e wherewithal to pay his losses, a
Tarahumare may go on playing for a fortnight or a month, until he has
lost everything he has in this world, except his wife and children;
he draws the line at that. He scrupulously pays all his gambling debts.

The northern Tepehuanes also know this game, and play with sticks
eighteen to twenty inches long. As these larger sticks fly quite a
distance off when rebounding, the players sit rather far apart.

Wrestling also may be observed, but what may be termed the national
sport, of which the Tarahumares are inordinately fond, is foot-racing,
which goes on all the year round, even when the people are weakened
from scarcity of food. The interest centres almost entirely in
the betting that goes with it; in fact, it is only another way of
gambling. It is called rala hipa ("with the foot throw"), the word
alluding to a ball used at the race.

No doubt the Tarahumares are the greatest runners in the world, not
in regard to speed, but endurance. A Tarahumare will easily run 170
miles without stopping. When an Indian is sent out as a messenger,
he goes along at a slow trot, running steadily and constantly. A
man has been known to carry a letter in five days from Guazapares to
Chihuahua and back, a distance of nearly 600 miles by the road. Even
considering shortcuts, which he, no doubt, knew, it was quite a feat
of endurance; for he must have lived, as the Indians always do while
travelling, on pinole and water only.

Where the Indians serve the Mexicans they are often employed to run
wild horses into the corral. It may take them two or three days,
but they will bring them in, the horses thoroughly exhausted, while
the men, who, of course, economise their strength, and sleep, and eat
pinole, are comparatively fresh. In the same way they will run down a
deer, following it for days through snow and rain, until the animal
is cornered and easily shot with arrows, or until it is overtaken
utterly jaded and its hoofs dropping off.

This propensity for running is so great that the name of the tribe
alludes to it. Tarahumare is a Spanish corruption of ralamari, the
meaning of which, though somewhat obscure, may doubtless best be
given as "foot-runners," because rala certainly means "foot."

The race is always between two localities, each side being represented
by from four to twenty runners. The two parties show in their
apparel some distinctive mark; for instance, all of one troop have
red head