OQUETILLA CACTUS.
We traveled some thirty miles along the river without seeing a living thing except a few jack rabbits and coyotes, when suddenly we rounded a bend of the beautiful Boca Grande and came upon a stretch of valley covered with zacaton grass, and which in a few years will be a valuable ranche. Across this we saw two as hard-looking characters approaching us as ever cut a throat. I was preparing to hand over to them all my Mexican money and other valuables when they politely touched their hats and simply said, "Documentos." Here, again, in the far-off woods and hills were more customhouse officials. These men were here to prevent smugglers from crossing the border between the towns and established highways.
We lunched that day on Espia Hill, used formerly as a customhouse post of observation, but the Apache chief Geronimo, raiding through here, collected a poll tax of one scalp apiece, and since then the post has been abandoned. A short distance further the river changes from the Boca Grande to the Casas Grandes.
The Boca Grande and the Casas Grandes are the same river, like the Wind River and the Big Horn in our own country, the two changing names at a certain point. In other words, they have the same river bed, for in the dryest seasons the Casas Grandes sinks and reappears further down as the Boca Grande, the two streams being really identical most of the way, however, and both of them emptying into the great "sink" known as Laguna Guzman. I noticed one peculiarity of the rocky soil on the ridges extending down from the foothills of the mountains that I have never seen elsewhere, and might not have noticed even here had it not been pointed out to me by one of my guides. Great areas of the soil were covered with stones, mostly flat in shape, and so numerous that but little vegetation could exist between them. A decidedly desolate aspect was thus presented; indeed no one would believe that anything except the oquetilla cactus could possibly grow here. One of my Mexican men, however, assured me that the stones were only on the surface, and that by removing them the richest of red soil could be found underneath, not affording a single stone in a cubic yard of earth. The soil had not been washed away when the rains beat down upon it, as this "top-dressing" of flat rock had shielded it from such action, protecting it, let us hope, for the future use of man. They told me this peculiar kind was the richest and most easily cultivated soil in Mexico, but it looked, with its covering of rocks, poor enough to put in some terrestrial almshouse along with the Sahara Desert.
This whole Southwest, or rather Northwest from a Mexican standpoint, is a country of deceptive appearances. Hundreds of my readers have probably traveled over the Santa Fé Railway as it courses through the Rio Grande valley, and, recalling the grassy, pleasant-looking country in the East, have wondered how this cheerless area of sand and sagebrush could ever be utilized. Yet in this valley is a farm of twenty-two acres for which sixty thousand dollars has been flatly refused, although not one cent of its value is due to its proximity to any important point (as the fact is with the valuable little farms around our Eastern cities), but solely to what it will produce. Verily the desolation of the land is deceptive, and, like beauty, is but skin deep.
CHAPTER II.
| NORTHWESTERN CHIHUAHUA (CONTINUED)—MEXICAN MORMON COLONIES—FROM LA ASCENSION TO CORRALITOS—SOME RUINS ALONG THE TAPASITA—A TOLTEC BABYLON. |
It is sixty to sixty-five miles from Las Palomas to La Ascension, and not a settlement or a sign of life except jack rabbits, coyotes, and customhouse officers is to be seen throughout the whole length of this unusually rich country, so effectually did the Apaches enforce their restrictive tariff but a few years ago. At rare intervals great haciendas are found in these rich valleys, the main industry of which is cattle raising. We passed a herd of about a thousand head just before reaching La Ascension, all in magnificent condition, and attended by some eight or ten vaqueros, who were driving them to market. With the usual Mexican politeness they took particular pains to give us the road; and to do so drove the whole herd over a high hill, around the base of which the road ran.
Just before reaching La Ascension we came to the Mormon colony of Diaz (named by them in honor of the present President of the Mexican Republic), numbering about fifty families. A discussion of their religious tenets is clearly and fortunately out of my province, not only from its heavy, dreary character, but for the reason that everything wise and otherwise about Mormonism has already been put before those who care to read it. But entirely aside from the subject of polygamy, which has so completely obscured every other point about these people, they have one characteristic which is seldom heard of in connection with them and their wanderings in the Western wilderness. I refer to their building up of new countries. They have no peer in pioneering among the Caucasian races. They are so far ahead of the Gentiles in organized and discriminating, businesslike colonization, that the latter are not close enough to them to permit a comparison that would show their inferiority. Of course they (the Mormons) see in their belief an ample explanation for this excellence; it is far more probable, however, as I look at it from my Gentile point of view, that it is due to the peculiar organization of their Church, which so fits them for the work of making the wilderness blossom as the rose.
No other Christian Church exercises so much authority over the temporal affairs of its members as the Mormon Church. However debatable this exercise of authority may be in civilized communities, surrounded by people of the same kind, there is no doubt in my mind as to its favorable effect upon pioneer associations, encompassed by enemies in man and nature. This view of the subject must be admitted by everyone who has grown up on the Gentile frontier and seen the innumerable bickerings between adjacent towns, the internal dissensions in the towns themselves, the rivalry for "booms," the shotgun contests for county seats, the thousands of exaggerations about their own interests, and the hundreds of depreciations about those of others adjoining. As in its spiritual, so in its temporal affairs, the authority of the Mormon Church is remarkable for its effective power of centralization. It judicially settles all questions for the general, not the individual good; and upon this principle it determines, by the character of the soil, and by the natural routes of travel, where colonies shall locate, as well as what are the probable opportunities for propagation of the faith. It is not at all surprising to one who has observed these facts that an organized faith of almost any character should have flourished, though surrounded by so much disorganization.
As a rule, at least from two to four years of quiet are needed after an Indian war to restore such confidence among the whites that they can settle the disturbed district in a bona-fide way. I should, however, except the Mormons from this class, but to do so without an explanation would appear somewhat unreasonable. Their long and almost constant frontier experience has taught them how to weigh Indian matters correctly, as well as others pertaining to the ragged edge of civilization. Although the Apaches had been subdued a dozen times by the Mexican and American governments alternately, they knew when the subduing meant subjugation, and before Geronimo and his cabinet were halfway to the orange groves of Florida, Mormon wagon poles were pointing to the rich valleys of Northwestern Chihuahua.
They number here a few hundred families, a mere fraction in view of all the available land of the magnificent valleys of the Casas Grandes, Boca Grande, Santa Maria, and others; and they never will predominate politically or in numbers over the other inhabitants if we include the Mexican population, which is almost universally Catholic.