The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-09-03
MARIA TERESA UREA.
The Remarkable Mexican Girl Who
is Now with the Yaqui Indians.

is Now with the YaIui Indians.
From the Chicago Record.
The young Mexican girl, Maria Teresa
Urea, who is devoutly believed by the
Mexican Catholics to be endowed with di-
vine power, is now somewhere among
the Yaqui Indians in Sonora Mex, and al
though they are the fercest tribe in that
republic. and irreconciliable in their hos
tillty to the whites, they revere her as
priestess, and obey her as If she were
their queen. There is something strange
about Santa Teresa as they coll her.
She is a modest, uuassumng Mexican girl,
the daughter of a small farmer in Sonora,
with very little education, but at an ear
ly age she developed remarkable hypnotic
or mesmeric powers, which caused the ig-
norant peasants TO look upon her as
more than human. A touch of her hand
is believed to be a cure for every mortal
evil, and one of her prayers of interces-
sion a passport to Paradise. She does
not claim divine power, but confesses that
she does not understand the source of her
influence. Her family We're Catholics, but
she has never been strict in her observa-
ance of her religious duties. At the same
time she recognizes that there is some
thing within her that gives her the I'M
usual influence that she enjoys.
In 1896 I saw her a Ell Paso, a plain-look-
ing girl of twenly-one or twenty-five years
in a speckled 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 Aguirre, the
editor of the Mexican paper Ell Paso, hav-
ing been compelled 10 leave Mexico by The
authorities. who accused her of trying to
incile a revolution. A band OF fanatics
somehow got a notion that she was to
be the author of Montezuma, the long
looked-for Mexican Messiah who is to lib
crate the splendor of The empire that Cor
tez pfundered and overthrow. Restless and
dissatisfied politicians took advantage of
the mania. and, in the name of Saint Te-
resa, organized a revolution in Sonora,
and attacked the custom-house and bar.
racks al Nogales.
Mr.. Aguirre may have given the move
ment some encouragement, for he Is an
exile. and is wanted by the Mexican
police. But l was assured that Teresa
was not involved in any way. Trust
worthy people tod me that she was just
an ordinary sort of girl, without any spe-
cal force of character or intellect but
possessed 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 a locomotive in her
slender fingers. Santa Teresa has some
such physical peculiarly, which gives
her a mesmeric influence over people to
whom II may be applied, and she has cur
ed hundreds of sick and lame and blind.
The Mexicans hang her portrait over their
little shrines beside that of the Virgin
Mary. but when we talked with her divin-
ity, and Indignantly denied that she was
to be the mother of the redeerler OF the
Aztec race. She is now living among the
Yaqui Indians IN an obscure mountain VIII
lage in Sonora, which is constantly VISIT
ed by pilgrims and sick people in search
of her healing power