leaders, though the sweetest players are understood to be pure Indians; and so also in the case if the police—the force is mainly Indian, while the superintendent and his staff are likely to be white. One also, it is said, rarely sees faces tinged with Indian blood among members of the Mexican Congress, the clergy, the teachers, the superintendents of the haciendas or the students of the universities. At the same time it is understood that Indian blood is no bar to entrance into good society, or to office, if the person is otherwise qualified; and the Indian is not anywhere abused in Mexico, or ejected from the lands which his ancestors have tilled from time immemorial, as has often been the case in the United States. The majority of the Mexican Indians have lost all traces of their once wild life, and have recognized that their living must now be gained by work, even if it be but rude and imperfect; and, except in the case of the Apaches and Yaquis and of some of the tribes of Southern Mexico, have long since exchanged the blanket for the serape, the bow for the ox-goad, and scalp-lifting for the monte-table, the cock-pit, or the bull-ring. Another interesting feature of the life of the independent or free Indians in Mexico—that is, Indians not attached to any of the great estates—is, that it is eminently communistic; and more characteristic of the type of the agricultural village
