The Sierra Madre Mountains, where they live, are extremely picturesque in their rock formation, giving thousands of shapes I have never see elsewhere—battlements, towers, turrets, bastions, buttresses and flying buttresses, great arches and architraves, while everything from a camel to a saddle can be descried in the many projecting forms. It is natural that in such formation—a curious blending of limestone pierced by more recent upheavals of eruptive rock—many caves should be found, and also that the huge, irregular, granitic and gneissoid bowlders, left on the ground by the dissolving away of the softer limestone, should often lie so that their concavities could be taken advantage of by these earth-burrowing savages.
The first cliff dwellers I saw were on the Bacochic River, the first day out on mule-back from Carichic. These cliff dwellers had taken a huge cave in the limestone rock, some seventy-five feet above the water and almost overhanging the picturesque stream. They had walled up its outward face nearly to the top, leaving the latter for ventilation probably, as rain could not beat in over the crest of the butting cliff. It had but one door, closed by an old torn goat hide, through which the inhabitants had to crawl, like the Eskimo into their snow huts or igloos, rather than any other form of entrance I can liken it to. The only person we saw was a "wild man of the woods," who, with a bow and arrows in his hand and the skin of a wild animal around his loins for a breechclout, was skulking along the big bowlders near the foot of the cliff. A dozen determined men inside this cliff dwelling ought to have kept away an army corps not furnished with artillery, although I doubt if the occupants hold these caves on account of their defensive qualities, but rather for their convenience as places of habitation, needing but little work to make them subserve their rude and simple wants. My Mexican guide said they would only fly if we visited them, leaving a little parched corn, a rough metate or stone for grinding it, an unburned olla to hold their water, and some skins, and, perchance, worn-out native blankets for bedding; so I desisted from such a useless trip as getting over to their eyrie to inspect it.
About three months before my first expedition into Mexico, I saw a notice going the rounds of the press that living cliff dwellers had been seen in the San Mateo Mountains of New Mexico, and that as soon as the snow melted a mounted party would be organized to pursue and capture them; but I have heard nothing from it, beyond the little stir created at the time, and which the finding of any living cliff dwellers anywhere would be likely to create. Yet here are people of that description, of whom the world seems to have heard nothing. How many there are of them, as I have already said, it seems hard to tell. We saw at least five to six hundred scattered around in the fastnesses of this grand old mountain chain, and could probably have trebled this if we had been looking for cave and cliff dwellers alone along and off our line of travel. Let us place them at only three thousand in strength, and we would have enough to write a huge book upon, giving as startling developments as one could probably make from the interior of some wholly unknown continent—in fact more curious; for the public is somewhat prepared for such a story by the large number of old deserted cliff dwellings found in Arizona and New Mexico, which have often been assigned to a people older than the ruins of the Toltec or Aztec races. That there is some relation between these old cliff dwellers and the new ones I think more than likely; and I believe that most writers who have seen both, or rather the ruins of the former and much of the life of the latter, as I have, would agree with me in this view.
It is pretty clearly settled that the Apaches are Athabascans, and came from the far north; and it seems not unlikely that they drove southward or exterminated the northern cliff dwellers, leaving only these here as representatives, although numerous beyond belief, of a most curious race generally supposed to be extinct. The Pueblo Indians, of the same locality, by living in larger communities and stronger abodes were better able to resist these Indian Northmen, and consequently some of their towns still exist; but the old cliff dwellers, like the new ones, could in many cases be cut off from water by a persistent and aggressive enemy, such as the Apaches must have been then, when just fresh from their northern excursion. It is still more probable, however, that they drove them southward until the retreating cliff dwellers became so powerful by being massed upon their southern brothers that they could resist further aggression, and therefore give successful battle to their old foe, as we know they have been able to do recently when the Apaches were performing such destructive work in this part of the country.
It is a well-known fact in archæology that a badly defeated people, driven from their country by a superior force of numbers, and occupying a new and less desirable tract, will generally reproduce their habitations, implements of the chase, and all other things which they may be called upon to construct in a much less perfect manner than when in their own country; and I found the cave and cliff dwellings of the wild Tarahumaris in the Sierra Madre Mountains to be in general less perfect than the cliff dwellings far to the north, as those near Flagstaff, Ariz., the cave and cliff dwellings in the Mancos Cañon, and many others I could mention in our own Southwest. Whatever may be the relation between the dead and departed northern cliff dwellers and their southern living representatives, it seems to me that it would well pay some scientist to devote a few years to their thorough study, as Catlin did so well among the Sioux, Cushing with the Zunis, and many others I could mention.
All these Tarahumaris, whether civilized to the extent of agriculture, living in houses, and having the other arts in a crude degree, and embracing Christianity, or whether in the most savage state, naked to the skin except rawhide sandals, and living in caves or cliffs, while still worshiping the sun, and hoping for the return of Montezuma some day, all are to a great extent independent of the Mexican Government, much more than are any of the peaceable Indians of the United States from our own government, unless it be a few almost unknown tribes in the interior of Alaska. If a Tarahumari commits a crime against, or does an injury to, a Mexican or foreigner, the Mexican Government takes notice of it and tries to punish the offender; but between themselves, except in a few cases of flagrant murder, they can conduct all administration of justice, as well as other matters, wholly by officers of their own selection and by their own codes and customs. The very wild ones—the cliff and cave dwellers—know nothing of Mexican affairs, and in fact fly from all white people like so many quails when they approach. The more civilized elect their own chiefs and obey their executive mandates so well, as a general thing, that there is really very little reason for the Mexicans to force their officials upon them, if their only object is a maintenance of peace. Still the half-wild tribes of some parts of the mountains even war against each other without asking the Mexican Government yes or no, and conclude their own treaties as a result of such quarrels on their own basis. I was informed by Mr. Alberto Mendoza, a perfect master of both Spanish and English, and an interpreter at one of the big Sierra Madres silver mines, where there also was employed an excellent Tarahumari interpreter, that such a war as I have described recently broke out and was carried on by two factions in adjoining parts of the mountains. It was a very strange affair, of course, but I doubt if its existence was even known in any other part of Mexico.
METHODS OF WARFARE