ed about a foot above
the ground, and the entrance is made from the top. The ears of corn
can plainly be seen behind the bamboo sticks. In March they are taken
out and shelled, and the corn is put in home-made sacks and replaced
in the store-houses.

The Tepehuanes make pulque, but not tesvino, and cotton is cultivated
on a very small scale. They gather the fibre of the maguey and other
plants, and make sacks and ropes of excellent quality, for their own
use as well as for sale in Durango, to which market they also take
any fruit not required for home consumption.

Their only amusement is to drink mescal and pulque. No games are
in use, and to stake money or valuables in any of the "neighbours'"
games is forbidden.

The commonest disease here, strange to say, is malaria, which
sometimes proves fatal. The first thing a Tepehuane does in the
morning is to wash his head, face, and hands with cold water, letting
it dry without wiping it off. He starts to do his work with the water
dripping from him.

The Southern Tepehuanes perform a religious dance called by the
Mexicans _mitote_; it is also found among the Aztecs, the Coras,
and the Huichols. In the vicinity of Lajas is a circular plain set
pleasantly among the oak-trees. This is the dancing-place. At its
eastern side is a jacal, a gable-shaped straw-roof resting on four
poles, the narrow sides standing east and west. Inside of it is found
an altar, consisting simply of a matting of large, split bamboo sticks
(_tapexte_) resting on a framework of four horizontal poles, which
in turn are supported by two pairs of upright forked sticks. On this
altar the people put the food used at the dances, and many ceremonial
objects are placed here or hung under the roof of the jacal.

In regard to their native religion, they are as reticent as their
northern brethren, if not more so. "I would rather be hanged than
tell anything," said one shaman to me. Still, all things come to
him who waits. This very man, who was so tragic, became my friend,
and when we parted he asked me to write my name on a piece of paper,
that he might salute me every morning. A name is a sacred thing,
and they never tell their real native names.

Nowhere else in Mexico have the institutions founded by the
missionaries of early times remained intact as in Lajas. Not only so,
but the regulations are carried even further than was originally
intended, and this in spite of the fact that the Indians have not