ADVENTURING DOWN THE WEST COAST OF MEXICO 



clothed, the Mexican Indian is a fair 

 laborer ; but usually he is half starved 

 and half dead for sleep. 



A lifelong diet of corn and beans 



From the northern border to Chiapas, 

 the Indian — and of the 15,000,000 Mexi- 

 cans more than 6,000,000 are pure-bred 

 Indians — is on the border of complete 

 destitution. He has so little that he has 

 really nothing. 



The unvarying food in every puebla is 

 frijoles and tortillas — beans and cakes. 

 The Indian may get a slice of meat now 

 and then, when the scavenging pig or one 

 of the few remaining cattle has been 

 killed. There are a few chickens in each 

 village. He may, now and then, kill a 

 little game or catch a few fish. 



But, broadly speaking, he lives on corn 

 and beans. To mitigate the monotony of 

 that diet, he soaks his food in chili sauce. 

 The blazing torture that sets up in the 

 unaccustomed mouth is almost that of a 

 fire blister. Yet the Indian eats it by the 

 handful. 



He lives on this diet. That he has the 

 sturdiest sort of a constitution is evi- 

 denced by the fact that an Indian, habitu- 

 ally underfed on corn and beans, is able 

 to fill his morales, a sort of bag the run- 

 ners tie to their waists, with a ground 

 mixture of parched corn and salt and live 

 upon it for weeks in the back country, 

 where no other food is to be found. 



But that he will do better work and 

 more of it and more days of it to the 

 week on better food has been abundantly 

 proved by American employers, who in- 

 sist on feeding their men. 



If the peon is given money for food, 

 he buys beans and cakes and tequila; but 

 if he is fed in the company kitchen, he 

 grows strong and works hard. 



In the north he huddles in a 'dobe hut, 

 usually without windows, sometimes with- 

 out even window openings. The floor is 

 mud, the only furniture a few earthen 

 cooking pots. It even lacks a chimney, 

 and the fire is built in the middle of the 

 floor and the smoke curls out at the level 

 of the rafters. 



His clothes are two pieces of thin 

 cotton, with rawhide sandals sometimes. 

 His womenkind wear sleazy wrappers. 

 He folds a blanket about his shoulders in 

 the day and sleeps in it at night. Usually 



the man of the house and his wife and 

 the surviving children sleep on the mud 

 floor without a pretense of a bedstead or 

 bedding more than an armful of grass, 

 when the pigs and dogs and chickens have 

 tracked in too much water during the 

 rainy season. 



FIFTEEN YEARS IS THE MEXICAN INDIAN^ 

 AVERAGE LENGTH OF LIFE 



I said the surviving children because 

 the death rate of children under one year 

 of age is twice what it is in the United 

 States, and the death rate of children 

 under ten is three times as great. The 

 average tenure of life in Mexico is fifteen 

 years. Mexican statistics are untrust- 

 worthy, but these given have not been 

 challenged, to my knowledge. 



It is not now strange to me that these 

 half-clothed, half-fed, shivering folk 

 wake up in the middle of the night to 

 talk, nor that they must sleep in the hot 

 sun of noon. The marvel to me is that 

 when they wake up — of a cold midnight, 

 when in a blanket and overcoat and 

 warmly bedded on a pile of straw I shiv- 

 ered — they always laugh and chatter and 

 seem happy. 



_ As one goes farther south, the only 

 difference in living conditions is that the 

 Indian wears fewer clothes, and that his 

 home is made of thatched poles instead 

 of adobe. 



The clay-built huts of Guaymas gave 

 way at Culiacan to brush jacals. Three 

 sides of the shack are walled in by poles, 

 through the interstices of which the sun 

 sometimes shines and the winds blow. 

 The fourth is open to the world. Over 

 all is a brush roof. 



A little cooking place is built up on the 

 open side. A metate, or stone on which 

 the boiled corn is ground for tortilla 

 paste, a few round pots in which water 

 is carried from the river, a gasoline tin 

 or two for cooking, and the home is com- 

 plete. 



"One can get almost anything for an 

 old tin can," a roaming prospector said. 

 "Such things are priceless to the Indian." 



Pessimism is not justified, however. 

 The Indian is what he is to-day because 

 of centuries of oppression, misrule, and 

 demagoguery, perhaps, but also because 

 he is an Indian. He knows no better. 



