Page:Barbarous Mexico.djvu/52

42 and carried them in the gunboat El Democrata and dropped them in the ocean between the mouth of the Yaqui river and the seaport of Guaymas, all of them perishing."

A report was circulated along our Mexican border that an incident similar to the last mentioned happened in February, 1908. Colonel Francisco B. Cruz, who was in charge of the exiles and who claims to have been on board of the gunboat and witnessed the incident, declared to me, however, that this report was not true. The Yaquis were drowned, he declared, but not by the authorities, and, since at that time the government was not killing any Yaquis whom it could catch and sell, I accept the version of Colonel Cruz as the correct one.

"Suicide—nothing but suicide," asseverated the Colonel. "Those Indians wanted to cheat me out of my commission money and so they threw their children into the sea and jumped in after them. I was on board myself and saw it all. I heard a loud cry, and looking, saw some of the crew running to the starboard side of the vessel. I saw the Yaquis in the water. Then there was a cry from the port side and I saw the Yaquis jumping overboard on that side. We lowered boats, but it was no use; they all went down before we got to them."

"Every soldier who kills a Yaqui," an army physician who served two years with the troops against the Yaquis and whom I met in Mexico City, told me, "is paid a reward of one hundred dollars. To prove his feat the soldier must show the ears of his victim. 'Bring in the ears,' is the standing order of the officers. Often I have seen a company of soldiers drawn up in a square and one of their number receiving one hundred dollars for a pair of ears.

"Sometimes small squads of the Indians are captured, and when I was with the army it was customary