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The sound of this air gave my heart a wrench, as I thought of poor Dennis; whose gallant race with death assuredly had saved all of us from dying without a chance to strike a blow. And both of our Otomí Indians were dead too. But while we had suffered thus severely we had the satisfaction of knowing that we had inflicted a most signal punishment upon our enemies.
And I will arrange that the señor shall live for a time in the mountains it will be a hard life, I fear at Santa María and at San Andrés, in which villages he can gain a mouth-mastery of both Otomí and Tarascan. A little time must be given to all this some months, no doubt. But the señor, who already has studied through ten years, will understand the needfulness of this short discipline.
In planning our present journey, I had arranged to visit San Gregorio and Tlacuilotepec for the purpose of investigating this manufacture of paper and these pagan customs. Inquiring of the presidente of Pahuatlan about his indians, I asked regarding paper-beating, and discovered that it was done at the nearest indian village of San Pablito, Otomi.
At the first Otomi portrait, he had said: "Ah, sir, but my schools will change the Otomis." It would be pleasant to have faith in President Diaz' solution of the Otomi problem, but to me it seems doubtful. Of course, I recall with pleasure my visit to the boys' school at San Nicolas Panotla.
Our serious work was to begin with one of the most conservative and reserved of Mexican indian populations. If we could do what we planned to do with the Otomis, we were likely to have but little greater trouble with any tribe. In ancient times the name of Otomi was synonymous with stupidity. When an Aztec was particularly stupid or clumsy, his fellows in derision called him an Otomi.
Which reasoning we perceived to be so sound that we promptly accepted it. Rayburn added to our company, therefore, only three men: two Otomí Indians of whom Fray Antonio gave a good account, and Dennis Kearney, who had served as axeman on the recently disbanded engineering corps.
The fourth song has been preserved in an Otomi translation by the Mexican antiquary Granados y Galvez and in an abstract by Torquemada. The latter gives the first words as follows: Xochitl mamani in huehuetitlan: Which he translates: "There are fresh and fragrant flowers among the groves." It is said to have been composed at the time the king dedicated his palace.
In Tlaxco, a small village in this municipio, four idioms are spoken Aztec, Otomi, Totonac and Tepehua. Two years before, just as my work was ending, we were in the great Otomi town of Huixquilucan, in the state of Mexico. While resting at midday, I noticed a neatly-dressed and clean young indian, plainly not Otomi, with whom I conversed.
That we might talk the more freely, in both English and Spanish, we drew away a little from where the two Otomí Indians and Pablo were stretched out upon the grass together; and we bade Dennis take a look around the shoulder of the first hill, so that we might know something of what our way would be like when we started in the morning; for we were not as yet ready that the minor members of the expedition should know the purpose that we had in mind.
Fray Antonio and I rode first; then came Rayburn and Young, followed by Dennis Kearney; then the two pack-mules, beside which walked the two Otomí Indians; and closing the procession came Pablo, wearing his rain-coat, with his revolver strapped outside of it, and riding El Sabio with a dignity that would have done honor to the Viceroy himself.
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