Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1886-05-20
Mexico,s Peasant Girl.

In themore unfrequented portions OF
This republic the peasant girl is seen in
all her primitive simplicity. As the
numbering stage coach, with its dozen
passengers, slaekens up at the adobe
gate OF some hacienda, and the driver
shouts his "Buenos Dias!" or words of
greeting, the first to issue from the
gray-walled hacienda is Mexican mu,
:hacha. True to the vein of curiosity
which forms a fiber of the feminine
neart ever since the day that curiosi-
~ led Mother Eve to taste the forbid
den fruit, the muchacha must see who
are the new arrivals.
She stands at the great gate of the
hacienda shyly watching the new
corners. She is but a developed child;
simple, picturesque, content; one
whose face is not freckled, whose
limbs are not attenuated and never
know the manacling OF a stocking.
Her hair is not golden; her feet are
bare, and the two long braids OF jetty
hair falling behind are caught at thu
ends with the inevitable bit OF bright
ribbon. When speaking she generally
catches the braids and filings them
over her breast and her brown, bare
shoulders. She rears no Pompadour,
no Grecian coil, and no bangs, but
her hair, parted in the middle, is as
glossy and black as the famous
atzabatche of the native hills. She
wears only o. short skirt, ard that
intimate low-cut vesture OF white
texture and scant pattern so wei!
known and seldom mentioned, which
hangs Suspended from her nut-brown
shoulders, and is caught inside the
skirt before it is gathered in at the
waist. She is entirely unconscious OF
want of further clothing.
Among the different types of wom-
en- in America none is more unique
than the Mexican Muchacha; for she
is woman governed rather by the
characteristics of II race than by the
shackles ofeducation, coquettish from
instinct, graceful because natural. The
traveller remembers well a creature
who watched him with less of iuquisi-
tive curiosity than sly coquettishness
in those very black evey But beyond
the mere attraction of her glances are
the associations which environ that
creature. She is the representation
of a romantic race whose civilization,
coevai with the palmiest days of Egypt
and Persia, partake strangely OF the
Orient. Like her sisters on the Gan
hn 40 IL, Yaa, .l,.,
makes her tortillas or unleavened
bread; she carries water on her head
as gracefully as Rebeeca, and spins
like Penelope.
But her race has bent below the
futtering of a cross-emblazoned flag,
which, wherever it has gone, has left
behind it a trail ofdesolation. 1t was
beneath that Castillan flag that the
native American woman became Span
Ish in the olden time OF strength and
conquest; and unchanged in manner,
appearance, or taste, she has acquired
the new characteristic coquetry so es-
sentially Spanish. While the pretty,
oval face, the bright black eyes, and
the quick, glib tongue OF the Mexican
muchacha is the same as it was 500
or l 900 years ago, she has attained
other characteristics brought to her
by the chivalric soldiers OF Cortez.
Once married her domestic surround
ings are such as she would have them
be, for she knows no better.
Her domestic system may be
primitive. She has no chairs, no clos
cts, no stoves, no tin or glassware,
and no soap. Her cooking, celebrated
for its savory character, is carried on
N alias, or pots of brown earth over
a brasero, or open brick fireplace.
The great national dish, friioles--
beans-is not prepared by her as it
would be by her golden-haired and
blue-eyed Boston sister-with rich
morseis OF pork.
The muchacha soaks and steams the
friioles for two days or so, and then
cooks them with onions and season
ings, and serves them hot from a flat
cazuela, or earthern frying-pan aud
covered with thick gravy. Her tor
tillas-bread are flat, round cakes OF
eorn-flour, toasted over the charcoal;
they contain no yeast or bicarbonate
poisons; these tortillas, curled up, are
used to scoop the frijoles like a spoon,
only the spoon is eaten each time.
Every Mexican peasant girl is an
adept in the cooking of atole, or corn
meal cruel, euchilades, and tamales,
spicy preparation wrapped in the
plant tartilas, and she is also a good
Judge of Mexico national beverages
pulque and mezcal.-Mexico Cor.
Providence journal.