Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1916 — YAQUIS WORSHIP AMERICAN MUTE [ARTICLE]

YAQUIS WORSHIP AMERICAN MUTE

Nine Times They Try to Kill Harness Maker of Cananea, but Bullets Miss Him. THOUGHT MAN WAS ACCURSED Unwittingly He Acquires Peculiar Influence Over Indians by Virtue of Unconcern When They Attempt to Kill Him. El Paso, Tex. —Refugees arriving from Sonora report that D. O. Watson is dead. He died, they say, in the Customary manner for human beings to die —in bed with his boots off. Such a death was not "what the fates had seemed to decree. Watson was a harness maker living in Cananea, and was known throughout the Sonora district for his peculiar influence over the Yaqui Indians. Lnwittlngly he had acquired this power by virtue of his attitude of total unconcern on an occasion when the Indians sought to kill him. Since then, and until his death, they regarded him as a deity. The harness maker was deaf and dumb. His wife and two of his three children were similarly afflicted. The third child, however, was born normal. . It was this peculiarity that aroused the enmity of the Yaquis several years ago. They saw Watson conversing on his fingers with his wife. They had never heard him utter a word. Such symptoms, according to the Indians creed, were unfailing proof that the evil spirit lived within the man. They believed the harness maker accursed and considered it their duty, as their key to the happy hunting grounds, to exterminate him.

Ambushed Nine Times. On nine occasions Watson was ambuscaded by- the would-be assassins, but escaped the bullets that were sent to take his life. These attempts, however, were but preliminaries. It was during the closing hours of the first battle of Cananea, fought March 23, 24 and 25, 1913, that the grand and final attempt was made, and the Indians failing In this, became the religlous slaves of the harness maker. The night before the battle, 60 Vil? Ilstas, under command of Capt. Alvaro Dieguez, visited Cananea and, breaking into the little Watson home, demanded gold. Watson, being deaf and dumb, could not understand the soldiers. Angered at what they deemed his refusal to comply with their demand. Captain Dieguez stood the unhappy man and his wife against the wall of their bedroom. A firing squad had already formed opposite them, when the cry of the third child attracted the officer’s attention. Seized with a sudden inspiration, Dieguez went over to the crib and lifted the Infant out. Then he snatched up the diminutive mattress. Gold rained onto the floor. The crib was Watson’s hiding place for his horde. The baby’s cries had saved its parents’ lives, for the Mexicans, having got what they sought, left the couple unharmed.

Hardly had the Vllllstas galloped out of the town before the advance detachment of the federal troops galloped In from the south. An hour later a hatless peon raced through the streets crying out that a large force of constitucionalistas —the Carranaa troops —were approaching. It was on the third day of the fighting when victory was assured for the constitucionalistas, that the Yaquis remembered the “evil spirit” and set about a united effort to crush it, in the person of the harness maker. A small band of Indians, a score, perhaps, happened to approach the Watson home and deployed cautiously to the rear. There they saw the harness maker seated calmly on a fence whittling a stick with a jack-knife. He had heard nothing of the battle going on around him, and was totally unconscious that anything was wrong. Hate Turns Jto Worship. It appeared to be “easy picking” for the Indians. They leveled their guns and took pot shots. The combined reports of their weapons roared like cannon, arxj a score of bullets whizzed past Watson’s head, miraculously he escaped being hit, and

being deaf, he heard nothing. Calmly he continued whittling his stick. The Indluns were nonplused. They held a pow-wow for discussion of the miracle. Tremendously affected, the Indians suddenly dashed forward and began the execution of a religious war dance around the mute. No longer did they believe him accursed with an “evil spirit,” but rather blessed with the spirit for good, which defied even bullets. Even until his death, refugees who knew the man declare he wielded a vast influence with the Indians, acting as their mentor often In matters of grave Importance to them. Nor did they ever attribute the “spirit for good” within hUn to the fact that he was a mute.