Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-01-31

~ done in prying and peeping into the great
IA natural treasure houses Of Sonora convinced
w him years ago that that Western Mexican
province country well worth exploit
ing If than half of the silver of the world has
out of Mexico as is probably the fact then from
all reports when the argenferous deposits of Sonora
properly opened up three-fourths of the worlds
silver will from the land of Diaz.
Sonora has been exporting $12,000OO0 to $15,000,-
600 of silver a year and could have exported five
times that amount and incalculable quantity of
gold but for one reason-the country has not been
safe for white people, except in the larger towns, be-
of the warlike Yaquis, who have been battling
for generations against the Mexicans
But now the good news is flashed the wires
that the long drawn Yaqui war is at end and
that a treaty favorable to the Indians is being
negotiated SO that there will be such thrush
of greedy gringoes, the Mexicans call us, into
Sonora as has never been there before. For
there will be no night attacks upon ore wagon
and supply trains, terrorizing of the miners
in their prospect holes and more rushes to the
sun rack in the lonely cabin on the
1t is characteristic of commercial age that the
chief interest of the white people in the Yaqui up
s:sings has not been humane but financial one.
:. Though Americans have obtained concessions from
the Mexican government of mining cattle and farming
lands they have never been able to hold undisputed
sway over them. Now the hardy gringo will descend
upon Sonora bent upon conquest far more thorough
than that of General Scott in 1S4S He lusts for the
silver and gold hidden under the Sonora mountains,
great bands cattle and for the fruits of the
fertile valleys, and he will have them.
Not that the Americans have been essentially hostile
to the Yaquis, for many guns and much ammunition
have taken the border to aid them in their
desperate fight, but that when Diaz has fit to
parcel off comfortable section of Yaquf land here
and there to an enterprising Yankee for considera
ton it has been only natural that Yaqui and Yank
should have become embroiled at times.
1.-The Yaqui Indians the most stubborn fighters
earth said President Diaz of Mexico eight years
ago, land if to put them down must
strike at the root of their race-we exile their
women and children"
So, month by month, since then thousands of the
little brown women of the Yaqui nation in Sonora
have been torn their homes reservations and
elsewhere rounded up at Guaymas the west coast
of Mexico, and with their children, deported to San
Bias and thence country to the far fever
lands of Yucatan where many of them have died
None have ever returned to Sonora.
This means of subduing race that has been in
almost constant warfare against the Mexican gov
eminent for than thirty years has at last been eff
fective although it has been necessary at the same
time to keep from two thousand to five thousand
troops in readiness in the field to fight the dmin
fishing band of Yaquis who have proved themselves
as valiant and as unyielding as the Beers
The last two stands of the Yaqus have recently
been reported in the dispatches. One of these was
in a mountain canon just north of Altar where the
Mexicans and Papagos lured the Yaquis into ambush
and killed large number of them. The other and
concluding engagement followed a skirmish that was
made by the Mexicans southeast of Hermosio, the
capital of Sonora in which it reported that Bul6,
the chief of the Yaquis was killed and one hundred
of his men were slain After this bloody battle the
remnant of the Yaqu forces engaged in that fight
marched into Hermosillo and surrendered.
So many other events have been taking place on
little into the consideration of the people this
rim of the continent with The exception of those Amer
lean capitalists who have longed to unearth the min
ing treasures of that rich gold and silver country
that have been interested in college football
contests than in this terrible warfare that been
going within five days railway journey of New
York for the last three decades and longer
For as matter of fact the Yaquis have never been
at peace with their hereditary foe since the conquest
of Mexico by the Spanish in 1919 and from an esti
has steadily declined, chiefly because of it's almost
incessant warfare, to about forty thousand at the
present day.
Having regarded the Yaqui at close range and
having studied him and marked what manner of man
he is | may be excused for admiration of him
that surpasses my appreciation of any other of the
native races of North America Assuredly these people
the most industrious and most civilized of all
Indian tribes being for the most part farmers miners