CHAPTER V.

CENTRAL CHIHUAHUA--IN THE LAND OF THE LIVING CAVE AND CLIFF DWELLERS--THE TARAHUMARI INDIANS, CIVILIZED AND SAVAGE.

I propose to devote the greater portion of this chapter to a consideration of the Tarahumari Indians of Central and Southwestern Chihuahua, a tribe of aborigines that I have occasionally seen mentioned in works and articles on Mexico (especially its northern part), but of which I can find no detailed account anywhere in the literature I possess of this region. The fact of my having been in that country for some time, seeing and investigating some of their most curious habitations and customs, coupled with what information I could get from a few hardy Mexican pioneers in the fastnesses of the great Sierra Madre range, who corroborate each other, constitutes the basis of my comments.

Although the Tarahumari tribe of Indians are not at all well known--for I doubt if many of my readers have ever heard of them--they are, nevertheless, a very numerous people, and were they in the United States or Canada, where statistics of even the savages are much better kept than in Mexico, they would have an almost world-wide reputation. On account of this utter lack of statistics it is impossible to state with close approximation the number of Tarahumari Indians in this part of the country. So I will have to rely on the estimates (really broad guesses) of those best informed, giving my readers the benefit of my own researches as a check, although not claiming they will make a very good one, to the wide range of estimates made by others. In a previous