Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 August 1915 — The YAQUI and His Land [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The YAQUI and His Land

IN THE. YAQUI VALLEY

MORE deadly than the deadliest Manser and as swift as a German Zeppelin are the poisoned arrows of the Yaqui Indians, against whom the Mexicans have waged relentless wai for more than a century, says the Boston Transcript. Yaqui bows are made of black palm wood, which is extraordinarily hard; the arrows are long and sharp and so poisoned as to cause certain death in from three to seven days, but only after the most horrible torture, during which the patient raves, eats and gnaws his own flesh, beats his head against the wall or ground and so dies. No antidote for the poison has ever been discovered. According to an old Bpanlsh record, early settlers in Mexico tried by promises and threats to persuade the Indians to give them a recipe for it, but could not prevail until they had wounded a Yaqui they had taken, and then gave him liberty to go abroad to seek his remedy. They observed that he gathered two herbs, which he stamped and pounded severally, drank the juice of one, and injected the other into lAs wound; but first he opened the wound and drew out the barbs of the arrow, which, infinitesimally fine and thin, are left in the flesh after the shaft is taken out; for unless the wound be first cleared thereof, the herb can have no effect In this manner the Indian cured himself, but the novice has had only varying results, as none but the Indian knows the art of^ clearing the wound. "They cumberthe earth," said Lord Amherst on a certain memorable occasion of our own truculent Senecas. “They cumber the earth,” said his excellency, President Diaz, when speaking of the Yaquis. So the unwritten edict went forth that the Yaquis should be exterminated, after they proved refractory to all softening influences of civilization. Don’t Like Americans. Being unable to either civilize or exterminate them after nearly a century of endeavor, Mexico graciously sold to Americans almost exclusively mining and other concessions within the disputed territory, a fact which probably accounts for the Yaquis' sudden “change of heart” towards Americans. Indeed, until within the past fifteen years, a visit to the Yaquis was considered an interesting and by no means hazardous excursion by the younger men of our navy while cruising or surveying hi the Gulf of California. The Yaquis would always receive their visitors with perfect Indian hospitality, regale them with the best they had and show them excellent shooting. The only descriptions we have of the coast villages of the coast tribes, situated as they are amid swamps and lagoons which render them well-nigh inaccessible, are due to the accounts which the jolly sailor boys have left of their outings on shore. Curiously enough also, the armistices which have been concluded and the attempts which have been made from time to time to make peace between the Mexican government and the Yaquis have nearly always been initiated and carried on by American adventurers and prospectors across the border, the Yaquis refusing consistently to admit Mexicans within their villages, even when they came suing for peace and bringing presents. The strongholds of the Yaqui valley a«d the fastnesses of the Sierra which they are defending with such stubborn valor as to command the admiration of the Mexican officers who have had to fight them are fall of copper mines - >•

and deposits of other precious ores, attractive to the commercial spirit of the age, and the present era of ill-feel-ing against the American there is undoubtedly due to what the Yaquis regard as unwarranted trespassing upon their domain, since they cannot read and do not recognize the Mexican rulers’ right to sell mining and other concessions within the territory which that government has never conquered. Another reason for the cooling off of friendly relations between our navy and the Yaquis is that on several occasions in the course of the revolutions that have been going on for so long Americans have permitted Mexican generals to secure strategic advantages by transporting their troops over our territory from El Paso to Nogales. How great a factor this is in the present situation can best be understood by those who know the Yaquis—not one of whom has ever turned traitor, though every one of them, from the moment of his capture to the day of his execution by the Mexican authorities, has been tempted to betray his tribe with offers of gold, invaluable treasures, and life itself. With few exceptions, all the prisoners taken by the government since the war with the Yaquis began in 1825 have been butchered.