chiefly corn and beans,
some spare clothing and cotton cloth, hikuli, herbs, etc. The door of
the house is made from one or more short boards of pine wood, and is
either provided with an ingeniously constructed wooden lock, or the
boards are simply plastered up with mud along the four edges. The
Tarahumare rarely locks his house on leaving it, but he is ever
careful to fasten the door of his storehouse securely, and to break
open a store-house sealed up in the manner described is considered
the most heinous crime known to the tribe. Mexicans have committed
it and have had to pay for it with their lives.

The most common kind of store-house is from four to six feet high,
round, and built of stones and mud, with a roof of pine boards,
weighed down with earth and stones. Other store-houses of similar
size are square and built of boards with corners interlocked. They,
too, are covered with boards. These diminutive buildings are often
seen inside of caves; or else they are erected in places difficult of
access, on tops of boulders, for instance. Sometimes they are seen in
lonely places, more often, however, near the dwellings; and the little
round structures make a curious effect when erected on boulders in the
vicinity of some hut, looking, as they do, like so many diminutive
factory chimneys. They proclaim more clearly than anything else the
fact that when the people reach that stage in their development in
which they begin to till the soil, they soon become careful of the
little property they have, in marked distinction to the savage and
nomadic tribes, who are always lavish and improvident. I have seen as
many as ten store-houses of the kind described, and once even fourteen
near one dwelling, but generally one or two only are found near by.

Small caves, especially when difficult to reach and hidden from view,
may be utilised as store-houses, and are then sealed up in the same
way as the other varieties are. Sometimes regular log-houses are used.

Chapter IX

Arrival at Batopilas--Ascent from Batopilas to the Highlands of the
Sierra--A Tarahumare who had been in Chicago--An Old-timer--Flight
of Our Native Guide and its Disastrous Consequences--Indians
Burn the Grass All Over the Country--Travelling Becomes too
Difficult for the Animals--Mr. Taylor and I Go to Zapuri--Its
Surroundings--The Pithaya in Season.

We continued our way toward the south, crossing Barranca de Cobre
where