[227] Vocabulario Manual de la Lengua Ópata, por Francisco Pimentel; Boletin de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia y Estadistica, tomo X, 1863, pp. 287-313.
[228] In the archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
[229] The latter form (_se-ere_) corresponds precisely with the current Papago pronunciation of the term, though none of the various Papago informants consulted were able to interpret the expression; indeed, they simply relegated it to the category of “old names” which they deemed it needless to discuss. An archaic form of orthography, noted in the synonymy (pp. 128-130), is SSeri, which suggests the same sounding of the initial sibilant.
[230] From 105 to 130 miles; Bartlett, Personal Narrative, vol. I, p. 445.
[231] Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago, 1894, p. 104. In a letter to Mr F. W. Hodge, under date of September 11, 1900, Dr Lumholtz says: “After renewed investigation I have come to another opinion regarding the meaning of the tribal name _Tarahumari_. This word is a Spanish corruption of the native name ‘Raramuri’. Though the meaning of this word is not clear, that much is certain that _rala_ or _tara_ means ‘foot’, and I therefore take it that we must be at least approximately correct when we say that the word signifies ‘foot-runner’.”
An Indian has been known to carry a letter from Guazapares to Chihuahua and back again in five days, the distance being nearly 800 miles. In some parts where the Tarahumaris serve the Mexicans they are used to run in the wild horses, driving them into the corral. It may take them two or three days to do it, sleeping at night and living on a little pinole. They bring in the horses thoroughly exhausted, while they themselves are still fresh. They will outrun any horses if you give them time enough. They will pursue deer in the snow or with dogs in the rain for days and days, until at last the animal is cornered and shot with arrows or falls an easy prey from sheer exhaustion, its hoofs dropping off.[232]
[232] American Anthropologist, vol. VIII, 1895, p. 92.
The Papago, of the same region and linguistic stock, have a racing game in which a ball of wood or stone caught on the foot is thrown, followed, and thrown again until the two or more rival racers have covered 20 to 40 miles in the course of a few hours; and their feats as couriers and trailers are quite up to those of the Opata. Yet among all these tribes, and among the Mexicans as well, the Seri are known as _the_ runners par excellence of the Sonoran province; and it is but natural that their astounding swiftness and lightness of foot should have brought them an appellation among contemporaries to whom these qualities peculiarly appeal.