Their most common diseases are pleurisy, intermittent fevers, and jaundice, while fits, fainting spells, and hysterics are exceedingly rare.
As a rule the women are abstemious, economical, and very hospitable. They love work, and are fond of raising chickens and turkeys, which they sell in order to enable them to buy what they most need, or else they prepare such fowl for banquets, marriages, christenings, the day of All Souls, or for the novenas which they celebrate for the Holy Cross or the saint of their special devotion. They do not fancy all manner of necessities, nor do they pretend to live on the work of their husbands; rather they work constantly in order to dominate them, and in this they succeed generally, at least to a certain degree. They will upbraid them if they undertake anything without asking their advice. They do not forget offenses they may have received until they are avenged. In their old age they are liable to commit small insignificant thefts, and they especially seem to like to become mendicants, even though they do not need to be. They seem to do this as a kind of compensation for what in their earlier days they may have given to the poor.
Sentiments of gratitude do not last long. However, we must in this case always except those who were reared in the homes of white people. With few exceptions (when perhaps poor methods or little care in their education, or perchance bad example and ill-treatment dominated), these Indian girls are virtuous, assiduous, disinterested, and very well-disposed toward all the different branches of service and ready to learn whatever they are taught. They are modest, and are fond of dressing themselves nicely and decently. They are so affectionate, true, and grateful, that many a time they grow old in the service of one family, and if this family meets with misfortune and perhaps becomes impoverished, they will go to work outside to help support them, of which I could mention many cases. Just the opposite happens with the men, who, although they were educated in a white family from early childhood, and many a time with the same care as the white children, the cases are rare that they do not gradually drift apart, become estranged, give themselves up to vice, and finally forget their benefactors entirely.
DRESS
The ordinary costume of the men consists of a shirt of white cotton like ours, worn outside the white drawers of the same material, which are wide and reach to the calf of the leg; a belt, white or in colors, is worn around the waist under the shirt; a kerchief; a straw hat, and sandals consisting of only soles which are adjusted to the foot by cords of agave fiber, complete his costume. While at work in the field they take all their clothes off and wear only a loin-cloth, which they call huit, consisting of a piece of cotton cloth fastened around the hips, the points passing between the thighs to be fastened to the belt below the navel. From this belt hangs the sheathed machete on the left side.
When they go out, the Indian women wear on their heads either a piece of cotton cloth of about half a yard in width by two and a half yards in length, the ends of which hang down the back, or else they tie a red kerchief around the head, a very bright red being their favorite color. A hipil of cotton is fashioned like a wide sacque-coat, with an opening in the center to put the head through, fitting around the neck, having openings on the two sides for the arms. This hipil reaches to about the calf of the leg, falling on a skirt or petticoat, also of white cotton, three or four fingers longer. It is fastened around the waist under the hipil, which falls loosely over it. The hem of both the skirt and the hipil are very often roughly embroidered in blue or red thread. For traveling they wear sandals like the men.
LANGUAGE
The Indians of Yucatan speak the Maya language, though somewhat adulterated through contact with Spanish. Several Spanish expressions have gradually crept into their idiom, especially in cities and principal towns where the Indians are in almost constant intercourse with whites and mestizos. Many among them can speak Spanish perfectly well, but as a rule they avoid it, and will answer in Maya to those who speak Spanish to them.
STATURE, PHYSIOGNOMY, COLOR
Generally speaking, the Indians of Yucatan are of about the same stature as all intertropical races, of a round face, straight black hair, rather coarse, not very pronounced eyebrows, very little beard or none at all, a low narrow forehead, black and expressive eyes, a somewhat flat nose, small but outstanding ears, protruding cheekbones, a regular mouth with thin lips and beautiful teeth, a stout neck, broad chest and shoulders, arms, thighs, and limbs of robust and muscular build. Their hands and feet are small, and the toes of their feet stand closer together than the heels. They have no hair on their bodies except on the head. Their color is a copper-brown, darkened through constant exposure to the sun, especially as they go about almost totally naked. The color of the women is therefore much lighter, and this is also the case with such men as have been reared from childhood in homes of the white people. Among the women there are some very pretty ones, slender in form, with an airy but graceful carriage, and a very sweet voice; but the hard work to which they are subjected from early childhood causes them to lose their beauty at an early age. There are also some truly fine types among the men.
SAVAGE TRIBES
Of real savage tribes there are none in Yucatan. After the greater part of the peninsula, cities as well as villages, had been reconquered from the possession of the Indians who had taken them during their insurrection in 1847, which was general, the most tenacious and unruly ones among them settled in the eastern part of the peninsula, where they have built several towns, the principal one being Chan-Santacruz. From these fastnessess they frequently sally forth to attack and even to raze our absolutely defenseless villages. These attacks cause frightful suffering not only to members of other tribes and races, without regard to sex or age, but they are at times even greater among those of their own race, who at one time or another have either absolutely refused to join their ranks, or, after following their lead for some time, have deserted, and returned to live in peace among the white people.
Another and by far the most numerous band of those rebellious Indians went to settle in the south of the peninsula, and by virtue of the treaty they celebrated with General Vega have given up all hostilities, although they remain in complete independence of national as well as of state authorities, and in peaceful business intercourse with this city (Mérida), and also with Campeche and other points in close proximity to their abodes. Colonel Juan Sanchez Navarro drew a map, which he presented, together with his report, before the government of Yucatan on April 12 of the present year, on which map he gives an approximate idea of the localities on the peninsula still occupied by rebellious Indians who maintain a hostile attitude and those who have agreed to peaceful intercourse. The first mentioned he calls the eastern group, and the last named the southern one.
Santiago Mendez.
Mérida, October 24th, 1861.
Note by Antonio García y Cubas
After having written about several groups of aborigines who inhabit the central part of the republic, I wish to extend these notes with the aid of documents in my possession to the Indians of Tabasco and Chiapas.
The customs, habits, and inclinations of all those Indians in general do not, with any certainty, evoke any hope for the improvement of their race and their subsequent utility and usefulness to the nation. The task I have set for myself is a very delicate one, and there may exist a great many people who will attribute to lack of patriotism the frank statement of many defects in our population; but I observe that our nation is not moving toward its aggrandizement with the alacrity and speed which the progressives among the authorities wish to see. Therefore I consider it necessary to study and point out the defects. I do not wish it to appear as if the conceptions expressed in these lines were imputations of my own imagination, and I wish to state, therefore, that whatever is said in this report is extracted from official documents in my possession.
The aborigines living in the towns and villages of the district of Jalpa, and the same may be said of the rest of the Indians of Tabasco, despite their docility, prefer the wild, uncivilized life of the mountains to the advantages of communal life, if by so doing they are able to evade all public responsibilities and duties. They come together only for their religious festivities, and on all such occasions they are given to drunkenness and gluttony to such a degree that they contract very serious diseases which in a great many cases hasten their demise. With very few exceptions they live in complete vagrancy, and they propagate without respecting any degree of blood relationship. They insist on curing their diseases with all sorts of roots and plants, which, however, mostly impair their health, causing great mortality, especially among children. This may be regarded as the principal cause why very few among their number reach the age of fifty years.
The aborigines who inhabit the borders to the river Usumacinta and its tributaries are for the greater part natives of Yucatan, and are like all the rest of their kind, very fond of drinking. The Indians of Tenosique, about forty years ago, were known as very honest and trustworthy, but their intercourse with the rebels and emigrants from Yucatan have demoralized them to a great extent.
These and other defects, with but a few honorable exceptions, are revealed in the documents treating of the Indians of the district of Comitan, state of Chiapas, which, however, I am not going to enumerate, so as to avoid repetitions, and by so doing make this article altogether too long.
All the above mentioned shows the decadence and general degeneration of the aborigines, as compared with the very scant elements of vitality and vigor that might help in the movement toward progress in our republic. The same customs, the same reserve and diffidence which characterized the Indian of colonial days is manifestly still his today under the so-called protective laws of the republic, which barely give him the title of citizen. Yet, as I have stated before, I do not belong to those who despair of his ultimate civilization, and I believe that the most efficacious means of effecting this is by crossing his breed or race by way of colonization, introducing other nations and elements to come in contact with him.
That this efficacious means of stopping the infinite defects which retard, if they do not hinder, the natural progress of our nation, has not been attained, to my idea, lies in the fact that so far no protective laws have existed which, founded on prevision, afford guaranties and procure work for colonists. There are no laws that fix the boundaries of the immense stretches of waste-land within our country, nor a careful study of climate, geology, and production. There is not, to my knowledge, any report establishing the best methods of making all our territory productive either through sales or the renting of all lands that cannot be tilled by their original owners. Our own elements, as we have tried to demonstrate in this article, are either heterogeneous or too scarce and insufficient to accomplish the task of carrying the nation onward on the road of aggrandizement. Hence it is, according to my idea, colonization, and colonization alone, that may serve as the final remedy for our national ills.
If we had today laws such as I have had reference to, we would at this very moment see European colonists arrive continually, attracted by hopes of a splendid future which our fertile soil and our salubrious climate offer to the industrious and enterprising man. Our population would increase daily at the same pace with the United States of Brazil and Buenos Aires, where European immigration forms an element of prosperity.
It remains for our government to fix in the most decisive way the answer to this question in the interest of the future of our country.
Antonio García y Cubas.
Mexico, May 1st, 1870.