I saw also a few ancient cave-dwellings.  Of considerable interest were some burial-caves near Nararachic, especially one called Narajerachic (= where the dead are dancing).  A Mexican had been for six years engaged there in digging out saltpetre, with which he made powder, and the cave was much spoiled for research when I visited it.  But I was able to take away some thirty well-preserved skulls and a few complete skeletons, the bodies having dried up in the saltpetre.  Some clothing with feathers woven in, and some bits of obsidian and of blue thread were found, but no weapons or utensils.  According to the miner, who appeared to be trustworthy, he had excavated more than a hundred corpses.  They were generally found two and a half feet below the surface, and sometimes there were others underneath these.  With many of them he found ear ornaments made of shells, such as the Tarahumares of to-day use, besides some textile made of plant fibre, and a jar with beans.

A few months later at Aboreachic (Tarahumare:  Aoreachic = where there is mountain cedar) I examined a burial-cave in which the dead were interred in a different manner from that described before.  The cave is somewhat difficult of access.  The ascent of 300 feet has to be made over a track at some places so steep that holes have been cut for the feet, to enable a person to climb up.  On reaching the top I found a spacious cave, which had been used as a kind of cemetery, but unfortunately the peculiarity of the cave had attracted treasure-seekers, whose destructive work was everywhere to be seen.  Still I could see that the corpses had been placed each by itself in a grave in the floor of the cave.  The graves were oblong or circular basins lined with a coating of grass and mud and about three feet deep.  Apparently no earth had been placed immediately over the body, only boards all around it laid lengthwise in a kind of box.  The bodies were bent up and laid on their sides.  Over the top boards was spread a layer of pine bark about an inch thick, which in turn was covered with earth and rubbish three inches deep, and this was overlaid with the coating of grass and mud so as to form a solid disk four or five inches, thick.  The edge of the basin was slightly raised, thus making the disk a little higher than the level of the floor.  I secured four skulls from here, besides a piece of excellently woven cloth of plant fibre, another piece interwoven with turkey feathers, and a fragment of a wooden needle.

Don Andres told me that he had observed similar modes of burial in the neighbourhood of Nararachic.  It may be worth mentioning that the miner who excavated in the burial-cave near Nararachic mentioned above, told me of having met with somewhat similar structures in his cave; the material was the same, but they were of different sizes, not larger than two feet, and he found them empty.

The ancient modes of burial that I have come upon, in the Tarahumare country are either like those in Nararachic or in Aboreachic.  There scarcely seems any doubt that the bodies buried here were Tarahumares.  The Indians of to-day consider the dead in the ancient burial-caves their brethren, and call them Ana-yauli, the ancients.