uses. The floor of the cave was getting higher and
higher. I had to crawl on my stomach for about ten yards and came
suddenly to the edge of a precipice; but a track led around it to the
other side, where I found the main portion of the houses, eighteen
in all, the largest having a side thirteen feet long, though the
others were considerably smaller. They were arranged just like those
of the first section, in one row, and were made of the same material,
except a few, which were built of adobe. In these the walls were only
eight inches thick. One of the rooms was still complete, had square
openings, and may have been a store-room. The others seem to have had
the conventional Indian apertures. In two chambers I noticed circular
spaces sunk into the floor six inches deep and about fourteen inches
in diameter. What I took to be an estufa, nineteen feet in diameter,
was found in the lowest section. Behind it was only a small cluster
of five houses higher up in the cave.

Though this is the only ancient cave-dwelling I visited in Ohuivo,
I was assured that there were several others in the neighbourhood. The
broken country around Zapuri is interesting on account of the various
traditions which, still living on the lips of the natives, refer to a
mysterious people called the Cocoyomes, regarded by some Tarahumares
as their ancient enemies, by others as their ancestors. They were
the first people in the world, were short of stature and did not
eat corn. They subsisted mainly on herbs, especially a small agave
called tshawi. They were also cannibals, devouring each other as
well as the Tarahumares. The Cocoyomes lived in caves on the high
cliffs of the sierra, and in the afternoon came down, like deer, to
drink in the rivers. As they had no axes of iron they could not cut
any large trees, and were unable to clear much land for the planting
of corn. They could only burn the grass in the arroyos in order to
get the fields ready. Long ago, when the Cocoyomes were very bad,
the sun came down to the earth and burned nearly all of them; only
a few escaped into the big caves.

Here in Zapuri the Cocoyomes had four large caves inside of which
they had built square houses of very hard adobe; in one of the caves
they had a spring. The Tarahumares often fought with them, and once,
when the Cocoyomes were together in the largest cave, which had no
spring, the Tarahumares besieged them for eight days, until all of
the Cocoyomes had perished