impeded by Padre’s Ban—Final Start for the Huichol Country—A Threatened Desertion.

At the pueblo of San Francisco, prettily situated at the bend of a river, I was made very welcome. The Casa Real, another name for the building generally designated as La Comunidad, had been swept and looked clean and cool, and I accepted the invitation to lodge there. It was furnished with the unheard-of luxury of a bedstead, or rather the framework of one, made of a network of strong strips of hide. As the room was dark, I moved this contrivance out on the veranda, where I also stored my baggage, while my aparejos and saddles were put into the prison next door. Two Indians were appointed to sleep near by to guard me. When I objected to this I was informed that two fellows from Jesus Maria had been talking of killing me as the easiest way of carrying out the padre’s orders. I felt quite at home among these friendly, well-meaning people, and paid off my men, who returned to their homes. I thought that whenever I decided to start out again, I could get men here to help me to reach the country of the Huichols. A shaman who knew more than all others was deputed to give me the information I wanted about the ancient beliefs and traditions of the Coras.

The people also agreed to let me see their mitote, which at this time of the year is given every Wednesday for five consecutive weeks in order to bring about the rainy season. The fourth of this year’s series was to be on May 22d. As to burial-caves, they at first denied that there were any skulls in the neighbourhood, but finally consented to show me some. Later on, how-ever, an important shaman objected to this, strongly advising the people not to do so, because the dead helped to make the rain they were praying for, at least they could be induced not to interfere with the clouds.

A few Coras here were married to “neighbours,” and some Cora women had taken “neighbours” for husbands. For the first time, and also the last, in all my travels, I had here the gratification of seeing impecunious Mexicans from other parts of the country at work in the fields for the Coras, who paid them the customary Mexican wages of twenty-five centavos a day. The real owners of the land for once maintained their proper position.

I saw hikuli cultivated near some of the houses in San Francisco. They were in blossom, producing beautiful large, white flowers. The plant is used at the mitotes, but not generally.

On both sides of the steep arroyo near San Francisco were a great number of ancient walls of loose stones, one above the other, a kind of fortification. In other localities, sometimes in places where one would least expect them, I found a number of circular figures formed by upright stones firmly embedded in the ground, in the same way as those described earlier in this narrative.

The pueblo, mirabile dictu, had a Huichol teacher, whom the authorities considered, and justly so, to be better than the ordinary Mexican teacher. He was one of nine boys whom the Bishop of Zacatecas, in 1879, while on a missionary tour in the Huichol country, had picked out to educate for the priesthood. After an adventurous career, which drove him out of his own country, he managed now to maintain himself here. Although his word could not be implicitly trusted, he helped me to get on with the Coras, and I am under some obligation to him.

A prominent feature in the elaborate ceremonies of the tribe, connected with the coming of age of boys and girls, is the drinking of home-made mescal. The lifting of the cochiste, as described among the Aztecs, is also practised, at least among the Coras of the sierra, and is always performed at full moon.

The people begin to marry when they are fifteen years old, and they may live to be a hundred. The arrangement of marriages by the parents of the boy without consulting him is a custom still largely followed. On five occasions, every eighth day, they go to ask for the bride they have selected. If she consents to marry the man, then all is right. One man of my acquaintance did not know his “affinity” when his parents informed him that they had a bride for him. Three weeks later they were married, and, as in the fairy-tale, lived happily ever afterward. His parents and grandparents fasted before the wedding. In San Francisco I saw men and women who were married, or engaged to be married, bathing together in the river.