BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

F,
THE EXTERMINATION OF THE VAQUIS 41
pie that the government had decided to give it to foreigners.
They confiscated $80,000 in a bank belonging
to Chief Cajeme. Finally, they sent armed men to arrest
Cajeme, and when the latter could not find him they
set fire to his house and to those of his neighbors, and
assaulted the women of the village, even Cajeme's wife
not being respected. Finally, the victims were goaded
into war.
Since that day twenty-five years ago the Mexican government
has maintained an army almost perpetually in
the field against the Yaquis, an army ranging in numbers
from 2,000 to 6,000 men. Thousands of soldiers
and tens of thousands of Yaquis have been killed in battle
and many hundreds of the latter have been executed
after being taken prisoners. After a few years Chief
Cajeme was captured and publicly executed in the presence
of a large body of his people who had been taken
prisoner with him. Tetabiate, another Yaqui, was
promptly elected to Cajeme's place, and the fight went
on. Finally, in 1894, at one fell swoop, as it were, the
ground was literally taken from under the feet of the
rebels. By act of the federal government the best of
their lands were taken from them and handed over to
one man, General Lorenzo Torres, who is at this writing
chief of the army in Sonora, then second in command.
The government is credited with having been guilty
of the most horrible atrocities. Two examples are cited
by Santa de Cabora, a Mexican writer, as follows:
"On May 17, 1892, General Otero, of the Mexican army,
ordered the imprisonment of the Yaciuis, men, women and
children, in the town of Xavajoa, and hung so many of these
people that the supply of rope in the town was exhausted, it
being necessary to use each rope five or six times."
"A colonel in the army, Antonio Rincon, in July, of 1892,
took two hundred Yaauis. men. women and children. QrsoIle.z&