ADVENTURING DOWN THE WEST COAST OF MEXICO 



475 



TWO SOLDIERS OF THE WARLIKE YAQUI TRIBE 



For the first time in history since the Spaniards reached New Spain, the Yaqui may be 

 said to be in a position of ease and comfort. The Mexican Government is rationing and paying 

 the Yaqui men, partly to make certain that they will continue to be peaceful and partly to 

 retain their services in the event of war. Every Yaqui is a fighting man. 



Guaymas is on the edge of the Yaqui 

 country. We had been conscious of the 

 Yaqui all the way south, of course, for 

 in Sonora he forms the background to 

 every conversation; but it was here that 

 he stepped into the foreground. 



When things go wrong in Yaquiland 

 he is apt to beleaguer Guaymas. It is 

 not so very long ago that no one dared 

 walk out of the dangerous end of town. 

 The Yaquis have burned railroad bridges 

 and held up railroad trains and murdered 

 passengers. 



ONLY 5,000 YAQUIS SURVIVE 



At one time the Yaquis may have num- 

 bered 30,000 souls ; -now there may be 

 5,000 in all. 



Their home was in the fertile valleys 

 of the Yaqui and Mayo rivers, with the 

 hills behind as hunting grounds. They 

 were as tireless on the trail as the 

 Apaches or the Navajos, and, despite 

 three hundred years of contact with a 



more or less diluted civilization, are to- 

 day about what they were when the first 

 Spaniard came to Sonora. 



They live in shacks made of brush, 

 prefer the meat of burros to beef, and 

 preserve jealously the purity of the Ya- 

 qui blood. They are religious after their 

 own fashion, mingling the rites of the 

 Catholic Church with those of their own 

 barbaric faith. 



Most Americans who know the Yaqui 

 say that if he had been let alone he would 

 have let the white men alone. 



But he owned fertile valleys and mine- 

 rich mountains. The history of our own 

 West teems with analogous cases. The 

 miners and the farmers established them- 

 selves in his territory, and the Yaqui de- 

 clared war. The technical honors seem 

 to have gone to the Yaqui. 



It is true that at one time mines were 

 opened everywhere in his mountains and 

 the fat river bottoms were taken from 



