take a century yet before they
will all be made the servants of the whites and disappear like the
Opatas. Their assimilation may benefit Mexico, but one may well ask:
Is it just? Must the weaker always be first crushed, before he can
be assimilated by the new condition of things?

Future generations will not find any other record of the Tarahumares
than what scientists of the present age can elicit from the lips of
the people and from the study of their implements and customs. They
stand out to-day as an interesting relic of a time long gone by; as a
representative of one of the most important stages in the development
of the human race; as one of those wonderful primitive tribes that
were the founders and makers of the history of mankind.

Chapter XXIII

Cerro de Muinora, the Highest Mountain in Chihuahua--The Northern
Tepehuanes--Troubles Cropping Out of the Camera--Sinister Designs
on Mexico Attributed to the Author--Maizillo--Foot-races Among
the Tepehuanes--Influence of the Mexicans Upon the Tepehunaes, and
_Vice Versa_--Profitable Liquor Traffic--Medicine Lodges--Cucuduri,
the Master of the Woods--Myth of the Pleiades.

On my return from an excursion southward from Guadalupe y Calvo as
far as Mesa de San Rafael, I ascended on January 12, 1895, Cerro
de Muinora, probably the highest elevation in northern Mexico. I
say probably, because I had no opportunity of measuring Cerro de
Candelaria. Approached from the north it looked like a long-stretched
mountain, covered with pines, and falling off abruptly toward the
west. It is conspicuous in the songs and beliefs of the Tepehuane
Indians.

We made a camp about 1,000 feet below the top, among the pines, with
snow lying all around us, and in the night a flock of parrots flew
screeching past the tents. I was surprised to find the temperature so
mild; there was no ice on the water, not even at night. The aneroid
showed the height of the top to be 10,266 feet (20.60 in. at a
temperature of 40 deg. F., at 5.15 P.M.). I noticed more birds between
our camping-place and the top than I had ever seen before in pine
forests. Blackbirds, the brown creepers (_certhia_), and red crossbills
were seen on the very top.

From Guadalupe y Calvo I continued my journey to the northwest in order
to visit the Tepehuanes, about fifteen hundred of whom still exist
here in the northernmost outpost of the tribe's former domain. Only
seventeen miles north