El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-09-08

on YaQu1 rights, ana ne can see no.
thing but wanton cussedness at the
bottom OF the trouble. Naturally, the
immediate incidents of the outbreak
and his personal interests loom up SO
large before his mind as to conceal
any broader question involved. There
is no perspective in his view.
To get little deeper into the mat
ter it Is necessary only to divert his
mind from the actual outbreak and ask
him how the mill is doing. Then he
says he has enough grain on band to
little more from the outside, but after
that the mill must shut down. No
grain % being raised, he says, because
the Yaquis have quit farming and gone
on the war path, When the Yaquis
shall have been killed off, the mill may
serve as picturesque feature OF the
landscape in the form of a ruin. Pos
sibly the Scotchman has misapplied
his terms of reprOach.
Americans here declare that the
Mexican government, If 1t sanctions
the policy of determination, Is trying
to wipe out the only people in the va
qui Valley who are worth their salt
They cite many facts in support of this
view. All the labor, they say, is per-
formed by Ysquis. Even in the
Scotchman's mill today, it is Yaqui
who carries sacks of grain all day long
and works in room so hot that 1t
would kill white man in a week.
The Mexicans occupy the choice land,
land SO fertile that it would grow any
thing, and yet not a pound Of fruit. not
a vegetable, can be seen in the valley.
unless raised by Yaqui. Shops
owned and manned by Yaquis carry to
Guaymas melons and other produce
raised by Yaquis, and bring back
81 81 ov,lx re
used here are woven by Yaquis from
wool grown on the backs of Yaqui
sheep. When other work fails, or the
planting and harvesting do not
demand their attention, the Yaquis
find employment in Guaymas, on the
railroad, in the mines, in all the towns
and camps from Guaymas to Nogales,
and as iaborers they are preferred
invariably to the Mexican poems.
Without the Ysquis the great hacien,
das are reproductive, untitled
and useless. The Mexicans sent in
here to take up the Yaqui land will
not do the same work. It is a marvel
how they manage to get anything to
live on when the Yaquis are not here.
In fact, they don't get much of any
thing that is produced by the hard
la Dor of man. Hens lay few eggs for
them, so few that eggs cost 5 cents
own living in the bosque give milk and
cattle and pigs supply meat. Butter
Is unknown, because labor is necessary
to produce it. Meal for tortillss is
made from corn probably raised by
Yaquis or on the big ranches, for there
are no evidences of cultivation near the
town. Perhaps at other seasons of the
year, signs of industry may be de-
tected among the Mexicans and the
~f ioto ho
cleared away. Any adequate excuse
for such existence has not presented
itself yet to my view. OF course I
am speaking OF the ''gente" or lower
class Mexicsus. The dons are Diff
ferent lot Of people, educated, intelli-
gent and having some notion of enter
prise and progress, although the trail
of "manana" is over them all.
The upper classes, the landowners
NIT the uselessness Of the ordinary
Mexican, who is nothing but q degen-
crate Indian with enough mixture of
white blood to make him of less &C.
count than q half breed Digger. They
suggest as an alternative to extermi-
nation of the Yaqui his removal to q
distant country and the replacing of
the Yaqui with the Indians of Yucca
tan. They do not appear to consider
valley with Mexican labor, but figure
on getting pure-bred Indians to do the
work. The Yaqui Ia undesirable. not
because of inefficiency, but because he
thinks he has rights and is unwilling
to give up his land and become peon
in his own country.
1t all comes down to this: The va
qui must go. The fate in store for him
is the same that has overtaken the In
mfr IF 10 n ho mi
States coveted by the whites. By force
or by fraud, by sudden expulsion or the
slow process of crowding out, the
white race will have the land, and pro-
tests against the incid entail wrongs and
injustices of the appropriation will not
delay the conquest. Many cruel wrongs
were done in dispossessing the original
owners of the soil in the United States,
and perhaps more may be done, but the
world for some years to come, and it is
always seeking more elbow room.
This Yaqui war is only an ordinary
incident In the process of white occu.
patton of the continent, and 1t attracts
attenti on because 1t has been so long
delayed; because the Yaquis have re-
sisted successfully for nearly three hun
The details OF the method by which
the Yaquis are being ousted from their
heritage may not be defenslble on
Eoral grounds. Among them are cold
blooded murder and cruelty on both
sides, but the numbering was begun by
the Indians, and is deemed by them
only Incidental to the campaign. In
slaughter and rapine are
their recognized methods of making
war, and they expect no kid glove
treatment from their enemies. They
are not likely to receive 1t, either.
A part from what essential
Justice there may be in the
claim of the Yaqui to the