Studies of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico
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y Texas Technological College Bulletin Vol. XII, No. 1, January, 1936 STUDIES OF THE YAQUI INDIANS OF SONORA, MEXICO By W. C. HOLDEN Professor of History and Anthropology and Director of Archaeological Research Texas Technological College C. C. SELTZER Research Fellow Harvard University R. A. STUDHALTER Professor of Biology Texas Technological College C. J. WAGNER Chief of Staff West Texas Hospital , , • and w. g. McMillan Scientific Scries " No. 2 • PUBLISHED BY TEXAS TECHNOLOGICAL COLLEGE LUBBOCK Issued monthly by the College and entered as second-class matter December 24. 1924, at the Post Office at Lubbock, Texas. under the Act of August 24, 1912. r Texas Technological College Bulletin Vol. XII, No. 1, January, 1936 STUDIES OF THE YAQUI INDIANS OF SONORA, MEXICO By W. C. HOLDEN Trofessor of History and Anthropology and Director of Archaeological Research Texas Technological College C. C. SELTZER Research Fellow Harvard University R. A. STUDHALTER Professor of Biology Texas Technological College C. J. WAGNER Chief of Staff West Texas Hospital w. G. McMillan Scientific Scries " 'No. 2 PIBLISHEI) BY TEXAS TECHNOLOGICAL COLLEGE LUBBOCK Issued monthly by the College and entered as second-class matter December 24, 1924, at the Post Office at Lubbock, Texas, under the Act of August 24, 1912. 9 70,3 COPYRIGHT, 1936 by TEXAS TECHNOLOGICAL COLLEGE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 3 1262 08645 484 9 STUDIES OF THE YAQUI INDIANS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The following studies of the Yaqui Indians are by no means exhaustive, and the members of the expedition are fully aware that more remains to be said on the various subjects treated by them than they have included in these reports. The various papers, with the exception of Dr. Seltzer's, have been written with the layman in view rather than the professional anthropologist. We wish to express our appreciation to the civil and military officials of the Republic of Mexico for their kindness and coopera- tion in making the expedition possible: to Mr. Ramon Beteta, Director General of Statistics, for his friendly interest; to Mr. Jose Reygadas Vertiz, Head of ihe Departments of Monuments, for giving us permission to make ethnological studies among the Yaquis; to Manuel Mascarenas, Jr., Chief of Customs at Nogales, Sonora, for extending to us the "courtesy of the port", both on entering and leaving Mexico; to General Jesus Gutierrez Cazares, Lt. Colonel Francisco Salcedo, and Lt. Colonel Natividad Jacome, Mexican officers in the Yaqui region of Sonora, for military assistance and courtesies; to Jose Miranda, Yaqui governor of Torin, and the other Yaqui chiefs at Vicam and Torin for their friendly coopera- tion; and to RamOn Torry, our Yaqui interpreter, for his fa'thful service and personal loyalty to the members of the staff. For financial support and contribution of supplies we are in- debted to the Rotary Club of Lubbock, the Kiwanis Club of Lub- bock, the West Texas Chamber of Commerce, the Lubbock Ava- lanche, the A marMo Globe News, Davis and Humphrey Whole- sale Grocery Company of Lubbock, Swift and Company of Lub- bock, Western Windmill Company of Lubbock, J. A. Folger and Company of Kansas City and San Francisco, Texas Power and Light Company, Mr. John W. Carpenter of Dallas, Mr. Spencer Wells of Lubbock, and to many other organizations and individ- uals. We wish to thank Mrs. R. A. Studhalter, Mrs. W. C. Hoi- den, Professor Gus L. Ford, and Professor C. D. Eaves for taking over the routine college work of two members of the staff whi'e those individuals were on the expedition. We are indebted to Miss Elizabeth Howard West for having read the several manu- scripts. W. C. Holden Director of the Yaqui Expedition 2i£10 . TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Organizations by William Curry Holden 13 2. Marriage, Child Rearing, and Education by William Curry Holden 25 3. La Fiesta De Gloria by William Curry Holden 34 4. Yaqui Funerals by William Curry Holden 55 5. Household Economy by William Curry Holden 67 6. Yaqui Architecture by William Garrett McMillan 72 7. Medical Practices of the Yaquis by Charles John Wagner 79 8. Physical Characteristics of the Yaqui Indians by Carl Coleman Seltzer 91 9. Yaqui Agriculture by Richard Arthur Studhalter 114 Appendices 126 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plate 1 15 Plate 2 17 Plate 3 23 Plate 4 29 Plate 5 35 Plate 6 47 Plate 7 57 Plate 8 73 Plate 9 75 Plate 10 77 Plate 11 81 Plate 12 87 Plate 13 93 Plate 14 115 Plate 15 121 STUDIES OF THE YAQUI INDIANS 7 INTRODUCTION William Curry Holden, Director Our active interest in the Yaqui Indians began in the spring of 1933. Through Miss Yone Stone of Lubbock we met Mr. Ivan Williams, an immigration officer from Marfa, Texas. Mr. Williams for several years had been closely associated with a group of Yaqui refugees at Tucson, Arizona. During a period of Yaqui hostilities in 1926 this group had been driven across the border by a superior Mexican force. Mr. Williams befriended the refugees and in time won their confidence. They elected him an honorary chief and gave him a chief's staff and feather bonnet. By talking with the old men, Williams learned that Yaquis had long kept a "history" of their tribe handed down by word of mouth. He asked "General" Guadalupe Flores, chief of the refugees, to send word down to the chiefs of the Yaqui villages on the Rio Yaqui in Sonora requesting them to have some of their history written down and sent to Tucson. There is constant com- munication between the Arizona Yaquis and the Yaquis of Sonora. Runners slip back and forth over secret trails between the Bacatete Mountains and the border. The Sonora chiefs decided to sup- ply the "history." They directed one of their tribe who could operate a typewriter to write the tribal traditions as dictated by the old men. The scribe wrote a few episodes and attempted to send them to Arizona through the Mexican mails. The Mexicans in- tercepted the letters, and the Yaquis tried another plan. They typed a chapter on cloth, sewed it in the lining of a shirt, put the shirt on a runner who carried it over the secret trails to Tucson. Williams said that every few weeks a runner would arrive at Tuc- son with a "shirt full of history". It was written in Yaqui. "Gen- eral" Flores would translate it into Spanish, and Williams in turn would translate it into English. In all there were about 8,000 words of it. Five months later Mr. Williams was kind enough to let us see the account. It was mostly a sketchy account of the tribal wars with the Mexicans since 1 740. It occurred to us that if we could get to the old men on the Rio Yaqui we could possibly draw from them additional information. Williams had visited the eight villages on the Rio Yaqui in 1929, and had become a close friend of Jesus Munguia, at that time chief of all the villages. Munguia had since urged Williams to visit the Yaquis again and bring his friends if he wished. An opportunity to enter the Yaqui country as "Williams' friends" caused us to start planning an expedition. The matter of financing an expedition in 1933 was a serious one. The depression was at its worst, many banks were closed, and funds of foundations for scientific work had been greatly de- 8 TEXAS TECHNOLOGICAL COLLEGE BULLETIN creased through the stock market collapse. Finally, we worked out a plan to finance the expedition locally. President Bradford Knapp and the Board of Directors of Texas Technological Col- lege enthusiastically approved of the project. The Avalanche- Journal undertook to sponsor the campaign. Service clubs, busi- ness firms, and the West Texas Chamber of Commerce contributed more readily than we anticipated. The director of the expedition, accompanied by his wife, went to Mexico City during the Christmas holidays, 1933, and secured not only permission, but the cooperation of the Mexican government. Mexican officials listened to our story and became quite interested in our proposed expedition. They frankly admitted that the Yaquis had been terribly abused by the Spanish government and by the Mexican government until a few years ago. Porfirio Diaz had tried to exterminate them. At the present the government seems to want to do the right thing by the Yaquis. During January and February of 1934 we organized our ex- pedition. We wished to make historical, physical anthropological, archaeological, ethnological, ethnobotanical, herpetological, orni- thological, and medical investigations. To this end Harvard Uni- versity attached to our staff a physical anthropologist, Dr. Carl Coleman Seltzer, student of Dr. E. A. Hooton. Dr. Richard A. Studhalter, head of the Department of Biology, Texas Technologi- cal College, accepted our invitation to go as ethnobotanist. Dr. Charles J. Wagner, chief of staff of the West Texas Hospital, was selected to care for the health of the party and investigate Yaqui diseases. To William G. McMillan of Lubbock was entrusted the study of wild life. Charles A. Guy, editor and publisher of the Avalanche-Journal, was to assist in recording data. Bennie McWilliams, a Technological College student, was added as cook and assistant archaeologist. At the last moment the expedition decided to take along Ross Edwards and Frank Maddox of Lub- bock as outdoor men and camp assistants. We were desirous to add a geologist, but we had been repeatedly told by persons who knew that the Yaquis are jealously guarding their minerals and that one man examining rocks and geological structures would jeopardize the entire expedition. Our party left Lubbock March 1 , travelling in two cars and a heavily loaded truck.