People here are more intelligent and much less reticent than in Lajas.  Women when addressed will answer you, while in Lajas the inhabitants are guarded, and suspicious even of other Indians, not to speak of “neighbours.”  Another difference is that very few drink mescal.

At a meeting I had with the Indians, I remarked, in my desire to please them, that the Mexican Government was interested to know whether they were getting on well or whether they were coming to an end.  To this the principal speaker at once laughingly rejoined.  “Of course, they want to know how soon they can ‘finish’ us!”

The Indians here have the usual trouble from “neighbours” trying to encroach upon their territory.  Once a delegation from this and the neighbouring pueblos undertook a journey to the City of Mexico in order to settle the troubles about their land.  They stopped eleven days in the capital and were well received by the Ministerio del Fomento; but their money gave out before they finished their business, and they had to walk all the way back without having accomplished anything.

I found these Indians law-abiding and obliging, and I had no great difficulty in securing permission to be present at a mitote, which was to be given at a ranch in the neighbourhood.  On March 24th, a little before sunset, we started out on a ride of an hour and a half, ascending some 3,000 feet on a winding Indian trail up to a high mesa.  It was a starlit, beautiful night, but the magnificent view which this mesa commanded could only be surmised.  There are a few ranches here owned by people from the pueblo below, a man sometimes living in his ranch here during the wet season, while for the remainder of the year he occupies one in the pueblo.  As we entered on the plain we could distinctly hear the beating of the tawitol, the musical instrument of the Tepehuanes.  At this distance it sounded like a big drum.

We passed the ranch which was giving the mitote, and a hundred yards farther on we came upon a picturesque scene.  Here on a meadow the Indians were grouped around the many fires whose lights flickered among the trees.  There was just a pause in the dancing, which had begun soon after sunset.  I could at once discern a little plain set apart for the dancing.  On its eastern side was an altar of the usual description, fenced on two sides with felled trees, on which were hung the paraphernalia of the dancers, their bows, quivers, etc.  In the centre of the dancing-place was a large fire, and to the west of it the shaman was seated on a stool.  Behind him, similar though smaller stools were set for the owner of the ranch and the principal men.

Strange to say, the shaman was a Tepehuane.  I learned later that the Aztecs consider the shamans of that tribe better than their own.  In front of the shaman was the musical instrument on which he had been playing.  This was a large, round gourd, on top of which a bow of unusual size was placed with its back down.  The shaman’s right foot rested on a board which holds the bow in place on the gourd.  The bow being made taut, the shaman beats the string with two sticks, in a short, rhythmical measure of one long and two short beats.  When heard near by, the sonorousness of the sound reminds one of the cello.