610 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 16, 1910. 
He dearly loves to see you cook. When you 
finally rebel, he falls suddenly and desperately 
ill and takes to his bunk—until the trout are 
broiled to a crisp brown. Then he as mysteri¬ 
ously recovers. And it is a truth that no matter 
how plentiful game may be, your trip will be 
ruined—will simply decay on your hands—and 
all because of him. 
So you must keep an eye out for him, and if 
you have a doubt when he proposes to accom¬ 
pany you on your next expedition, just say that 
you have a most important engagement with a 
man down-town. Then go to your old tried and 
true friend with the keen gray eyes, the grip that 
makes you wince, and the strong shoulders and 
stronger determination to “get those ducks if it 
takes three months and a leg.” 
Mexicans who have settled in this State, and 
make no effort to elevate themselves. They are 
satisfied to live, and, according to figures in the 
possession of the Mexican government, are 
about equal in numbers as twenty-five years 
ago. Few epidemics visit Sinaloa, and the In¬ 
dians are, as a rule, temperate, having none of 
the temptations open to the aborigines of the 
cities and railroad camps of the republic. 
From clay they make all their cooking dishes, 
fire-hardening them and ornamenting them with 
beautiful though crude designs, painted with the 
juices of various weeds. Without potter’s 
wheels, these utensils are made wonderfully 
round, and compare favorably with the pottery 
of the more advanced tribes of the tableland,. 
Close to the Ground in Mexico 
By HARRY 
I HAVE just returned from a trip through 
the Southwestern States of this republic, 
making photographs and gathering up 
here an idol, there the skin of a jaguar or a 
bit of weaving from the native looms of the 
people. 
Sinaloa is a long State, comparable almost 
with Chile, as it lies along the west coast of 
Mexico, just as Chile lies along the Pacific 
shore of South America. Its climate is con¬ 
sidered the most desirable of all the “tierra 
caliente” of Mexico, and, while it does not com¬ 
pare with the table land of the interior, on 
which Guadalajara and the City of Mexico are 
situated, still it is far from being so disagree¬ 
able as either Sonora or Tepic, its northern 
and southern neighbors, respectively. 
Sinaloa is much advertised as “the California 
of Mexico,” but it is not a good place for an 
American farmer, despite the alluring pros¬ 
pectuses of the colonization companies, unless 
he speaks the language and is familiar with the 
culture of bananas, cocoanuts, fiber plants and 
pineapples. Mazatlan is a great port, now that 
the railway has reached it, but too much atten¬ 
tion has been devoted to putting in a costly 
seawall and other improvements instead of 
deepening the eight-mile harbor, which is 
mostly a shallow mudflat, lined with cocoanut 
palms. 
There is fine fishing in the open channel be¬ 
tween the mainland and the three islands which 
are visible from the seawall, but I understand 
that a reel and light line have never been used 
here, while a nine-ounce rod would be laughed 
at. There are tuna here, a large white, salmon¬ 
like fish and another big fellow, slightly reddish 
in color which looks and fights like a yellow- 
tail. 
Like most new countries, the most interesting 
part of this fertile State is its inhabitants, pos¬ 
sibly because the country is so fertile. Cer¬ 
tainly they are lazy and worthless for anything 
which we Northerners call work; it is no cause 
for labor to be alive in Sinaloa. Game is 
abundant, easily caught, and the fruit of the 
great pithaya cactus is ripe almost from season 
to season. 
Every native, whether mounted or afoot— 
and most of them ride—carries a slender stick 
ten feet long, sharpened at one end and the 
point hardened with fire. One supposes these 
sticks are a sort of primitive lance, until one 
sees the Indian spear a cactus fruit from a 
branch seven or eight feet above his head. 
These pithayas contain many seeds and a little 
H. DUNN 
blood-red pulp, all of which, except the spines, f < 
is food for the Indian. 
All day long these Indian men wander 
through the jungle, a wall of green, broken only 
here and there by the old trails of half-wild 
cattle, gathering the cactus fruit. It would 
seem that some would be dried, or at least taken 
to the brush jacal which represents home to the 
Indian; but no, he sits down and eats what he '• 
gathers immediately. If his wife wants any of 
the fruit, she goes and gets it herself; she also 
gathers the food for the babies, of which there 
are not usually so large a number as in the 
upper-class families of Mexico. 
Most of these people are the same kind of 
Indians who were here w r hen the Spaniards 
came. They have never been powerful enough 
tc organize a government of their own, and, 
consequently, they have never attracted the at¬ 
tention of a conquering tribe. Their clothing 
is of the simplest, made of cheap cotton cloth 
bought from the near-by factories, of which 
there are many in Mexico. All their utensils 
of life, of the chase, of burial, are made by 
themselves, and every man and woman is not 
alone the architect of his or her own fate, but 
of the house in which they live, the dishes from 
which they eat and the hats they wear. 
One of the most interesting sights I have 
seen in a trip through nearly every State in the 
republic, was in the jungle between Culiacan, 
the capital of Sinaloa, and Mazatlan. I was 
following one of the cactus gatherers in a 
winding-cattle trail, when I came suddenly on 
a little natural clearing. Here were half a dozen 
people, seated on the ground, all working on 
wooden dishes, platter-shaped and each large 
enough to hold an entire meal. The wood they 
were carving was freshly cut from the jungle 
1 trees, their tools were bits of old band iron, 
secured in the railroad junk heaps. It is only 
a few months, however, since these bits of iron 
have replaced the stone adzes of former years. 
The coming of the railroad, less than a year 
ago, brought the iron, and even yet the Indians 
attempt to sharpen their crude chisels by rub¬ 
bing them on stones. One Indian will take 
his blanket, a little parched corn and some dried 
meat, gather up all the iron tools, carry them 
six or seven miles back into the hills and stay 
there until he has sharpened all the tools of 
the entire village. The idea of bringing one of 
the flinty stones to the group of huts and thus 
saving the monthly trip has never come to these 
children of Sinaloa. 
They do not mix with the whites, or even the 
with which these Sinaloese have had little if any 
commercial intercourse. 
One brush hut does for each family, no¬ 
matter how large, and the clothing of the in¬ 
dividual during the day suffices for his bed at 
night as well. Almost all their game is taken 
with snares. Bows and arrows are known, but 
guns are almost entirely lacking, even close to- 
Culiacan, which is supposed to have 22,000 in¬ 
habitants, and in the suburbs of Mazatlan, which 
has some 27,000. 
Good water is at a premium throughout 
Sinaloa, and two drinks are sold by the Indians on 
the streets of every town. One is an infusion 
of barley in cold water and sweetened with 
sugar; the other is the juice of the cocoanut, 
diluted with water and sweetened or not, as 
the buyer chooses. Sugar is cheap and plenti¬ 
ful; cocoanuts can be bought for one to three 
cents each, while labor is worth practically 
nothing. Consequently, the resident buys these 
drinks at one cent each—all he can drink. The 
foreigner, if he does not speak the language, 
pays from five to ten cents, according as the 
peddler estimates his customer’s gullibility. 
Hundreds of tons of cocoanuts rot every year 
on the shores of Mazatlan Harbor for the 
simple reason that no attempt is made to mar¬ 
ket them. The people, even the most advanced 
of the business men, do not know that outside 
their petty world, there is another land waiting, 
waiting for their product. When this country 
is developed it will be the richest in the world— 
but it will be a long time in the developing. 
The Vaquero—the Grizzly and the 
Rawhide Rope. 
It was in 1833 at the Green River rendezvous 
that Captain Bonneville detached I. R. Walker 
and forty stark trappers properly outfitted for 
one year and dispatched them on discovery to 
the Great Salt Lake and the regions beyond it, 
directing them to explore the lake, trap beaver 
on its tributary streams, keep a log of the trip 
and map the lake, its fluvial feeders and the 
country about it, meeting him at his rendezvous 
in the Bear River valley at the expiration of the 
year. Instead of this these frontier blades tossed 
up a feather and followed it into the land of 
eternal sunshine and free beef, Southern Cali¬ 
fornia—only the hide of each animal killed had 
to be turned over to the mission fathers who 
mainly owned the herds. They made Los 
Angeles the center of their equestrian exploits 
in the art of riding a grub line. They had the 
time of their lives and put Captain Bonneville 
