Arizona republican., 1922-03-26
American Traveller on West Coast Finds That
Natives Seem to Haze All Necessities of
Life, Although PLoughs Are Little I'm
proUen1ent OUer Those of the Ancient
Egyptians
By HERBERT COREY
Article No. 21

IXTLAN, NYARIT, Mexico. Marci
24.-Never was there such road al
that to Ixtlan. Well. maybe tha
statement is excessive. There are
other such roads. This Mexican coun.
try is full of them But for sheer color
and movement and delight 1t woulC
make the best product of Los An
geles studio seem as commonplace a:
Houston street to some one who
sells old clothes in Baxter.
Note. There was also dust. Dust in
thick, gummy, talcum powder clouds
And ruts that jolted the very soul out
of one and sun rays that burned down
in q white flame. But overhead
there was the clear, fathomless. bril-
liant azure of the Mexican sky, in
which little woody clouds floated and
the tinkle of running water in the
irrigation bitches by the roadside and
now and then the boughs of great
trees arching overhead. But it was
the human element that caught and
held ones imagination. 1t seemed
such very little while ago that Cor
tez and Fra Junipero and Alvaroda
the Damned trod this bed of staring
yellow sand.
Tepie's Indian Market Day
We had delayed ieaving Tepic be-
cause it was the Indian market day
and we wanted to see what we could
before we said good-by. Some of the
Huicholes had come down from the
hills with the odds and ends they
make for the white man. One young
ster had brought a burro back four
strong, rush -bottomed chairs, precise
ly suitable for porch use, and made
with a massiveness that promised
years of usefulness. He was delighted
to get the equivalent of two dollars
gold for them. And another had the
well-tanned hide of a small mountain
lion, for which he asked--and did not
get-three dollars American. And for
a dime-the asking price-I bought
one of the quaint little hair brushes
with which the Indian mothers sani-
tate the heads of their children. It
is made of the stiff fibre of the cactus
root in precisely the form of shay
ing brush, and is bound with cords
in bright colors. Here were things
of feather and pottery and rough,
crudely decorated articles from the
native loom. But the Indian at the
fliyer wheel grew impatient.
The last person to wave us good
by from Topic was an old woman,
from the corner of whose mouth a
loES cigarette depended. That was
Just before we met the herd of long
horns-no, it was just before we met
the corpse. Far in the distance we
had seen the pillar of cloud that told
of the coming of the trampling
hoofs, but long before they reached
us we saw ahead of the herd
something which flashed alternately
in white and red and which swayed
and shifted through the heat haze
and the gloom of the dust.
Utmost Honor to Indian Dead
It was the body of some poor Nm
dian, being carried TO the church at
Tepic for a blessing on its way to the
last resting place. 1t was borne
shoulder high on a litter by four
sweating, white clad poems, at their
hapitual dog-trot in order to Out-pace
the herd behind. Their hats had an
incongrously jaunty air. tilted as they
were to one side by the poles of the
litter, while the train, sunken body
was swathed against the angry sun
in red blanket with spotless white
sheets covering the head and feet.
The utmost honor was being paid the
dead by his companions. Here the
women and the Relatives do not go
to the church. The mourning is done
in the pitiful little grass thatched
huts in which the Indians live.
1t was but natural that there
should be leak in the gas line. 1t
came, fortunately. under the shadow
of a tree where an Indian lunch
stand had been placed The term
stand is but a conventional one.
In fact blankets and wisps of old
sacking and grass mats had been
placed on the ground, and on them
bananas, of course, and one or two
oranges, though in a district in which
We're spread the various edibles Of
fered to the passer- by. There were