MEXICAN INDIANS. 



43 



j bride and her mother, with several female re- 

 | lations, were seated at the upper end of the 

 apartment ; the bride being dressed up in gaudy- 

 coloured cottons, with immense ear-rings, and a 

 profusion of showy artificial flowers in her hair. 

 She sat with her arms folded, and with a look of 

 determined gravity, or rather, as it appeared, of 

 sulkiness, that promised no comfortable life to the 

 husband. But I learned afterwards, that it was 

 an essential part of the etiquette upon these oc- 

 casions for the bride to be uniformly grave, silent, 

 and seemingly abashed and frightened ; that a 

 smile from her would be considered the height of 

 indecorum ; and a cheerful speech, even to 

 welcome a guest, the most unpardonable inde- 

 licacy. 



No one sat at dinner besides our party, except 

 the bride and her mother, and one of her aunts. 

 The bridegroom would also have sat down with 

 us, had there been room ; but as there was not, 

 he placed himself at a small side-table, along with 

 his father. When we had done dinner, we rose to 

 make room for the second set, consisting of the 

 friends of the Novios ; after which a feast was 

 spread on the grass outside, for all who chose to 

 partake of the good cheer. The object of the first 

 dinner was to prove that the family was respected 

 by their superiors — of the second, to show they 

 were not without friends of their own class — and 

 the dinner without was intended as a display of 

 their liberality. 



When the party who succeeded us had nearly 

 dined, one of them, a poet by profession, rose and 

 addressed some extempore verses to the bride ; 

 which, though humorous enough to make all the 

 rest of the company laugh, were received by her 

 with the most correct indifference. The poet, a 

 sly old fellow, and half tipsy, was a person well 

 known for making it a point of conscience never 

 to allow any wedding, or other merry-making, to 

 pass without a sufficient dose of his verses. 



As we imagined our presence imposed some 

 restraint upon the party, we retired to another 

 cottage, when one of the young ladies, spying a 

 harp, carried it to the door, and played to the 

 people who were lounging about. They immediately 

 began the dance of the country, consisting of a 

 short inelegant step, mixed with an occasional 

 rapid stamping of the foot, while in the act of 

 describing various small circles round one another. 

 The harp on these occasions was generally accom- 

 panied by a shrill song. No more than two 

 persons danced at a time ; and the step, figure, 

 and the numerous gesticulations, appeared to 

 depend on the taste and fancy of the couple them- 

 selves. It is very remarkable that this dance bears 

 the closest resemblance to that of Chili, and every 

 other country we visited along the whole coast. 

 The natural inference from this fact would seem 

 to be, that it owes its introduction to the Spaniards ; 

 who in their turn may have borrowed it, in still 

 earlier times, from the Moors. The dance and 

 the music certainly bear no small resemblance to 

 what we find at the Natches, or native dances in 

 India. 



On the 22d of April, when I was walking 

 through the market-place with one of the officers 

 of the ship, our attention was arrested by a party 

 of native Mexican Indians, who had come from 

 the interior to purchase maize and other articles. 



Each of them carried a bow, and about two dozen 

 of arrows, and wore in his girdle a long broad 

 knife. Their dress was a coarse cotton shirt, made 

 of cloth manufactured by themselves ; and a pair 

 of leather small-clothes, loose at the knee, fringed 

 with a line of tassels, and short strips of leather ; 

 each being intended to represent some article 

 belonging to the wearer ; one meant his horse, 

 another his bow, another, larger and more orna- 

 mental, stood for his wife, and so on. The most 

 striking circumstance, however, was, that all these 

 Indians wore feathers round their heads, precisely 

 in the manner represented in the drawings which 

 embellish the old accounts of the conquest of the 

 country by Cortes. Some of these people tied 

 round their straw-hats a circle of red flowers, so 

 much resembling feathers, that it was not easy to 

 distinguish between the two. Several of the 

 Indians wore necklaces of white beads made of 

 bone, the distinctive mark, as we were told, of 

 being married. A little old man of the party, who 

 seemed much entertained by our curiosity, begged 

 our attention to a rod about two feet long, which 

 he carried in his hand, and to the skin of a little 

 bird of brilliant plumage, suspended at his left 

 knee : these two symbols he gave us to understand 

 belonged to him as chief of the village. The only 

 woman of the party stood apart, wrapped in a 

 coarse kind of blanket, holding the bridles of the 

 mules. At first, these poor Indians were rather 

 alarmed at the interest we took in their dress and 

 appearance; and as they understood but little 

 Spanish, shrunk back from us. But an obliging 

 person in the market-place stepped forward to act 

 as interpreter, which soon reassured them, and 

 they came round us afterwards with confidence ; 

 but it was with great reluctance they parted with 

 their bows and arrows, and their feathered orna- 

 ments. The old man could not be prevailed upon 

 to part with his rod of authority, nor his official 

 bird ; neither could we induce them to sell, at any 

 price, that part of their dress to which the 

 inventory of their goods and chattels was ap- 

 pended. 



These Indians are a small and feeble race of 

 men, resembling, in this respect, the aboriginal 

 inhabitants of the country, whom the early tra- 

 vellers have described. Their bows and arrows 

 are suited to their strength, being more like those 

 of school-boys than the arms of men who have 

 their country to defend ; and it is impossible not 

 to look back with pity upon the unequal contest 

 waged in this unfortunate country, when the 

 musket and bayonet of the disciplined Spaniard 

 were opposed to weapons so contemptible, and in 

 such feeble hands. 



From the Plaza, we went to a house where a 

 bee-hive of the country was opened in our presence. 

 The bees, the honeycomb, and the hive, differ 

 essentially from those of Europe. The hive is 

 generally made out of a log of wood, from two to 

 three feet long, and eight or ten inches in diameter, 

 hollowed out, and closed at the ends by circular 

 doors, cemented closely to the wood, but capable 

 of being removed at pleasure. Some persons use 

 cylindrical hives, made of earthenware, instead ( 

 of the clumsy apparatus of wood ; these are 

 relieved by raised figures and circular rings, so ! 

 as to form rather handsome ornaments in the . 

 verandah of a house, where they are suspended 



