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Show 46 BY PATH AND TRAIL. race, there can be no doubt. Scattered over the face of the country are the remains of a people who have long ago disappeared. Many of the ruins are of great extent, covering whole table lands, and are crumbling away in groups or in single isolation. Unfortunately, no docu ments are known to exist to record the traditions of the ancient people before the Spanish missionary fathers first began the civilization of the tribes 400 years ago. ' When the early Jesuit missionaries were called home, the archives and everything belonging to the missions were carried away or destroyed. It is, however, possible that a search through the libraries of the Jesuit and Francis can monasteries in France and Spain may yet reward the historian with some valuable finds. From an examination of the sites and the ruins, scat tered here and there in the Sonora valley, I am satisfied that the ancient dwellers were a sedentary and agricul tural people ; that they were of the same race as the Moki and suffered the same fate as that picturesque tribe, and from the unsparing hand of the same merciless destroy ers, the Apache- Yaquis. Long before the time of Cortez the evil fame of the unconquerable Yaquis had settled around the throne of the Montezumas. There is a tra dition that after the Spanish chief had stormed the City of Mexico and made a prisoner of the Aztec ruler, Mon-tezuma said to him: " You may take possession of all my empire and subdue all its tribes but, the Yaqui, never." To- day the Sonora valley is wet with the blood of slaughtered settlers. Formerly these fierce men con fined their depredations to the Sonora valley and the Yaqui river regions, but the members of the tribe are now scattered over northern and central Sonora, the fighters, however, live in the Bacatete mountains and |
