SERVILE CONDITION LOCAL ADHESIVENESS. 33 



before observed, when he quits the agricultural field, exhibits 

 most talent in the imitative arts. The instruments and mate- 

 rials he uses are of the simplest and rudest kind, and, although 

 the imitations produced by him are wonderfully accurate, yet 

 they want that lively variety which is only produced by vivid 

 imaginations. 



Upon the plantations the Indians are in reality slaves, notwith- 

 standing the Mexican laws prohibit slavery. This condition is 

 produced chiefly by two causes. The Mexican Indian who cher- 

 ishes, as we have seen, a remarkable devotion to his old habits, 

 customs, utensils and implements, is gifted with an equal tenacity 

 or adhesiveness for the place of his birth. Nomadic as were his 

 ancestors, the modern Mexican Indian is no wanderer. The idea 

 of emigration, even to another state or district, never originates in 

 his brain, or is tolerated if proposed to him as a voluntary act. So 

 helpless is his condition if placed beyond the limits of his habitual 

 neighborhood or hereditary haunts, that he feels himself perfectly 

 lost, abandoned and cast off, if compelled to change either his resi- 

 dence or his occupation. He has no variety of resources. He 

 knows nothing of alternatives. The operations of his mind, as 

 well as of his hand, are perfectly mechanical. The utter helpless- 

 ness of such an individual, if suddenly transferred from the midst 

 of his companions and all the scenes of his life-long associations or 

 duties, may be easily conceived, and consequently the greatest 

 punishment that a haciendado, or Mexican planter, can inflict upon 

 his Indian serf is to expel him from the estate upon which he and 

 his ancestors have worked from time immemorial. When other 

 punishments, which elsewhere would be thought severe, fail to 

 produce reform or amendment in the Indian's conduct, it usually 

 happens, that the serious threat of expulsion from the estate, made 

 by the owner himself, or his authorised representative, to the na- 

 tive, reduces the refractory individval to subjection. Thus it is, 

 that this peculiar territorial and local adhesiveness contributes to 

 making the Indian's condition not only menial but servile. 



The second cause may be found in the habits of wild and ex- 

 travagant indulgence which we have already described. These 

 licentious outbursts of recklessness create a pecuniary bond between 

 the proprietor and his laborer. The Indian becomes his debtor. 

 It is the policy of the landholder to establish this relation between 

 himself and the Indian, and consequently he affords him every fa- 

 cility to sell himself in advance, even for life, to his estate. The 

 Indian, is thus at least completely mortgaged to the landed pro- 



