Maquis

“ 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 Moquis have a legend that, long ago, when the principal mesa that they occupy was higher than it is now, and when they owned all the country from the mountains to the great river, giants came out of the west and troubled them, going so far as to dine on Moquis. It was hard to get away, for the monsters could see all over the country from the tops of the mesas. The king of the tribe offered the handsomest woman in his country and a thousand horses to any man who would deliver his people from these giants. ”

“ The Muache band of Utahs, under their renowned Chief Blanco, after trading for all the powder and lead which they required, joined the Apaches and commenced the war in earnest. They waylaid and murdered travelers on the roads, attacked towns, killed and made prisoners the people who inhabited them, and became so formidable that for a length of time everything was at their mercy. They lost no opportunity in showing their power and in possessing themselves of the finest herds of horses, mules, cattle and sheep within their reach. ”

“ The savages all stopped, and the chief approached Mackay and spoke to him through the interpreter. Would the white man join him in a head-hunting expedition, was his modest request. There were some Chinese not so far below them, cutting out rattan, and he was sure they could secure one or more heads. He shook the big net head-bag that hung over his shoulder and grinned savagely as he made his proposal. If the white men and their party would come at the enemy from one side, he and his men would attack them from the other, he said, and they would be sure to get them all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Moqui, too, are they whose ethnological relations have been looked for in the direction of Mexico and the semi-civilized Indians of Central America. Large towns, regular streets, stone buildings, white skins, and European beards have all been attributed to these mysterious Moqui. They seem, however, to be simply Indians whose civilization is that of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico. The same table that gives us the Uta and Navaho vocabularies, gives us a Moqui one also. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moquihuix secretly assembled his soldiers, and, in order to infuse into them the highest degree of courage, made them drink of the blood of their enemies, washed from the filthy surface of the sacrificial stone. Then he and his officers made a solemn sacrifice on a mountain near the city, to gain the favor of their gods. It was all in vain, however, for the Mexicans prevailed over their neighbors and brethren, in the bloody battle that ensued, and Moquihuix was cast down from the tower of the temple, from which he was directing his troops, and slain. ”

“ The Macús are one of the lowest and most uncivilized tribes of Indians in the Amazon district. They inhabit the forests and serras about the rivers Marié, Curicuriarí, and Urubaxí, and live a wandering life, having no houses and no fixed place of abode, and of course no clothing; they have little or no iron, and use the tusks of the wild pig to scrape and form their bows and arrows, and they make a most deadly kind of poison to anoint them. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Since that day twenty-five years ago the Mexican government has maintained an army almost perpetually in the field against the Yaquis, an army ranging in numbers from 2,000 to 6,000 men. Thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of Yaquis have been killed in battle and many hundreds of the latter have been executed after being taken prisoners. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tribes under Akbar Khan were more resolute in their defence; but light mountain troops, without artillery, and ignorant even of the most simple methods of rendering their passes more difficult of approach, present but a contemptible barrier to a well-organized and effective army. Marching over the heights, which were strewn with the mangled corpses of their ill-fated comrades, peals of British musketry rung a tardy death-knell to their memories, but wrote the epitaph in the blood of their assassins. ”

“ They live like beasts, they have mingled with negroes, degenerate Spaniards and Mexicans until it is almost an insult to apply the name "Indian" to them.
And it was a band of such natives as this that had captured Rosemary and Floyd. Kept as much as possible to the confines of what might be termed, unofficially, a reservation, the Yaquis occasionally broke through the line of Mexican soldier guards and went on a rampage, often crossing the border into Arizona, as happened in the spring of 1921, when several Americans were killed in a border town. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cultivated white woman, you say, would die of the shame and the horror of such conditions. But so does the brown woman of Sonora. No less a personage than Don Enrique Camara Zavala, president of the "Camara de Agricola de Yucatan," and a millionaire planter himself, told me:
"If the Yaquis last out the first year they generally get along all right and make good workers, but the trouble is, at least two-thirds of them die off in the first twelve months!"
On the ranch of one of the most famous henequen kings we found about two hundred Yaquis. ”

“ From all points there rode in on the outfit from Diamond X an ever narrowing circle of horsemen, many of whom carried lances which pointed toward the zenith.
"They aren't Yaquis," exclaimed Rolling Stone. "Those Mexican Indians don't carry lances. They must have met up with a band from some American reservation and have gotten them to go on the warpath. ”

“ When the Yaquis first took up arms against the present government some twenty-five years ago they did so because of a definite grievance. Usually they fought on the defensive. Driven to the mountains, they have been compelled at times to sally forth and plunder for their stomachs' sake. But for many years it was known to all men that they seldom attacked Americans or any people but Mexicans. And for a long time they never committed any depredations on railroads or railroad property, which in Sonora has always been American. ”

“ The Yaquis of Sonora are closely related to the Apaches of our own border country. From the earliest coming of the white man, they have resented the invasion of their domain. The Spaniards were never able to conquer them. Porfirio Diaz, who pacified all the rest of Mexico, could never make the Yaquis recognize the sovereignty of the Mexican government over their territory. He sent expedition after expedition against them, depleted their ranks by constant warfare, and took thousands of prisoners whom he shipped to far-off Yucatan to labor as virtual slaves upon the henequin plantations. ”

“ But I don't believe the Mexican Indians followed that practice, though of course I'm not certain about it."
"The modern Yaquis are mean enough to do anything," said Rolling Stone. "What the old timers did doesn't matter now. It's what these of today do. And I reckon ye've heard how a party of 'em has taken prisoners some of their friends," and he waved his hand toward the outfit from Diamond X, of which he was not yet a full-fledged member.
"Yes, we heard about the uprising," admitted Captain Marshall. "We had orders to take the trail, and we've been on it since. ”

“ The King was generally kind to Mackay, for he was proud to have so clever a white man in his country. But he could not make up his mind to become a Christian. M'tesa's heart had not really changed. His slave-raiding of other tribes might still go on. The horrible butcherings of his people to turn away the dreaded anger of the gods would continue. Mackay felt he must press on with his work. He was slowly opening a road through the jungle of cruelty and the marshes of dread of the gods that made the life of the Baganda people dark and dreadful. ”

“ Although the Yaquis had first declared war upon the invading white man with every possible justification, they had been forced, through years of constant retreat into the unfertile recesses of the desert, to prey upon the invaders for a living. Although their original grievance had been against the Mexican, bandits can not be choosers. And the miners at El Progresso were always on the watch. ”

“ The task was not without difficulty. The Mexican army was greatly more numerous. They had a splendid cavalry force and an efficient artillery. Their commander, Santa Anna, unscrupulous even for a Mexican, was yet a soldier of some ability. The Americans were mainly volunteers who had never seen war till now. The fighting was severe. At Buena-Vista the American army was attacked by a force which outnumbered it in the proportion of five to one. The battle lasted for ten hours, and the invaders were saved from ruin by their superior artillery. ”

“ CHAPTER VII INTO THE MOUNTAINS Disreputable ragamuffins as they appeared, the Yaquis were quick enough to put their captives in a position to render them almost helpless. Though the Mexican Indians do not seem to have the picturesqueness and skill of the outdoors possessed by the North American Indians, still they knew how to knot their lariats about Rosemary and Floyd, and so tie them on spare horses that it would have been no easy task to escape. ”

“ From time to time, in more recent years, groups of Yaquis have made their peace with the Mexican authorities. Many of them, known as “manzos” in distinction from the “bravos” in the hills, are to be found in every Sonoran village and even in Arizona. As soldiers, they are the bravest in Mexico, and as laborers the most industrious. But they were never especially friendly to Carranza, and in his era, although some served in the federal army, they frequently did so in order to obtain arms or ammunition for their own use. Soldiers one day, they were apt to be bandits the next. ”