his way try to beat her.

The Tarahumare woman is a faithful mother, and takes good care of her
children. She generally has from six to eight, often more. While small
the children play with primitive dolls. They dress up corn-cobs with
scraps of textiles and put them upright in the sand, saying that they
are matachines and drunken women. They also play, like other children,
with beans and acorns, or with young chickens with their legs tied
together. Of course the youngsters maltreat these. Sometimes they
play, too, with stuffed squirrels, but there are no special children's
games. The father makes bows and arrows for the boys, and instructs
them in hunting and agricultural work. As the girls grow up, the mother
teaches them how to spin yarn and weave blankets, "for," she tells
them, "otherwise they will become men." She also warns them not to
have children too rapidly in succession, for there is no one to carry
them for her. Women cannot eat the tenderloin until they are very old,
because if they did they could have no children. For the same reason
they must not eat the pancreas. The women who fear lest they may have
difficulty in giving birth to a child make soup of an opossum and eat
it. Girls must not touch deer antlers, or their breasts would fall off.

A characteristic custom is that the children, no matter how old they
get, and even after they are married and have families of their own,
never help themselves to anything in the parents' house. The mother has
to give all the food, etc., and she gives as long as she has anything.

Parents never inflict corporal punishment upon the young people. If
a boy does not behave himself, he gets scolded, and his father's
friends may also remonstrate with him at a feast. Otherwise, the
children grow up entirely independent, and if angry a boy may even
strike his father. A girl will never go so far, but when scolded will
pout and weep and complain that she is unjustly treated. How different
is this from the way in which, for instance, Chinese children treat
their parents! It does not favour much the theory that the American
Indians originally came from Asia.

Chapter XV

Many Kinds of Games Among the Tarahumares--Betting and
Gambling--Foot-races the National Sport--The Tarahumares are the
Greatest Runners in the World--Divinations for the Race--Mountains
of Betting Stakes--Women's Races.

To my knowledge there is no tribe so fond of games as the