Thus I gained a knowledge of these peoples which could have been procured in no other way. When after five or six months of such sojourns and travel my stock of “civilised” provisions would give out, I subsisted on what I could procure from the Indians. Game is hard to get in Mexico, and one’s larder cannot depend on one’s gun. As in Australia, my favourite drink was hot water with honey, which, besides being refreshing, gave a relish to a monotonous diet.
All along my route I gathered highly valuable material from the Tarahumares, the Northern and the Southern Tepehuanes, the Coras, the Huichols, and the Tepecanos, all of which tribes except the last named dwell within the Sierra Madre del Norte; also from the Nahuas on the western slopes of the sierra, as well as from those in the States of Jalisco and Mexico; and, finally, from the Tarascos in the State of Michoacan. Of most of these tribes little more than their names were known, and I brought back large collections illustrating their ethnical and anthropological status, besides extensive information in regard to their customs, religion, traditions, and myths. I also completed my collection of vocabularies and aboriginal melodies. On my journey through the Tierra Caliente of the Territory of Tepic, and the States of Jalisco and Michoacan, I also obtained a number of archaeological objects of great historical value and importance.
In 1898 I made my last expedition to Mexico under the same auspices, staying there for four months. On this trip I was accompanied by Dr. Ales Hrdlicka. I revisited the Tarahumares and Huichols in order to supplement the material in hand and to settle doubtful points that had come up in working out my notes. Sixty melodies from these tribes were recorded on the graphophone.
Thus from 1890 to 1898 I spent fully five years in field researches among the natives of northwestern Mexico. The material was collected with a view to shedding light upon the relations between the ancient culture of the valley of Mexico and the Pueblo Indians in the southwest of the United States; to give an insight into the ethnical status of the Mexican Indians now and at the time of the conquest, and to illuminate certain phases in the development of the human race.
So far the results of my expeditions to Mexico have been made public in the following literature:
CARL LUMHOLTZ: “Explorations in Mexico,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 1891.
CARL LUMHOLTZ: Letters to the American Geographical Society of New York, “Mr. Carl Lumholtz in Mexico,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. III., 1893.
J. A. ALLEN: “List of Mammals and Birds Collected in Northeastern Sonora and Northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, on the Lumholtz Archæological Expedition, 1890–1892,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. V., Art. III., 1893.
B. L. ROBINSON and M. L. FERNALD: “New Plants Collected by Mr. C. V. Hartman and Mr. C. E. Lloyd upon the Archæological Expedition to Northwestern Mexico under the Direction of Dr. Carl Lumholtz,” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. XXX., 1894.
CARL LUMHOLTZ: “American Cave-Dwellers; the Tarahumares of the Sierra Madre,” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. III., 1894.