In 1894 I stayed for a fortnight in a remote part of the Sierra Madre, called Pino Gordo on account of its magnificent pine-trees.  The district is separated on the north from the central part of the Tarahumare country by the deep Barranca de San Carlos, and there are no Mexicans living within its confines.  The place in which I found one of the skulls is twenty miles north of the mining town of Guadalupe y Calvo.  A lonely trail leads through it on which, only occasionally, perhaps once in the course of a month, a Mexican from the ranches at Guachochic may journey to Guadalupe y Calvo.

One day the principal man of the locality, who had been very friendly to me, showed me a burial-cave.  I had persuaded him that it was better for me to take away the bones contained in it, in order to keep them in a good house, than to let them remain where they were, “killing sheep and making people sick.”  “But why do you want them?” he asked.  Having been satisfied on this point, he one day led the way to a wild, steep arroyo, pointed at its head, and having thus indicated where the cave was, at once left me.  I made my way as best I could up the steep little gorge, accompanied by one of my men.  On arriving at the top I found the entrance to the cave completely covered with stones plastered together with mud.  A heap of stones was also piled outside against the wall.

The cave I found very small, and, contrary to the exaggerated reports of the Indians, it contained only three skeletons.  According to the custom prevailing throughout part of the country of the Tarahumares, these remains had not been buried.  The skeletons were simply lying on their backs, from east to west, as if looking toward the setting sun.  A few crudely made clay vessels of the ordinary Tarahumare type were found alongside of them.  On gathering the three skulls I was at once struck by a circular hole in the right parietal bone of one of them.  As they undoubtedly belonged to the Tarahumares, the question at once occurred to me:  Can it be possible that this barbaric tribe, not particularly advanced in the arts, was capable of trepanning?  The remoteness of the place entirely negatives the suggestion that a civilised surgeon could have had anything to do with it.

The skull, the lower jaw of which is missing, is that of a Tarahumare woman over fifty years of age.  The age of the specimen itself is impossible to arrive at, on account of the peculiar circumstances in which it was preserved.  However, the cranial walls still contained some animal matter, were still somewhat fatty to the touch, and retained some odour.  A spindle provided with a whorl made from a piece of pine-bark, which was lying among the bones in the cave, indicates that the body of this female had not been put there in recent times.  This variety of whorl, so far as I can ascertain, has not been observed among the Tarahumares of the present day.  It is, indeed, possible that the skeleton may be pre-Columbian.