In the Land of Cave and Cliff Dwellers

by Frederick Schwatka

Singularly enough, the badge of office of the self-governing tribes is a scepter, if an ornamented stick held in the hand can be called a scepter. These black savages of the sierras obey it more implicitly, however, than if it were a loaded Gatling gun trained on them. Whenever a government official or justice seizes this mace of the Madre Mountains, and holds it aloft, every person in sight is quelled more effectually than if it were a stick of giant powder that would explode if they did not obey. Its name among them, translated, is "God's Justice," and certainly no superstitious people ever obeyed a mandate more readily and completely than do they this mute expression of their own laws, and without which they would often be lawless under the same circumstances.

An almost ludicrous case was told me of a foul murder having been committed by the wild Tarahumaris on the person of a civilized one, the murderers holding possession of the body. It was natural that the civilized faction should want the corpse for burial, and they demanded it, but it was refused. The civilized natives then went to the boundary line of the two factions, hoping to get the chief of the wild savages to assist them. Here they found some four or five hundred of the latter drawn up in battle array, with bows and arrows, to dispute their passage into their own land. The chief was absent and refused to come to the assistance of the others, although demanded in the name of the Mexican law, with corresponding punishment. The civilized natives then conceived the idea of a small body of picked men going in a roundabout way to compel his attendance, which was done, although he still refused to exercise his authority to compel his own band to give up the corpse of the dead Tarahumari. The forcing of the wild chief into the dispute was about to bring on a collision between the two factions, when one of the civilized natives wrenched his scepter from his hand, waved it aloft, and demanded of the wild ones that they cease all hostile demonstrations and bring in the body of the murdered man, all of which they did in the name of "God's Justice."

Nearly all the civilized Tarahumaris are Christianized, while the wild ones living in cliffs and caves are—if they can be called anything—still worshipers of the sun and believers in the return of Montezuma; so this "God's Justice," as represented so effectually by the mace or scepter, cannot mean solely the Christian God or that of the Tarahumaris, for in either case it would have no effect on the other. There can be only one conclusion that I can see, and that is that this badge of authority is as old as the Tarahumaris themselves, or at least antedates the conversion of the civilized ones by the old Jesuits, or the conquering of the country by the Spaniards from Europe. The Mexicans use nothing of the kind except, probably, in their state and federal legislatures, as we do in some of ours, and it is not at all likely that these natives, especially the wild ones, would have borrowed it from so distant and almost never visited a source.

The civilized Tarahumaris have their own elections, patterned after the Mexicans in a crude way, while the wilder ones have their chiefs, but whether they are elected or hereditary I was not able to ascertain; I am inclined to think it is the former.

The wildest known of the Tarahumari cliff and cave dwellers are probably those of the Barranca del Cobre, which can be seen from the Grand Barranca of the Urique, as one skirts its dizzy cliffs, being in fact a spur of the Grand Barranca leading out to the east. There are undoubtedly many other, but unknown, places where these savages dwell, if possible more primitive than those of the Barranca del Cobre. In this cañon the cliff dwellers are often stark naked, except for a pair of guarraches, or rawhide sandals, these protecting the soles of the feet from the flint-like broken rocks of this part of the country, and without which even their tough hides would soon be disabled. Upon the approach of whites they fly to their birdlike houses in the precipitous cliffs like so many timid animals seeking their burrows.

The next nearest grade of these people goes so far as to ornament the person with breechclouts after the latest fashion set by Adam and Eve, the more savage of these again using the skins of wild animals for this purpose, while the better grade manages to secure some dirty clothes from the others to finish out this necessary part of their wardrobe. When it is reflected that the winters are quite severe on the higher parts of these sierras, the snow being some winters two and three feet deep, it is quite easy to conceive what constitutional toughness these fellows must have in their scanty attire.

An Eskimo would long to get back to the Arctic if he were here, so he could sit on an iceberg and get warm.

On the great mountain trails their feats of endurance are almost of a marvelous character. The semi-civilized are often employed as couriers, mail carriers, etc., and in all cases they invariably make from three to five times the distance covered by the whites in the same time, while there is no known domesticated animal that can possibly keep pace with them in the mountains.

It takes six or seven hours of fairly continuous climbing to make, by mule-back, from the mine in a deep gulch to the "cumbra," or crest of the Barranca del Cobre, by a most difficult mountain trail, the ascent made being five thousand to six thousand feet. It takes four hours to descend in the same way. A message was sent from "la cumbra" by a Tarahumari foot runner to a person at the mine and an answer received in an hour and twenty minutes, the same messenger carrying the letter both ways, or making the round trip.