While living among the heathen, of whom there are vet some three thousand left, I had no fear of being robbed of any part of my outfit. The Indians themselves would not touch anything, and there were no strange Mexicans about. If they had come, the Tarahumares would have immediately warned me. Everything was perfectly safe as long as I had an honest interpreter. The Tarahumare in his native condition is many times better off, morally, mentally, and economically, than his civilised brother; but the white man will not let him alone as long as he has anything worth taking away. Only those who by dear experience have learned to be cautious are able to maintain themselves independently; but such cases are becoming more and more rare.
It is the same old story over again, in America, as in Africa, and Asia, and everywhere. The simpleminded native is made the victim of the progressive white, who, by fair means or foul, deprives him of his country. Luckily, withal, the Tarahumare has not yet been wiped out of existence. His blood is fused into the working classes of Mexico, and he grows a Mexican. But it may 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.
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.