Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/357

Rh While some of the Indians of Mexico have pushed their way up to positions of influence, and sometimes of wealth, they are generally very poor, herding together in the cities in a quarter of their own, a people within a people. They number about five millions—more than half the entire population—while Indian blood predominates in the mestizo, or mixed, race of the country, the Creoles, or Europeans and their descendants, forming not

more than one-tenth of the inhabitants of Mexico. The Toluca Valley, about forty miles west of the capital, is owned by Indian pueblos, or corporations. Near Cuernavaca, where Cortez fought a fierce battle with the