30° 
demoralization and degeneration of the Aztecs which enabled 
Cortez, with a handful of men, to conquer the whole empire of 
Montezuma. 
The cultivation of Maize, as we know, spread rapidly north- 
ward from Mexico, so that even before the days of Columbus 
it was the Principal crop of all the agricultural Indians from the 
Rio Grande to the St. Lawrence and from the Atlantic to the 
Colorado of the West. Considering the abundance of corn among 
our Indians, and their craving for all intoxicants, it seems almost 
incomprehensible that the primitive and very simple art of making 
corn beer should never have found its way north of the Rio 
Grande, 
For several generations, the Apaches of Arizona and New 
Mexico have been known to prepare from corn an alcoholic drink 
which they called tizwin or tulpi. They are extremely fond of it 
and have ignored or defied all ordinances for its suppression ; tiz- 
Win formerly figured prominently in all their ceremonial dances 
which were generally preceded by a long fast in order the better to 
€xperience its full intoxicating effects. It is oae of the strange 
circumstances of this obscure subject that the Apaches have al- 
ways been nomadic, hunting and plundering Indians, seldom 
planting any vegetables and always more inclined to steal corn 
than to raise it, On the other hand, their agricultural neighbors, 
the Pimos, Papagos and Pueblo Indians, with always plenty of 
maize in stock, do not sezm to have indulged in tizwin although 
they must, of course, have known its preparation and effects; 
their abstinence was probably a matter of indifference, perhaps of _ 
pr inciples ; caring less for intoxicants than the roving and murder- : 
Ous Apaches, they had not yet developed a taste for it. ne e | 
Iam unable to determine the exact time when the Apaches _ 
began the manufacture of tizwin ; the first explorers of California, — . 
Arizona and New Mexico say nothing about it or any other alco- 
holic drink. I am informed by an army officer, stationed at the 
San Carlos agency, Arizona, that the old men of the tribe say ened = 
it began long before their time, that their fathers learned it bakin 
the Chiricahuas (then dwelling on the Mexican border), who them- : 
selves learned it from the Mexicans. But it seems impossible that 
_ this knowledge should have reached the Indians of ae 
