Once two cows and an ox were stolen from Crescencio, and the Indians followed the tracks of the thieves, their leader frequently touching the earth with his hands to assure himself by the smell that they were going in the right direction.  After a while two Tepehuanes and their accomplice, the “neighbour” who had put them up to the crime, were caught.  The “neighbour,” as soon as he arrived in the village, was given twenty-five lashes, and for two hours was subjected to the agonizing torture of having his head and his feet in the stocks at the same time.  Next day he was given ten lashes, and the following day five, and eight days later they took him to Durango.  His two Indian associates, father and son, were also put in the stocks, and for two weeks each of them got daily four lashes and very little food; besides which their blankets were taken away from them.

Although the Tepehuanes keep up their ancient rites and beliefs along with the new religion, they strictly comply with the external form of Christianity, paying due attention to all the Christian feasts and observances.  Every day the bells of the old church are rung, and the saints “are put to bed,” as the Indians express it.  When Crescencio first came here he found the people on Sundays in the church, the men sitting on benches and the women on the floor.  They had gathered there from habit, though nobody knew how to pray, and they sat around talking and laughing all the time.  It was their Christian worship.  Crescencio has now taught them to say prayers.

The teachings of Christianity, however, are for the most part forgotten.  No trace of the religion of charity remains among them, but the severity of the early missionaries survives, and their mediaeval system of punishment.  Evidently the tribe always entertained extreme views regarding the relation of the two sexes toward each other, or else the spirit of the new law would never have been imbibed so eagerly.  “The slightest want of modesty or exhibition of frivolity is sufficient reason for a husband to leave his wife, and for young women never to marry,” says Padre Juan Fonte, of the Tepehuane Indians.  There is no sign of relaxation in their strictness, or of any inclination to adopt more modern views on marital misdemeanour.

In the greater number of cases husband and wife live happily together “till death doth them part.”  If either should prove unfaithful, they immediately separate, the wife leaving the children with the husband and going to her parents.  Then the guilty one and the correspondent are punished by being put in the stocks and given a public whipping daily for one or two weeks.  Neither of the parties thus separated is permitted to marry again.