Referring to the many regulations and observances the Indians have to comply with in order to insure food, health, and life, he said:  “A man has to do a good deal to live.  Every tortilla we eat is the result of our work.  If we do not work, it does not rain.”  That the “work” consists in fasting, praying, and dancing does not detract from its hardship.

Other sayings I picked up are as follows: 

We do not know how many gods there are.

The Moon is man and woman combined; men see in her a woman, women see a man.

It is better to give a wife to your son before he opens his eyes very much; if not, he will not know whom he wants.

Illness is like a person; it hears.

Everything is alive; there is nothing dead in the world.  The people say the dead are dead; but they are very much alive.

My friend went with me in the afternoon to the place where the mitote was to be given.  As the preparations of the principal men consume two days, and I was bent on seeing everything, I went to the place the day before the dance was to come off.  It was a few miles away in a remote locality, on top of a hill the upper part of which was composed mainly of huge stones, some of them as regular in shape as if they had been chiselled.  Here and there in the few open spaces some shrubbery grew.  An opening in the midst of the great mass of stones had been prepared to serve as a dancing-place.  The big stones looked dead enough, but to the Indians they are alive.  They are what the Coras call Taquats or ancient people.  Once upon a time they went to a mitote, just as we were doing now, when the morning star arose before they arrived at their destination, and all were changed into stone, and ever since have appeared like stones.  My companion pointed out the various figures of men, women, and children, with their bundles and baskets, girdles, etc., and in the waning light of day it was not difficult to understand how the Indians had come to this conception of the fantastic forms standing all around the place.  Even a mountain may be a Taquat, and all the Taquats are gods to whom the Coras pray and sacrifice food; but it is bad to talk about them.

It had often been a puzzle to me why primitive people should make for themselves stone idols to whom they might sacrifice and pray; but what is to us a rock or stone may be to the Indian a man or a god of ancient times, now turned into stone.  By carving out features, head, body, or limbs, they only bring before their physical eyes what is in their mind’s eye.  This peculiar kind of pantheism can never be eradicated from the Indian’s heart unless he is from infancy estranged from his tribal life.