and write, and,
as he took a great interest in church affairs, he acted as a kind of
padre. I was told that he ascended the pulpit and delivered sermons
in Cora, and that he aspired even to bless water, but this the padre
had forbidden him. He was very suspicious and intolerant and quite
an ardent Catholic, the first Indian I had met who had entirely
relinquished his native belief. He actually did not like mitote
dancing, and the other Indians did not take kindly to him. All the
time I was here he worked against me, because the priest of San Juan
Peyotan, as I learned, had denounced me before the people.

Two traders from that town, who had been visiting Santa Teresa while
I was there, had reported to the padre the presence of a mysterious
gringo (American), who had a fine outfit of boxes and pack-mules,
and who gave the Coras "precious jewellery" to buy their souls,
and visited their dances. The padre, without having ever seen me,
concluded that I was a travelling Protestant missionary, and one
day after mass he warned the people against the bad Protestant who
was on his way to corrupt their hearts and to disturb this valley in
which there had always been peace. "Do not accept anything from him,
not even his money; do not allow him to enter the church, and do not
give him anything, not even a glass of water," he said. This padre,
so I was told by reliable authority, made the judges at San Juan and
at San Lucas punish men and women for offences that did not come under
their jurisdiction. The men were put into prison, while the women had
fastened to their ankles a heavy round board, which they had to drag
wherever they went for a week or two. It caused them great difficulty
in walking, and they could not kneel down at the metate with it.

His speeches about me made a deep impression upon the illiterate
Mexicans in that remote part of the world, who in consequence of it
looked upon me with suspicion and shunned me. Not knowing anything
better, they invented all kinds of wild charges against me: I was
surveying the lands for Porfirio Diaz, who wanted to sell the Cora
country to the Americans; I appealed only to the Indians because
they were more confiding and could be more easily led astray, my
alleged aim being to make Freemasons out of them. A Freemason is
the one thing of which these people have a superstitious dread and
horror. Even my letters of recommendation were doubted and considered
spurious. However, one old m