The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1899-12-19

!
hippodrome track" said man recent
ly returned from Mexico. 81 want t,
tell you that less than month ago
saw a race of man on foot agains
wild horse, where the man won, ant
the race was On the dead level, too. l
was down in Mexico on the edge Of tn,
Yaqui country, where they are jus
! now pulling off their semiannual bar
gain counter insurrection was dow
there looking after the interests Of
some people who had money in thu
Yaqui placers, and wandered ovel
to the northwest to the edge of the
Seri Indian country, where happened
to see the man who could beat a run
ming horse.
"The Seri country is about so mile:
northwest of Hermosillo, the capita
Of the state of Sonora. The Serbs are
probably the most peculiar Indians il
the western hemisphere. They do not
seem to be related by language. Gus
toms or physical make up to any
other known tribe. They are a race, OF
big, black giants for the most part
some Of them measuring feet
and nearly all of them one or two
inches over six feet The women will
average taller than white men, so that
the tribe as whole is formidable
proposition. They have the pleasant
habit of killing off all weakling chill.
dren, as well as the members of the
tribe who are too old and feeble to
shift for themselves, and the country
they live in is so inhospitable that the
tribe Is fine type of the survival of
the fttest. In color and features they
are more like negroes than Indians,
and some of their rites and supersti-
tons seem to have distinctly African
ttnge. 1t is capital offense for one of
them to marry outside of the tribe,
and the principal tenet of their re-
ligion, according to the neighboring
Mexicans, is to kill every one they
meet who is not of their own blood.
"All this don't bear on the horse
race particularly, but it will give you
some idea of the sort Of people the
Serbs are and lend a color of probable
ity to an otherwise rather strong story.
I kept hearing all sorts of pipe stories
Of the Seris as soon as we got any
where near their country. The Next
cans are afraid of them and endow
them with almost fabulous powers of
endurance and desert cunning. We
were told that Seri could trail man
frvy hxy e,to Y.li b0k
they never used horses except to kill
and eat and that they could run down
deer on foot. The deer story was re-
peated by everybody. but never met
man who pretended to have actually
seen it till we stopped at the Costa
RIGA ranch, owned by old Pasqual En-
cinas, right on the edge of the Seri
country. Encinas is the Daniel Boone
of Mexico, and the man who solved
the Seri problem for Sonora. He gotta
grant of land from the government and
settled down right in Seri territory,
surrounded himself with a small
army Of vaqueros and Papago In
dams, as armed retainers, and fought
the Seris to standstill. Now they
are thoroughly afraid of him, and new
er kill his stock if they can find any
other brand on the range and never
shoot his vaqueros from ambush with
their poisoned arrows unless they hap
pen to have some personal score to set
tie. AS the old man and his followers
have planted some 300 Serbs in that
part Of the country it may be inferred
that there are still some scores of that
sort outstanding.
"Old Encinas is very fond of talking
over his coffee and cigarettes after
dinner out under the brick foored
veranda of the ranchhouse, and he as
sured me that he had several times
seen Serbs run down deer on foot. His
explanation was that they trail almost
as well as dogs, running by eye, of
course. instead of by nose, and that
they can go at lope and keep deer's
trail through the brush, no matter
what sort of ground he crosses. One
of them will start out and scare up
deer in the mesquite and keep after
it at swift wolf trot all day if neces-
sary, never giving it chance to stop
for food or water. In the course of a
day he will run it off it's feet and kill
1t with a knife.
1.-THE first time said the old man,
that ever saw deer run down In
that way was soon after l got well
settled here. The Serbs were nomi-
nally at peace with us for the time.
and had lot of them working for
me, as l have off and on all the time.
One afternoon one of them came to
me and asked to get off to go hunting.
1t was well on in the afternoon then,
and l said to him: ''Valga, you do not
want to hunt You want to get drunk
on Antonio Meguile's mescale and not
go to work tomorrow" But he sulked
around and said | wanted to starve
his sorrowing family and that there
were deer out in the mesquite yearning
to be killed. So | told him to go,
knowing we'll enough he would go any
how and probably take the whole lot
Of his fellows along with him If he
were crossed did not think any
thing more about him till after sunset,
when he came up. just as we were
stopping work for the day. l said to
him: well. you have had good sleep
IN the brush. | hope you are satisfied"
Said he: Eyes, did have good sleep,
and l dreamed that killed a deer. II
the senior will look over there he will
see my son bringing him in" looked,
and there sure enough was a boy
staggering in with doe on his back
with her throat freshly cut. The Seri
had nothing with him but a knife, and
| examined the doe all over. and there
was not mark on her except the slit
in her throat. noticed that all four
Of her hoofs were off, and the Papagos
noticing this said: yes, it is true that
he ran her down. A deer always casts
its hoofs when run to death by a man."
l find that that belief holds good
among all the Indians, but have since
noticed that in summer time, when the
ground is very hot and the deer are
fat and heavy, the same thing often
happens if you run them down with
horses
''That was Encinas' story of the Seri
running power, but the next day
happened to get an exhibition of it my
self that satisfied me even better. Just
before we were going to bed the major
domo came up and reported that the
verba colorado had come into the
troughs. 1t seems the verba colorado
was little red mare. the incarnation
of devil in the wild range horse. She
had reputation among all the 5000
head of stock on the ranch, having
been maverick so long that when she
was finally caught up and branded she
was too wild to be of any use for ell
Their work o: breeding. She had nearly
killed an Indian and Mexican who
had undertaken to break her and had
been turned loose again. She never