18 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 64 



ambition or in any desire to accumulate wealth with which to acquire 

 comforts and luxuries not enjoyed by their neighbors. It happens 

 occasionally that an individual does perforce acquire wealth, as 

 in the case of the head chjef of the Icaiche Indians, who was 

 paid a salary by the Mexican Government to keep his people 

 quiet, and royalties on chicle cut on his lands by various contractors. 

 He accumulated a considerable sum, aU in gold coin, which he 

 stored in a large demijohn and hid in the bush. At his death, as no 

 one knew the place where the demijohn was buried, the money was 

 permanently lost. They are remarkably skillful at finding their way 

 in the bush by the shortest route from point to point, possessing a 

 faculty in this respect which amounts almost to an instinct; they are 

 skillful also at f ollowmg the tracks of men and animals in the bush 

 by means of very slight indications, as broken twigs and disturbed 

 leaves, imperceptible to an ordinary individual. The men are very 

 stoical in bearing pain. I have removed both arms at the shoulder 

 joints, with no other surgical instrument than a long butcher's knife, 

 and no anesthetic except several drinks of rum, for an Indian, 

 crushed between the roUers of a native sugar mill, without his uttering 

 a single complaint. The Indians are undoubtedly cruel, but not 

 wantonly so, as the shocking acts of cruelty reported as being per- 

 petrated by them from time to time are usually by way of reprisal for 

 similar or worse acts on the part of the Mexicans. Before the rising 

 of the Indians in 1848, they were throughout this part of Yucatan prac- 

 tically in a state of slavery, and were often treated by their Spanish 

 masters with the utmost barbarity. As an instance of this it is 

 recorded of a well-known merchant of Bacalar that he was in the 

 habit of burying his Indian servants in the ground to the neck, with 

 their heads shaved, exposed to the hot sun; their heads were then 

 smeared with molasses and the victims were left to the ants ; and this 

 punishment was inflicted for no very serious offense. It is hardly to 

 be wondered at that such treatment left in the Indians' hearts an 

 undying hatred for their masters which, when in their turn they 

 gained the ascendancy, found vent in acts of the most horrible 

 cruelty — flogging, burning, mutilation, and even crucifixion. 



Dress 



The men wear hats of platted pahn leaf, which they make them- 

 selves; those woven from coarse split pahn leaf are known as xani 

 pole, those of very fine leaf, like Panama hats, bear the name lomi 

 pole (pi. 1). They wear cotton trousers (eex), or in some sections 

 short cotton drawers {xkulex), with a short, loose, shirt-like jacket of 

 cotton hanging outside the trousers. On the feet they use sandals 

 of danta hide (xanaplceueT) held in place by a leather or henequen 

 thong passing between the great and second toes and around the 



