A Mexican gentleman who owns a part interest in a rich silver mine in the great broken Barrancas leading out from the Sierra Madre toward the Pacific side, or into the States of Sinaloa and Sonora (but who always reached his mine by way of Chihuahua), told me that he had several times passed over the mountain trail on mule-back, when with a pack train, and not seen a single Tarahumari, although the trip occupied a number of days in their country, and took him where he should have seen two or three hundred if they had made no effort to escape his notice. The country thereabouts is well wooded and often heavily timbered, and the timid native, hearing the clang of the mule shoes on the rough, rocky trail, will at once retire to the seclusion of the nearest thick brush, and there wait until the intruder is out of sight.
They do not fly like a flock of quails suddenly surprised by the hunter, however, for, if caught, they generally stand and stare it out rather than seem to run from the white man while directly in his presence; but if the latter is vigilant and keeps his eyes wide open, he will often see them skulking away among the trees or behind the rocks as he is approaching their houses, or the caves or cliff dwellings wherein they abide. Of course, as one would naturally expect, the more savage Tarahumari natives, or those living in the rocks, cliffs, and caves, or brush jacals, are much wilder and more timid than those pretending to adopt the forms and duties of civilization. It is this peculiarity that has made it so hard to understand or learn anything about them, and this too in a land where so little interest is taken in gaining knowledge of the subject.
[Illustration: AN INDIAN HOME BETWEEN ROCK PILLAR AND TREE.]
In my wanderings through this portion of the Sierra Madres (and right here I might state that on some Mexican maps this portion of the great range is occasionally labeled as the _Sierra de Tarahumari_, about the only place we ran across the name) I was more fortunate in seeing a large number of them engaged in more nearly all the labors and duties they are known to follow than is usually the case: the civilized Tarahumari, living in rough stone and adobe houses, with brush fences around his cultivated fields; and the most savage of the race, acknowledging none of the Mexican laws or customs, and living in caves in the rocks or under the huge bowlders, or in cliffs high up the almost perpendicular faces of the rock, where they probably tend a few goats and plant their corn on steep slopes, using pointed sticks to make the holes in the ground into which the grains are deposited.