Some of the boys and girls who have been punished for talking together in this manner, are so frightened that they never want to marry in Lajas, but the more defiant ones deliberately allow themselves to be caught, in order to hasten their union and steal a march on their parents.  For these Indians are by no means beyond the darts of Cupid, and both men and women are known to have arranged with a shaman to influence the objects of their tender thoughts, and have paid him for such service.  A woman may give a shaman a wad of cotton, which he manages to put into the hand of the young man for whom it is intended.  Afterward the shaman keeps the cotton in his house, the affection having been transmitted by it.

On the other hand, men and women, to subdue their natural instincts, go into the fields and grasp the branches of certain sensitive plants.  As the plant closes its leaves, the girls pray that they may be able to shut themselves up in themselves.  There are two kinds of sensitive plants growing in the neighbourhood of Lajas (Mimosa florribunda, var. albida, and Mimosa invisa), and recourse may be had to either of them.  Many men emigrate to other pueblos, though they may in time return.  Others remain bachelors all their lives, and the judges in vain offer them wives.  “Why should we take them?” they say.  “You have thrashed us once, and it is not possible to endure it again.”  The legitimate way of contracting marriage is to let the parents make the match.  When the old folks have settled the matter between themselves, they ask the judges to arrest the boy and girl in question, whereupon the young people are put into prison for three days.  The final arrangements are made before the authorities, and then the girl goes to the home of the boy to await the arrival of the priest.

When the Senor Cura is expected in Lajas, all the couples thus united, as well as all persons suspected of harbouring unsafe tendencies, are arrested.  On the priest’s arrival, he finds most of the young people of the place in prison, waiting for him to marry them.  For each ceremony the Indians have to pay $5, and from now on every married couple has to pay $1.50 per year as subsidy for the priest.  No marriage in Lajas is contracted outside of the prison.  Crescencio himself, when about to marry a Tepehuane woman, barely escaped arrest.  Only by threatening to leave them did he avoid punishment; but his bride had to submit to the custom of her tribe.

Contrary to what one might expect, unhappy unions are rare.  Probably the young people are glad to rest in the safe harbour of matrimony, after experiencing how much the way in and out of it is beset with indignities and leads through the prison gates.  However, imprisonment for love-making does not appear so absurd to the aboriginal mind as it does to us, and the tribe has accommodated itself to it.  I learned that some of the boys and girls after a whipping go to their homes laughing.