BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

44 BARBAROUS MEXICO
that had been brought to him and that were dangling
from the end of a cane. This picture was even published
in derision of the exploits of Governor Ysabal
in the newspaper El Im/'arciai, of Mexico City."
In 1898 the government troops were armed for the
first time with the improved Mauser rifle, and in that
year they met and wiped out an army of Yaquis at
Mazacoba, the killed numbering more than 1,000. This
ended warfare on anything like an equal footing. There
were no more large battles; the Yaqui warriors were
merely hunted. Thousands of the Indians surrendered.
Their leaders were executed, and they and their families
were granted a new territory to the north, to which
they journeyed as to a promised land. But it proved to
be a barren desert, entirely waterless and one of the
most uninhabitable spots in all America. Hence the
peaceful Yaquis moved to other sections of the state,
some of them becoming wage-workers in the mines,
others finding employment on the railroads, and still
others becoming peons on the farms. Then and there
this portion of the Yaqui nation lost its identity and
became merged with the peoples about it. But it is
these Yaquis, the peaceful ones, who are sought out and
deported to Yucatan.
A few Yaquis. perhaps four or five thousand, refused
to give up the battle for their lands. The found inaccessible
peaks and established a stronghold high up in
the Bacetete mountains, which border upon their former
home. Here flow never-ceasing springs of cold water.
Here, on the almost perpendicular cliffs, the y built their
little homes, planted their corn, raised their families and
sang, sometimes, of the fertile valleys which once were
theirs. The army of several thousand soldiers still
hunted them. The soldiers could not reach those moun-