BarbarousMexico JOHN KENNETH TURNER

OVER THE EXILE ROAD 61
the weight of a club. But our ma jocol never faltered.
That majocol is a genius. He conquered the wolf. He
wielded the rope until the stubborn one surrendered, un -
til that same Yaqui came crawling, whimpering, on hands
and knees and licked with his naked tongue the hand of
the man who had beaten him!"
During my travels in Yucatan I was repeatedly
struck with the extremely human character of the people
whom the Mexican government calls Yaquis. The
Yaquis are Indians, they are not white, yet when one
converses with them in a language mutually understood
one is struck with the likenesses of the mental processes
of White and Brown. I was early convinced that the
Yaqui and I were more alike in mind than in color. I
became convinced, too, that the family attachments of
the Yaqui mean quite as much to the Yaqui as the family
attachments of the American mean to the American.
Conjugal fidelity is the cardinal virtue of the Yaqui
home and it seems to be so not because of any tribal
superstition of past times or because of any teachings
of priests, but because of a constitutional tenderness
sweetened more and more with the passing of the years,
for the one with whom he had shared the meat and the
shelter and the labor of life, the joys and sorrows of
existence.
Over and over again I saw this exemplified on the exile
road and in Yucatan. The Yaqui woman feels as
keenly the brutal snatching away of her babe as would
the cultivated American woman. The heart-strings of
the Yaqui wife are no more proof against a violent and
unwished-for separation from her husband than would
be the heart-strings of the refined mistress of a beautiful
American home.
The Mexican government forbids divorce and re-