Photo by Ron Mears Click on the image for larger version

The Tarahumara Indians offer their arts and crafts for very affordable prices here. A casual visitor might just see a colorful indigenous people, but knowing a little of their history certainly deepens the experience, because only through a combination of tenacity and geography are they there at all. They call themselves the Raramuri, "men of light feet". Tarahumara is the name given to them by the Spanish. Numbering approximately 50,000, they are the last free living indigenous people in North America, living their lives in this vast Sierra Madre region, only a tiny portion of which you will even see from the train, a mountain range called often called the Sierra Tarahumaras because of their presence.

Photo by Ron Mears Click on the image for larger version

The story of their interaction with Western civilization follows the same sad pattern as that of the indigenous peoples of what is now the United States and most other countries of the world: one of being violently subjugated by an arrogant and more powerful culture which viewed them as sub-human. When gold and silver was discovered in the Sierra Madres in the late 1500's, the Spaniards wasted little time impressing the Tarahumara Indians into slavery as miners. They were forced to live in concentration camps, and, of course, the Tarahumara quickly discovered they were susceptible to a host of lethal western diseases, such as small pox and tuberculosis. This bothered their conquistadors not in slightest, and as demand for the gold and silver increased the Spanish needed more slave labor and began to raid even the mission pueblos which had been established by the Jesuits to protect the Indians. Many Raramuri fled into the canyons, a huge hideout which made it impossible for any group to ever take complete control of them. The Jesuits were finally recalled in 1767, but, strangely, their influence over the Raramuri continues to this day. The natives incorporated much of Christianity into their own indigenous view of the world, discarding what made little sense to them and clinging to what did. They were particularly fascinated with the Resurrection, and to this day Semana Santa (Easter week) is a huge celebration and is considered to be the key annual event in their culture.