Shortly after my arrival a number of Indians were started out to look up the animals; for we wished to get away the next morning if possible. When night came a part of the needed complement had not been found; for Mexican mules are always turned loose to hunt their living, and they often wander off many miles, and it sometimes takes days to find them. All night long the Indians were again out scouring the hills, but in the morning there were still not mules enough; so nothing could be done but patiently await their arrival. The next morning Francisco, a most excellent packer, by taking one horse to carry a few light bundles, had animals enough to make a start. Horses are of no service whatever in these mountains. On the steep, rough, dangerous trails the small Mexican mule is the only animal that can possibly cling, crawl, and climb up and down the dizzy heights. The motley and scraggy assortment of beasts led up for our inspection that morning gave us the uncomfortable feeling that we would never reach any place if we trusted to them. A little before ten o'clock my train of fourteen mules was started; and we were told we must ride fast, as the trail just out of the town was good, and it was necessary to make the noon camp at a certain spot. The trail we took was one seldom used, except by the Indians, and a few Mexicans who held mining property in that portion of the mountains. It was, therefore, one of the roughest and steepest in that region. Instead of seeking any sort of grade, it struck out wherever fancy had dictated to the original Indian travelers, generally over the steepest peaks or along the edge of some high and dizzy precipice, even when this course was wholly unnecessary. Although that made it somewhat laborious for us, as well as our animals, it gave us unusually fine views and picturesque effects, and despite the roughness of the trail we rode fifteen miles that morning and made our noon camp on time.
When but a very short distance out of Carichic, while crossing a high ridge, I observed, in a little valley below, a curious looking creature skulking along half hidden from view, toward the entrance to a cave in a huge bowlder. I called the attention of my Mexican companion to him, and he said he was only one of the wilder Tarahumari Indians, who lived in this manner, and that I would see enough of them before I finished my journey. This was my first introduction to a strange people hidden away in those grand old mountains, and of which the world has known comparatively nothing.
[CHAPTER V.]
| CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA—IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS—THE TARAHUMARI INDIANS, CIVILIZED AND SAVAGE. |
I propose to devote the greater portion of this chapter to a consideration of the Tarahumari Indians of Central and Southwestern Chihuahua, a tribe of aborigines that I have occasionally seen mentioned in works and articles on Mexico (especially its northern part), but of which I can find no detailed account anywhere in the literature I possess of this region. The fact of my having been in that country for some time, seeing and investigating some of their most curious habitations and customs, coupled with what information I could get from a few hardy Mexican pioneers in the fastnesses of the great Sierra Madre range, who corroborate each other, constitutes the basis of my comments.
Although the Tarahumari tribe of Indians are not at all well known—for I doubt if many of my readers have ever heard of them—they are, nevertheless, a very numerous people, and were they in the United States or Canada, where statistics of even the savages are much better kept than in Mexico, they would have an almost world-wide reputation. On account of this utter lack of statistics it is impossible to state with close approximation the number of Tarahumari Indians in this part of the country. So I will have to rely on the estimates (really broad guesses) of those best informed, giving my readers the benefit of my own researches as a check, although not claiming they will make a very good one, to the wide range of estimates made by others. In a previous chapter I spoke of the number of these Indians, but really am inclined, from all I could learn of them, to estimate their number at twenty thousand or thereabouts. An Indian tribe of twenty thousand people in our own country would be heard of often enough in press and public to become a household word; but the isolation of the Tarahumari Indians from the beaten lines of travel, and the little interest taken in them by local and governmental officials (especially the interest which would make their habitations, habits, and customs known to the world) have thrown a veil over them both dark and mysterious. Some tribes of no greater strength in the interior of Africa are better known to us at home than are these Tarahumaris of the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. They are now seldom seen in the city of Chihuahua, or even on the diligence lines radiating to the many western points which draw their supplies from this town; and it is only when the mule trails to the deeply hidden mountain mines are taken that they are seen at all. Still better, if one cuts loose from these too, he will be yet more likely to find them in all their rugged primitiveness. Those usually seen by the white traveler to these parts are called civilized, and live in log huts, tilling a bit of mountain slope, not unlike the lower classes of Mexico, whom they copy in their departure from established habits. It is no wonder, therefore, that little has been said about them more than to mention occasionally where they once lived in a country now held by a higher civilization.
A CIVILIZED TARAHUMARI HOUSE.