The Bear in a cave said to Hikuli, “Let us fight and let us first smoke over there.”  They smoked and they fought, and Hikuli was stronger than the Bear.  When Hikuli threw the Bear down, all the wind went out of the Bear; but the Bear said again, “Let us smoke and let us fight a few times more.”  And they did so, and Hikuli again threw down the Bear, and the Bear seated himself on a stone and wept, and went away, and never returned.

Hikuli is not indigenous to the Tarahumare country of to-day.  To obtain it long and until recently perilous journeys have to be undertaken every year to the plateaus of eastern Chihuahua, in the Sierra del Almoloy, near the railroad station of Ximenez, and to the Sierra de Margoso, beyond Santa Rosalia de Camarga, crossing the tracks of the Mexican Central Railroad.  From two or three to a dozen men start out to get the plants, first purifying themselves with copal incense.  It takes a week or ten days to get to the Sierra de Margoso, where the plants are chiefly found, and about a month is consumed on the entire journey.  Until they reach the hikuli country, the Tarahumares may eat anything; but once there, they must abstain from everything except pinole.  Upon arriving at the spot, the pilgrims erect a cross, and near it they place the first plants taken up, that these may tell where others may be found in plenty.  The second batch of plants gathered is eaten raw, and makes the men drunk.  As speech is forbidden, they lie down in silence and sleep.  The following day, when perfectly sober again, they begin early in the morning to collect the plants, taking them up with the utmost care, by means of sticks, so as not to touch or injure them, because hikuli would get angry and punish the offender.  Two days are spent in gathering the plants, each kind being placed in a separate bag, because, if they were mixed together, they would fight.  The bags are carefully carried on the backs of the men, as the Tarahumares generally have no horses.

In the field in which it grows, it sings beautifully, that the Tarahumare may find it.  It says, “I want to go to your country, that you may sing your songs to me.”  It also sings in the bag while it is being carried home.  One man, who wanted to use his bag as a pillow, could not sleep, he said, because the plants made so much noise.

When the hikuli-seekers arrive at their homes, the people turn out to welcome the plants with music, and a festival at which a sheep or a goat is sacrificed is held in their honour.  On this occasion the shaman wears necklaces made of the seeds of Coix Lachryma-Jobi.  In due time he takes them off, and places them in a bowl containing water in which the heart of the maguey has been soaked, and after a while everyone present gets a spoonful of this water.  The shaman, too, takes some, and afterward wears the necklaces again.  Both plants, the Coix Lachryma-Jobi as well as the maguey, are highly esteemed for their curative properties; and in his songs the shaman describes hikuli as standing on top of a gigantic seed of the Coix Lachryma-Jobi, as big as a mountain.