Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1889 — TARAHMUARI INDIANS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TARAHMUARI INDIANS.

AN INTERESTING TRIBE OF SAVAGES IN MEXICO. Tliey Are Probably Descendant* of the Hiiitoric Cliff Dweller*—Lieut. Scliwatka’» Account of Hi* Visit Among These Curious People.

rPROPOSE to devote most of this article to a consideration of the Tarahnmari Indians of Western and Southwestern Chihuahua, a tribe of aborigines that I have occasionally seen mentioned in works and articles on Mexico, ra n d especially the northern part, but of whom I can find no detailed ac'count anywhere

in the literature I have of this region, writes Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka from Chihuahua, Mexico, to the Cliicago Inter Ocean. Although the Taraliumari tribe of Indians are not at all well known—for I doubt if one reader in a thousand of this article has 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 ax-e very much better kept than in this country, they would have an almost world-wide knowledge of themselves spread before the people. They are now seldom seen in Chihuahua City, or even on the diligence lines radiating out to the many Western points drawing many of their supplies from this railroad town, and it is only after the mule trails to the deeply hidden mountain mines are taken that they are seen at all. If a person cuts loose from these, too, he will be most likely to see them in all their rugged primitiveness, for most of them, seen by the usual white traveler to these parts, are called civilized, living in log huts, tilling a little bit of the mountain slope, and living generally not unlike the lower classes of Mexico, which they have evidently

taken as a guide in their new 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. Though a peaceful tribe of Indians ■as far as their relations with Mexico have always been, they nevertheless were not wanting at all in all the elements that made them good defenders of their land; and the Apaches, so dreaded by all others, gave the mountaineous country of the Tarahumari-t a wide berth when on their raids in this direction. The Tarahumaris, equally armed, which they seldom were, were more than a match for those Bedouins of the boundary line between our own country and Mexico. One who had ever seen a group of the wild Tarahumaris would never credit them with anything warlike or aggressive, or even with mueh of the defensive combativeness that is necessary to fight for one’s country. They are shy and bashful to a point of childishness that I have never seen before among Indians or other savages. In appearance the Tarahumari Indian is, I think, a little above the average height of the North American,. Indians. They are well-built, with clean-cut muscles, while their skin is of the darkest hue of auy Indian I have ever seen, being almost a mixture of the darkest Guinea negro with the average copper-colored aborigine that we are so accustomed to see in the Western parts of the United States.

In their faces they generally have pleasing expressions, and their women ate not bad looking for Indians, although the older women break rapidly in appearance after passing 30 to 35 years, as near a's I could judge •their, ages. The savage branch of the Tarahnmaris are, of course, the more interesting, as the most nearly representing our own Indians of ten, twenty and thirty years ago, while the civilized are not unlike those we have cultivating the soil around the agencies; although those of Mexico have po Government aid, I believe, such as we so often and so lavishly pour into the laps of our copper-colored brethren of the North. The savage Tarahumari lives generally off all lines of communication, shunning even the mountain mule trails if they cafi". His abode is a cave in the mountain side or under the curving

inteiior of some huge bowlder on the ground. The Sierra Madres are extremely picturesque in their rock formations, giving thousands of shapes I have never seen elsewhere; battlements, towers, turrets, bastions, buttresses,and flying buttresses, great arches and architraves, while everything from a camel to a saddle can be made out in the many projecting forms. It i 3 natural that in such formations, a curious blending of limestone formations pierced bv more recent upheavals of eruption rock, that manv eaves should be found, and also that the huge, irregular granitic and gueissoid bowlders left on the ground by the dissolving away of the softer Ernestone should often lie so that their concavities could be taken advantage of by these burrowing savages. I give a picture of both by Mr. Landeau. The cliff-dwellers on the Bacac-hic

Eiver had taken a huge cave in the limestone rock, almost overhanging the picturesque stream, and had walled up its outward face almost 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 filthy goatliide, into which the inhabitant had to crawl, Eke the Eskimo into their igloos, or snow-huts, 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 bow and arrow in his hand, was skulking along the big bowlders near the foot of the cliff. A dozen determined men inside ought to have kept away an army corps not furnished w itli 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 uaiits. My guide Said they Avould only flv if Ave visited them, leaving a little parched corn, a rough nietate or stone for grinding it, an unburned olla to hold their water, and some skins, and, perchance, Avorn-out blankets for bedding; so I desisted from such a useless step as getting over to their eyrie to inspect it. Late last year or early in this I saAv a notice going the rounds of the press that living cliff-dwellers had been seen in the San Mateo mountains of NeAv Mexico, and that as soon as the suoav melted a mounted party Avould be organized to pursue and capture them; but I have heard nothing from it, beyond the little stir it created at the time, and Avhich the finding of anv li\*ing cliff-dwellers anyAvliere Avould be likely to create. Yet here are people of that description, of Avhich the world seems to have heard nothing. Hoav many there are

of them it seems hard to say. We saw at least two to three hundred scattered around in the fastnesses of this grand old mountain chain, and could probably have tripled this if we had been looking for cliff and cave duellers our line of travel. A Mex-' iean gentleman who liiid spent all his life in this part of Chihuahua, looking for and developing its almost fabulous mineral wealth, estimates the number of living cave and cliff dwellers at not far from 12,000; and he had no reason or incentive to exaggerate numbers, and in a long contact with him I found all his other estimates correct where I could verify them. Let us place them at 3,000 iu strength, and we would have enough to write a huge book upon, giving as sibling developments as one could probably make from the interior of some wholly unknown in fact, mure curious, for

the pubEc is somewhat prepared for such a story by the large number of old deserted cEff-dwellings found iu Arizona and New Mexico, which have often been assigned to a people older than the rains of the Toltec or Aztec races. That there is some relation I»e----tween these old cEff-dwellei-s and the new ones. I think more than likel v: and I believe most writers who le d seen both, as I have, would agree with me in tins view.

OLD TARAHUMARI INDIAN. CIVILIZED.

TARAHUMARI CAVE-D WELLERS.

TARAHUMARI CLIFF-D WELLERS.