assert that the Yaquis are as worthy as other Mexicans and deserve as much consideration at the hands of their rulers.
The extermination of the Yaquis began in war; its finish is being accomplished in deportation and slavery.
The Yaquis are called Indians. Like the Mayas of Yucatan, they are Indians and yet they are not Indians. In the United States we would not call them Indians, for they are workers. As far back as their history can be traced they have never been savages. They have been an agricultural people. They tilled the soil, discovered and developed mines, constructed systems of irrigation, built adobe towns, maintained public schools, had an organized government and their own mint. When the Spanish missionaries came among them they were in possession of practically the whole of that vast territory south of Arizona which today comprises the state of Sonora.
"They are the best workers in Sonora," Colonel Francisco B. Cruz, the very man who has charge of their deportation to Yucatan, and of whom I will have more to say later, told me. "One Yaqui laborer is worth two ordinary Americans and three ordinary Mexicans," E. F. Trout, a Sonora mine foreman told me. "They are the strongest, soberest and most reliable people in Mexico," another one told me. "The government is taking our best workmen away from us and destroying the prosperity of the state," said another. "The government says it wants to open up the Yaqui country for settlers," S. R. DeLong, secretary of the Arizona Historical Society and an old resident of Sonora, told me, "but it is my opinion that the Yaquis themselves are the best settlers that can possible be found."
Such expressions are heard very frequently in Sonora,
