Yaqui people

“ There is not a lazy bone in the Yaqui body. They are a peaceable, law-abiding people when justly treated. From time immemorial they have been hunters, miners, and tillers of the soil. They have the nomad instinct in less degree than almost any other Indian tribe." Another writer makes this statement: "There are about three hundred wild and rebellious Yaqui Indians hidden in the fastnesses of the Bacatete Mountains, and some thirty thousand peaceful Yaquis working all over Sonora—among the best workers, the most successful farmers, and the quietest citizens in the whole state. ”

“ That nameless haunting fear of the south, long lulled, now had its fulfillment.
Yaqui leaped with gigantic bounds down the slope. Like an antelope he sprang over rocks and dips, and once on the grassy downs he ran the swiftest race of his life. His piercing yells warned his people in time to save them from being surprised by the soldiers. The first shots of combat were fired as he hurdled the several courses of the stream. Yaqui saw the running and crawling forms of men in dusty blue—saw [133] them aim short carbines—saw spurts of flame and puffs of smoke. ”

“ It was to that fever and that slavery that the Yaquis were deported, in droves of hundreds at a time, men, women and children—droves like cattle droves, driven and beaten like cattle. They died there, like flies, as it was meant they should. Sonora was desolated of her rebellious people, and the land became "pacific" in the hands of the new landowners. Too pacific in spots. They had not left people enough to reap the harvests.
Then the government suspended the deportation act, but with the provision that for every crime committed by a Yaqui, five hundred of his people be deported. ”

“ As the months passed child after child was born to the women of the tribe. Yaqui’s dusky-eyed wife bore him a healthy girl baby. As the chief balanced the tiny brown form in his great hand he remembered speech of his own father’s: “Son, let the Yaquis go back to the mountains of the setting sun—to a land free from white men and gold and fire water, to the desert valley where deer graze with [124] horses. There let the Yaquis multiply into a great people or perish from the earth.” ”

“ Wonderful Mexican gardens! A wonderful fairyland conjured out of slavery—slavery of Mayas, and of Yaquis. Among the Yucatan slaves there are ten Mayas to one Yaqui, but of the two the story of the Yaquis appealed to me the more. The Mayas are dying in their own land and with their own people. The Yaquis are exiles. They are dying in a strange land, they are dying faster, and they are dying alone, away from their families, for every Yaqui family sent to Yucatan is broken up on the way. Husbands and wives are torn apart and babes are taken from their mothers' breasts. ”

“ Yaqui workingmen were taken daily from mines, railroads and farms, old workingmen who never owned a rifle in their lives, women, children, babes, the old and the young, the weak and the strong. Guarded by soldiers and rurales they traveled together over the exile road. And there are others besides Yaquis who traveled over that road. Pimas and Opatas, other Indians, Mexicans, and any dark people found who were poor and unable to protect themselves were taken, tagged as Yaquis, and sent away to the land of henequen. What becomes of them there? That is what I went to Yucatan to find out. ”

“ Near the Yaqui River the soil and climate are as well adapted to fruit culture as southern California. There are many large mining enterprises, the largest being at Cananea, and nearly all are American enterprises. The trouble with the Yaqui Indians has greatly hindered development in Sonora during the past decade. Several parties of American prospectors and miners were attacked and a number of Americans killed. The government finally deported thousands of the Yaquis to other sections of the republic, and their depredations then ceased. ”

“ Throughout this entire province, the Yaqui Indians have broken their bondage. They threaten Ures and Hermosillo; already they have overswarmed I know not how many farms—those houses are smouldering, their people are stiffening after indescribable tortures! I come hither to warn our friend that Monte Tesoro is the object of the rebels' march. Tonight, the attack will come, peradventure in one short hour! Brethren, verily I bid ye not forget that the enemies who threaten ye are ferocious pagans from whom you can expect no mercy! ”

“ They travel a great deal, usually they speak several different languages, and they and their families are a most cultivated class of people. All Merida and all Yucatan, even all the peninsula of Yucatan, are dependent on the fifty henequen kings. Naturally these men are in control of the political machinery of their state, and naturally they operate that machinery for their own benefit. The slaves are 8,000 Yaqui Indians imported from Sonora, 3,000 Chinese (Koreans) , and between 100,000 and 125,000 native Mayas, who formerly owned the lands that the henequen kings now own. ”

“ In the Quiché myths, the introduction of human sacrifice is associated with the “Yaqui,” a name afterwards used of the Mexicans, and it is the god Tohil, whom this people received from Tulan, who, by a trick, obtains the right to the hearts of the other tribes in return for the gift of fire. But the open and extensive practice of the rite belongs to a later stage of Quiché history, as the Popol Vuh also demonstrates. It is possible that the practice was, to speak generally, foreign to the original Maya, but was introduced in later times from Mexico. ”

“ But Perez saw nothing but affront to his authority. At his order the rurales clubbed Yaqui back into his squad. [142] They would have done the same for the stricken wife, had she not backed away from their threatening advances. She had time for a long agonized look into the terrible face of her husband. Then she was driven away in one squad and he was left in the other.
Montes thought he would forever carry in memory the tragic face of that Yaqui’s wife. Indians had hearts and souls the same as white people. It was a ridiculous and extraordinary and base thing to be callous to the truth. ”

“ YAQUI I SUNSET—it was the hour of Yaqui’s watch. Chief of a driven remnant of the once mighty tribe, he trusted no sentinel so well as himself at the end of the day’s march. While his braves unpacked the tired horses, and his women prepared the evening meal, and his bronze-skinned children played in the sand, Yaqui watched the bold desert horizon.
Long years of hatred had existed between the Yaquis of upland Sonora and the Mexicans from the east. Like eagles, the Indian tribe had lived for centuries in the mountain fastnesses of the Sierra Madre, free, happy, self-sufficient. ”

“ With a Yaqui maybe it's of deep significance. I've heard a Yaqui say that with his tribe no debt to friend or foe ever went unpaid. Perhaps that's what ails this fellow."
"Dick, don't laugh," said Nell. "I've noticed the Yaqui. It's pathetic the way his great gloomy eyes follow you."
"You've made a friend," continued Belding. "A Yaqui could be a real friend on this desert. If he gets his strength back he'll be of service to you, don't mistake me. He's welcome here. But you're responsible for him, and you'll have trouble keeping him from massacring all the Greasers in Forlorn River." ”

“ That hate has had time to grow as deep as a cactus root. The Yaquis are mountain Aztecs. Personally, I think they are noble and intelligent, and if let alone would be peaceable and industrious. I like the few I've known. But they are a doomed race. Have you any idea what ailed this Yaqui before the raider got in his work? ”

“ Yucatan is low, marshy, damp, hot. The Yaquis were bred on the high, dry Sonoran plateau, where the air is like a knife. They dropped dead in the henequen fields, and their places were taken by more. You see, the Mexicans won't kill outright in their war of extermination of the Yaquis. They get use out of them. It's a horrible thing.... Well, this Yaqui you brought in escaped from his captors, got aboard ship, and eventually reached New Orleans. Somehow he traveled way out here. I gave him a bag of food, and he went off with a Papago Indian. ”

“ We-all know how you feel. An' if I'd had that one shot never in the world could I have picked the Papago guide. I'd have had to kill Rojas. That's the white man of it. But Yaqui was right. Only an Indian could have done it. You can gamble the Papago alive meant slim chance for us. Because he'd led straight to where Mercedes is hidden, an' then we'd have left cover to fight it out... When you come to think of the Yaqui's hate for Greasers, when you just seen him pass up a shot at one—well, I don't know how to say what I mean, but damn me, my som-brer-ro is off to the Indian! ”

“ When the weaker among them began to lag, to slow down, to sicken, they were whipped to their tasks. [1]
Yaqui knew that never again would he see his wife and baby—never hear from them—never know what became of them. He was worked like a galley slave, all the harder because of his great strength and endurance. He would be driven until he broke down.
Yaqui’s work consisted of cutting henequen fiber leaves. He had a curved machete and he walked down the endless aisles between the lines of great century plants and from each plant he cut the lower circle of leaves. ”

“ There still exist in Yucatan the diminishing remnants of the most civilised nation of the pre-Columbian epoch of our continent. They are the Mayans, who for more than half a century have been forced to take up arms to defend themselves against the tyranny of the whites. In Sonora, in the small region lying between the Ihayo and Yaqui rivers, exists another race of Indians, the Yaquis, who have not builded magnificent monuments as have the Mayas, but who are intelligent, industrious, faithful, vigorous, and courageous. ”

“ Truly we have beheld the sun, but they, where are they now that the dawn has appeared? Truly Tohil is the name of the god of the Yaqui nation, who was called Yolcuat Quitzalcuat (Quetzalcoatl) when we parted yonder in Tulan. Behold whence we set out together, behold the common cradle of our race, whence we have come. Then they remembered their brothers far behind them, the nation of the Yaqui whom their dawn enlightened in the countries now called Mexico. There was also a part of the nation which they left in the east, and Tepeu and Oliman were the places where they remained. ”

“ The extermination of the Yaquis began in war; its finish is being accomplished in deportation and slavery.
The Yaquis are called Indians. Like the Mayas of Yucatan, they are Indians and yet they are not Indians. In the United States we would not call them Indians, for they are workers. As far back as their history can be traced they have never been savages. They have been an agricultural people. They tilled the soil, discovered and developed mines, constructed systems of irrigation, built adobe towns, maintained public schools, had an organized government and their own mint. ”

“ The typical Yaqui is almost a giant, the race a race of athletes. Perhaps that is just the reason why he has not bent his head in submission to the will of the masters of Mexico.
American mine-owners and railroad men of Sonora are repeatedly complaining against the deportation of the Yaquis, and it is because they are such good workmen. Another matter which I have heard much remarked about by border Americans is the regard of the so-called renegade, or fighting Yaquis, for the property of Americans and other foreigners. ”

“ He believed that evil days for Forlorn River, along with the apathy and lack of enterprise, were in the past. He hired a couple of trustworthy Mexicans to ride the boundary line, and he settled down to think of ranching and irrigation and mining projects. Every morning he expected to receive some word form Sonoyta or Yuma, telling him that Yaqui had guided his party safely across the desert.
Belding was simple-minded, a man more inclined to action than reflection. When the complexities of life hemmed him in, he groped his way out, never quite understanding. ”

“ At sixty years Yaquis had perfectly sound white teeth and hair as black as night. These desert men could travel seventy miles on foot in one day with only a bag of pinole. Water they could do without for days. And it was said that some of the Yaqui runners performed feats of speed, strength, and endurance beyond credence. Montes, remembering the seven-foot stature of that Yaqui chief and the spread of shoulders and the wonder of his spare lithe limbs, thought that he could believe much.
The act of Perez in deliberately parting the chief from his loved ones was cruel and despicable ”

“ On top of one of the jagged rocks, behind which they had conducted the defense that had failed, stood a ragged Yaqui Indian. To and fro, on the end of his gun, he waved not exactly a white flag, but a dirty rag that once might have been white. Objects of this hue did not long remain like the driven snow among the Yaquis.
"Cease firing!" blared the bugle, and the spiteful rattle of the soldiers' guns stopped abruptly.
"Cover the beggar, some of you," ordered Captain Marshall, "and a few of you get ready in case this is a trick and they try a rush. ”

“ Belding was not sanguine over the safety of the Casita trail. Refugees from there arrived every day in Forlorn River, and if tales they told were true, real war would have been preferable to what was going on along the border. Belding and the rangers and the Yaqui held a consultation. Not only had the Indian become a faithful servant to Gale, but he was also of value to Belding. Yaqui had all the craft of his class, and superior intelligence. His knowledge of Mexicans was second only to his hate of them. ”