many of their white sisters might be
pardonably envious of.

There are twenty Mexicans living here, counting the children; they
are poor, and have no house or lands of their own, but live in the
Convento and rent lands from the Indians. The Coras, of course,
are all nominally Christians, and the padre from San Juan Peyotan
attends to their religious needs. I was told that as recently as forty
years ago they had to be driven to church with scourges. Some families
still put their dead away in caves difficult of access, closing up the
entrance, without interring the bodies, and they still dance mitote,
although more or less secretly.

The Indians catch crayfish, and other small fish, with a kind of
hand-net of cotton thread, which they hold wide open with their elbows
while crawling in the water between the stones. Where the river is
deep they will even dive with the net held in this way.

The day after my arrival I was requested to come to. La Comunidad,
that the people might hear my letters read. This over, I explained
that I wanted them to sell me some corn and beans, a blue tunic of
native make, and other objects of interest to me, that I also wanted
them to furnish me two reliable men to go to the city of Tepic for
mail and money; that I wished to photograph them and to be shown
their burial-caves, and to have a real, good old shaman visit me,
and some men to interpret. The messengers were duly appointed, but it
took them two days to prepare the tortillas they had to take along as
provisions. My desire to see the burial-caves was looked upon with
ill-favour. The old shaman, however, was promptly sent for. He soon
arrived at the council-house, and without having seen me he told the
Indian authorities that "it was all right to tell this man about their
ancient beliefs, that the Government might know everything." When he
came to see me he took my hand to kiss, as if I were a padre, and I
had a most interesting interview with the truthful, dear old man, who
told me much about the Cora myths, traditions, and history. I gathered
from what he said that he could not be far from a hundred years old,
and he had not a grey hair in his head. His faculties were intact,
except his hearing, and while I was interviewing him he was making
a fish-net.

I had him with me one day and a part of the next, but by that time
he was a good deal fatigued mentally, and I had to let him go.

There was an Indian here, Canuto, who could read