The Raramuri indigenous people, with a population of about 60,000, are the largest tribe in the Republic north of the Valley of Mexico. With quiet, individualistic determination they cling to the sheer rockslide flanks of some of the most remote barrancas of Mexico, surrounded by a demanding environment in which even the smallest error can be dangerous, a large mistake, fatal.
Small, strong, wiry, alert, with immense capacities of endurance, they call themselves foot-runners — Raramuri — and delight in 170-mile marathons and in hunting deer, when they can be found, by running them to death.
More than 2,000 years ago, their ancestors explored the intricate, precipitous system of gorges known today, generally as the Urique and Copper Canyons, settling in the choicest flood land meadows. When the Spanish arrived in the mid-1500s, seeking silver and gold, they characteristically misunderstood the tribe’s name, dubbed the Tarahumara, and began forcing them off their land, which European frontiersmen coveted for ranches.
As they were squeezed west and southwest, the Raramuri-Tarahumara fought stubbornly, flaring up in rebellions that spread from Chihuahua to New Mexico, attacking forts, missions and boomtowns. In 1649, the Tarahumaras swept through Nueva Viscaya (as the Spanish called the region) in a fury, burning Spanish barracks, ranches, churches and killing the soldiers, settlers and padres inhabiting them. In control of the sierra passes, the Tarahumara blocked the deployment of troops, priests, settlers and supplies, maintaining their freedom for another 20 years.
The Great Tarahumara War ended in 1670 when an indigenous girl was persuaded to lead a viceregal army into a remote mountain valley where the main force of Tarahumara warriors had camped. The inevitable massacre broke the capability and the will of the tribe to continue resisting the Spanish. European disease and missions completed the job of subduing the once-powerful Raramuri.
But the tribe was subdued only in the sense that it was unable to continue waging open warfare against the Spanish. The Tarahumara swiftly scattered into the most inaccessible ridgebacks and ledges of the barranca country, declining to be recruited for Spanish mines, haciendas, church building and ranches, refusing even to gather together in any community larger than two or three related families. And as they moved frequently the Spaniards’ attempts at raiding the high canyons for workers were exercises in futility. The Tarahumara had disappeared into the desolate, uncharted gorges and hard-rock ridges of Sinaloa and Chihuahua. Even four centuries of attempts to missionize them as a tribe have been frustrated, until very recently, by their defensive scattered, nomadic living pattern.
To this day, these barranca-living people remain wary in their dealings with mestizo Mexicans, whom they consider Españoles. They are scornful of these invaders, saying that hell is overflowing with Mexicans, that is why they come all the way to the barrancas to bother the Raramuri. Mexicans, they will tell you, are hairy as bears and have a strong offensive odor. For the Tarahumara, Norteamericanos have an odor, too: they smell like coffee, but it is not a pleasant smell.
The survivors of the Tarahumara War who joined fellow tribesmen in the barrancas were tough, determined individualists who adapted themselves to a unique semi-nomadic life in which they spent the summer on the high plateaus and wintered part way down the canyons, but even then they were always on the move.
The far, plunging mountainsides are generous in many ways, harsh in others. They are made up of a hard volcanic layer folded over a softer volcanic tuff which is highly vulnerable to erosion. This soft volcanic under-layer slowly wears away, leaving an accommodating overhang made of resistant volcanic topping, providing ideal cave homes for the ever-mobile Tarahumara. Many of these caves are still used today, and near such dwellings you will find small agricultural patches and grazing grounds for sheep and goats.
Yet few Tarahumaras have lived all their lives in cave dwellings. Rather, since this is harsh country in which to eke out a living and the resources of any one spot are quickly exhausted, the Raramuri tend to move from one place to another, seeking moisture for their crops and grazing for their stock. Where there are no caves, families throw up stone and wood houses though these, too, are temporary, to be abandoned when the soil is overworked and the water gives out, and revisited when the soil revives, when grazing is good again.
In this demanding environment, all available resources must be carefully used. The Tarahumara subsist chiefly on that ancient indigenous trinity of corn, beans and squash, supplemented by goats, sheep, infrequent cattle and just about everything that grows, runs, swims and flies. Those few living things that do not lend themselves to direct human consumption are devoured by animals and subsequently used as fertilizer for gardens and fields.
Trained carefully by necessity, the Raramuri are marvelous, practical botanists. They utilize more than 50 plants as mixtures and condiments to give variety to their food. They have an armory of more than 30 plants with which to stun fish for catching. For food, they collect over 50 fruits and nuts, some 60 varieties of edible grains, 20 kinds of roots, more than 20 varieties of seeds and a dozen or so mushrooms, fungi and miscellaneous items. Still other plants are used for incense, ceremonial batons and a variety of musical instruments such as reeds, drums, rattles, violins and rasping sticks.
Nature’s medicine cabinet provides them with a vast pharmacy: 53 plant families which are used to cure everything from pulmonary disorders, rheumatism, malaria and heart ailments, to intestinal disorders, heat prostration, kidney problems and jaundice.
Modesty
Like their southern neighbors, the Huichol, the tribe uses peyote, both for religious and (especially) curing purposes, but in less elaborate, less ritualized ways. Catholicized Tarahumaras cross themselves when approaching peyote buds, greeting the plant as if it were a person. Modesty is an important concept to the Raramuri, and peyote is considered a “modest” plant; as such it is placed in a closed basket and normally kept in a storage area separate from a family’s living area.
This modesty — an unshakable reticence, shyness — seems a basic element of Tarahumara nature, a tribal instinct that moves them to prefer living isolated and alone, for the most part. At times, several families will gather in a brief community, but such “villages” seldom last long. Most Raramuri seem to welcome the silent isolation of their demanding environment, which they break now and then with annual feasts and fiestas. At these celebrations great quantities of tesquino (corn beer) is consumed and the bonds of their inherent modesty loosen and courtships and flirting are initiated — usually by the girls and women. But generally, modesty seems to be constantly expressed in almost everything a Tarahumara does. For instance when a visitor approaches a dwelling on an errand, he will sit down some distance away, waiting to be recognized, even though he is a friend or even a relative of those he is visiting. During such a visit, the guest may be invited to share comida, but seldom invited to spend the night. The Rarmuri say, “Only dogs enter a house uninvited.”
Yet, despite this modesty, men, women and children delight in daily games of skill and chance. Betting is almost always a part of such contests, which include wrestling, stick throwing, archery and quoits. But it is foot-running that is a passion among the Raramuri. Men race in competing teams (usually of 20 members), kicking a wooden ball over a long, prescribed course. Women race, also, using a hoop thrown with a stick.
With the expanded activities of the Chihuahua-Pacific railroad, the lives of many Tarahumara have changed — they work for the rail line, and those projects that have grown up around it. But for the most part, the Raramuri prefer the ancient independence and vast freedom of nomadic life among the wind-spun crests and plunging walled canyons of the Rio Urique.