shamed to cheat at games until the
Indian has lost everything he has. One poor wretch lost several
oxen in one game of quinze. Other sharpers borrow money from the
natives and never pay back the loan, or else impose fines on the
Indians under the pretext of being authorities. Some foist themselves
upon the Tarahumares at their feasts, which they disturb by getting
drunk and violating women. Where the Indians are still masters of the
situation they catch such an offender and take him before the Mexican
authorities, insisting upon his paying for all the requirements for
another feast, as he has spoiled the value of the one on which he
intruded. In the central part of the country, near Norogachic, they
may even kill such a transgressor.

It is generally through mescal that the Indians become peons. When
the Indian has once developed a taste for mescal, he will pay anything
to get it, first his animals, then his land. When he has nothing more
to sell, the whites still give him this brandy and make him work. And
there he is. To work himself free is next to impossible, because his
wages are not paid in money, but in provisions, which barely suffice
to keep him and his family alive. Indians are sometimes locked up
over night to force them to work.

The children of such parents grow up as peons of the Mexicans, who
deal out miserable wages to the descendants of the owners of the
land on which the usurpers grow rich. Before the occupancy of the
country by the new masters, the Tarahumares never knew what poverty
was. No wonder that the Christian Tarahumares believe that hell is
peopled so thickly with Mexicans that there is not room for all. Some
have been crowded out, and have come to the Tarahumares to trouble
them. The Indians in some districts have been cheated so much that
they no longer believe anything the white men tell them, and they do
not offer food any more to a white stranger if he is what they call
"deaf," in other words, unable to speak and understand their language
and explain what he is about.

They make very good servants when treated right, although they often
want a change; but they will return to a good master. I once had a
Tarahumare woman in my employ as cook. She was very industrious and in
every way superior to any Mexican servant I ever had. When not busy
with her kitchen work, she was mending her own or her two children's
clothes. While very distrustful, she was good-tempered and honourable,
and spo