Concluding that the eminent authority cited was right, I came back to realities and continued my journey.

By and by I arrived at a fertile little slope partly covered with corn stubble.  At the farther end of it was a large Cora ranch called La Cienega, and in front of it grew two or three magnificent oak-trees with light-green stems and equally light-coloured leaves.  The people here were well disposed and sold me some necessary supplies, so I stopped with them for a day.

While descending to the famous pueblo Mesa del Nayarit, one gets a magnificent view of the high mountains which form the western border of the Huichol country and stretch themselves out on the opposite side of the canon of Jesus Maria like a towering wall of a hazy blue colour.  The pueblo lies on a plain less than a mile in extent in either direction, on the slope of the sierra, with an open view only toward the east.  There is an idol of the setting sun standing on the mesa above the village, “looking toward Mexico,” as the Indians express it.  This mesa is the one called Tonati by the chroniclers, while by the Coras it is called Nayariti, and the whole sierra derived its name from it.  The same name is given to a cave in that locality, where the Coras, as well as the Huichols, deposit ceremonial objects and other offerings.  The setting-sun god is worshipped equally by the two tribes.  The Indians jealously guard this cave, which is never shown to outsiders.  This is practically the terminus of the Sierra del Nayarit.  The sierra from now on is lower and gradually falls down to Rio de Alica, or Rio Grande de Santiago, where Sierra Madre del Norte ends.

The people here, though friendly, were less sympathetic and much more reserved than those of Santa Teresa, and I could find no one who would divulge tribal secrets.  They had received a message from their sister pueblo telling them they had nothing to fear from me, but the Coras are not easily scared, anyhow.  A stranger may enter a house without any further ceremony than the customary salutation, “Axu!” One day when I approached a dwelling, a nice-looking little girl, scarcely three years of age, came running out with a big knife in her little fist, her mother following after her to catch her.  The small children curiously approach you, rather than run away.  My two dogs intruded into a house and met in the doorway a little girl, about four years old, who was just coming out.  The family dog was inside and began at once to bark at the new-comers, ready to fight, but the little one continued her walk without in the least changing the quiet expression of her face.

Although the Coras here maintain their traditions and customs more completely than in other places, I did not see any of the adults wearing the national dress, buckskin trousers and a very short tunic reaching only below the breast and made of home-woven woollen material dyed with native indigo-blue.  Only one of the boys was seen with this costume, and his father was said to have it also.  Yet the Coras do not want to be confounded with the “neighbours.”  When the principal men submitted to be photographed, I wanted a picture to show their physique, and therefore asked them to take off their shirts, which they refused to do.  But when I remarked, “You will then look like neighbours,” the shirts came off like a flash.