PREFACE


The reading public may well ask, Why another travel book on Mexico?
Few countries have been so frequently written up by the traveler.
Many books, good, bad, and indifferent, but chiefly bad, have been
perpetrated. Most of these books, however, cover the same ground,
and ground which has been traversed by many people. Indian Mexico is
practically unknown. The only travel-book regarding it, in English, is
Lumholtz's "Unknown Mexico." The indians among whom Lumholtz worked
lived in northwestern Mexico; those among whom I have studied are in
southern Mexico. The only district where his work and mine overlap is
the Tarascan area. In fact, then, I write upon an almost unknown and
untouched subject. Lumholtz studied life and customs; my study has been
the physical type of south Mexican indians. Within the area covered by
Lumholtz, the physical characteristics of the tribes have been
studied by Hrdlicka. His studies and my own are practically the only
investigations within the field.

There are two Mexicos. Northern Mexico to the latitude of the capital
city is a _mestizo_ country; the indians of pure blood within that area
occupy limited and circumscribed regions. Southern Mexico is indian
country; there are large regions, where the _mestizos_, not the indians,
are the exception. From the time of my first contact with Mexican
indians, I was impressed with the notable differences between tribes,
and desired to make a serious study of their types. In 1895, the