The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-08-17
MEETINGS. ETC.
Equity Cooperative Bank.
MARIA TERESA UREA.
The Remarkable Mexican Girl Who Is
Now with the Yaqui Indians.

Now with the Yaqui Indians.
The young Mexican girl, Maria Teresa
Urea, who is devoutly believed by the
Mexican Catholics to be endowed with
divine power, is now somewhere among
the Yaqui Indians in Sonora, Mexico, and,
although they are the fiercest tribe in that
republic, and irreconcilable in their hos
tility TO the whites, they revere her as q
priestess. and obey her as If she were
their queen. There is something strange
about Santa Teresa as they call her.
she is a modest llnassuming Mexican
girl, the daughter of a small farmer In
Sonora. with very little education, but at
an early age she developed remarkable
hypnotic or mesmeric powers, which
caused the ignorant peasants to look upon
her as more than human. touch of her
hand is believed to be a cure for every
mortal evil, and one of her prayers OF in
tercession a passport to Paradise. She
does not claim divine power, but con-
fesses that she does not understand the
source of her influence. Her family were
Catholics. but she has never been strict
in her observance of her religious duties.
AT the same time she recognizes that
there is something within her that gives
her the unusual influence that she enjoys.
In 1896 | saw her at Ell Paso, a plain
looking girl of q or % years, in a specified
calico dress and coarse Shoes with a
black shawl thrown over her head. Her
hair fell in two braids to her waist, and
she looked much younger than she really
was She was then living under the care
of a gentleman named Agufrre, the editor
of the Mexican paper, El Paso, having
been compelled to leave Mexico by the au-
thorifies, who accused her of trying to in
cite a revolution band of fanatics
somehow got notion that she was to be
the mother of Montezuma, the long
looked for Mexican messiah who Is to
liberate the poems from servitude and re-
store the splendor of the empire that
CorteZ plundered and overthrow Rest
less and dissatisfied politicians took adj
Saint Teresa organized a revolution In
Sonora, and attacked the custom house
and barracks at NogaIes.
Mr.. Aguirre may have given the move
ment some encouragement, for he Is an
exile. and is wanted" by the Mexican
police. But / was assured that Teresa
was not involved in any way. Trustwor-
ordinary sort of girl, without any special
force of character or intellect. but pos
sessed of a mysterious power, like that Of
the magnetic girl who came out of Georgia
few years ago, and seemed to have the
strength of locomotive in her slender
fingers. Santa Teresa has some such ply
steal popularity, which gives her a mes
may be applied. and she has cured hun
dreds of sick and lame and blind. The
sdexicans hang her portrait over their
little shrines beside that of the Virgin
Mary, but when We talked with her she
laughed at the suggestion of her divinity,
and Indignantly denied that she was to be
the mother of the redeemer of the Aztec
race. She is now living among the Yaqui
Indians, in an obscure mountain village m
Sonora, which is constantly visited by
pilgrims and sick people in search of her
healing power.-Chicago Record.