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 X

Nice-looking Natives—Albinos—Ancient Remains in Ohuivo—Local Traditions, the Cocoyomes, etc.—Guachochic—Don Miguel and “The Postmaster”—A Variety of Curious Cures—Gauchochic Becomes My Head-quarters—The Difficulty of Getting an Honest Interpreter—False Truffles—The Country Suffering from a Prolonged Drought—A Start in a Northwesterly Direction—Arrival at the Pueblo of Norogachic.

Followed the river a day’s journey up and noticed some small tobacco plantations on the banks. I met some good-looking people, who had come from Tierras Verdes, the locality adjoining on, the south. Their movements were full of action and energy. Their skins showed a tinge of delicate yellow, and as the men wore their hair in a braid, they had a curious, oriental appearance. The women looked well in black woollen skirts and white tunics. The people from that part of the country are known for their pretty, white, home-made blankets, and it was evident that in those inaccessible parts the Indians had still something for the white man to take away.

The natives of this valley had a curious habit, when they were made to dive for fish, of afterward throwing themselves in a row on the sun-heated sand to warm their stomachs for a minute or two.

Near Ohuivo, in the mountains toward Morelos, there used to live a family of ten albinos. When I was there only two survived, smallpox having made havoc among them. Their skin was so delicate that even the contact with their clothing irritated it. Mr. Hartman visited one of them, an old woman who lived in a cave with her husband, a small, dark-skinned fellow, and the two certainly were “mated, but not matched.” Her features were entirely Indian, but her complexion was unique in Mexico, even among the white population. She reminded one of a very blond type of Scandinavian or Irish peasantry. Her hair was yellowish-white, but her eye-brows and -lashes were snow-white. The face and body were white, but disfigured with large red spots and small freckles. She kept her eyes more than half shut, and as she was very shy it was not possible to ascertain the color of the iris; but Mr. Hartman was assured by the husband that it was bluish.

Most of the Indians in Ohuivo live in houses. The few caves that are occupied are not improved in any way. One cave contained ancient habitations, and tradition says that there the Tubares had once established themselves. The cave is nothing but a nearly horizontal crack in the rock, situated on the southern side of the river, some 300 feet above the bottom of the valley. It runs from south-east to north-west to a length of about 200 feet, interrupted perpendicularly by a crevice. Entering the cave at the southernmost end I found twelve low-walled rooms, standing singly, but closely side by side. They were square with rounded corners. The walls were built of stone and mud and one foot thick, and the floors were hard and smooth. A store-room, in a good state of preservation, resembled in every detail the store-houses used by the Tarahumares of the present day, being square and built of stone and mud. In none of these rooms was it possible for me to stand upright. Apart from this group, a few yards higher up in the cave, were two small houses. The floor of the cave was getting higher and higher. I had to crawl on my stomach for about ten yards and came suddenly to the edge of a precipice; but a track led around it to the other side, where I found the main portion of the houses, eighteen in all, the largest having a side thirteen feet long, though the others were considerably smaller. They were arranged just like those of the first section, in one row, and were made of the same material, except a few, which were built of adobe. In these the walls were only eight inches thick. One of the rooms was still complete, had square openings, and may have been a store-room. The others seem to have had the conventional Indian apertures. In two chambers I noticed circular spaces sunk into the floor six inches deep and about fourteen inches in diameter. What I took to be an estufa, nineteen feet in diameter, was found in the lowest section. Behind it was only a small cluster of five houses higher up in the cave.

Though this is the only ancient cave-dwelling I visited in Ohuivo, I was assured that there were several others in the neighbourhood. The broken country around Zapuri is interesting on account of the various traditions which, still living on the lips of the natives, refer to a mysterious people called the Cocoyomes, regarded by some Tarahumares as their ancient enemies, by others as their ancestors. They were the first people in the world, were short of stature and did not eat corn. They subsisted mainly on herbs, especially a small agave called tshāwí. They were also cannibals, devouring each other as well as the Tarahumares. The Cocoyomes lived in caves on the high cliffs of the sierra, and in the afternoon came down, like deer, to drink in the rivers. As they had no axes of iron they could not cut any large trees, and were unable to clear much land for the planting of corn. They could only burn the grass in the arroyos in order to get the fields ready. Long ago, when the Cocoyomes were very bad, the sun came down to the earth and burned nearly all of them; only a few escaped into the big caves.

Here in Zapuri the Cocoyomes had four large caves inside of which they had built square houses of very hard adobe; in one of the caves they had a spring. The Tarahumares often fought with them, and once, when the Cocoyomes were together in the largest cave, which had no spring, the Tarahumares besieged them for eight days, until all of the Cocoyomes had perished from hunger. From such an event the name of Zapuri may have been derived. Intelligent Mexicans, whom I consulted, agree that it means “fight” or “contest” (Spanish, desafio).

From a place called Tuaripa, some thirty miles farther south, near the border of the Tepehuane country, and in the same mountainous region, I have the following legend, about the Cocoyomes and the serpents:

Two large serpents used to ascend from the river and go up on the highlands to a little plain between Huerachic and Tuaripa, and they killed and ate the Cocoyomes, returning each time to the river. Whenever they were hungry they used to come up again. At last an old man brought together all the people at the place where the serpents used to ascend. Here they dug a big hole and filled it with wood and with large stones, and made a fire and heated the stones until they became red hot. When the serpents were seen to make their ascent on the mountain-side, the men took hold of the stones with sticks, and threw them into the big, wide-open mouths of the serpents, until the monsters were so full with stones that they burst and fell dead into the river. Even to this day may be seen the marks on the rocks where the serpents used to ascend the mountain-side.