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Rh laborers on the haciendas were a class called punteros, a sort of foremen found only on the larger places. They distributed the tasks of the day and themselves worked with the group of men of which they were given charge.

The labor difficulty in the south was then what it is to-day. Life was too easy to encourage habits of industry. The great majority of the population were Indians who felt no necessity to work. Only a few of the native towns furnished laborers. The people of the rest of the towns relied on their corn patches and hunting for their livelihood. In the average case, there was little oppression possible on the haciendas, since the Indian could escape and the arm of the administration was not strong enough to hold him to his duty. The landowner had to do the best he could to keep peace with his laborers and by various expedients try to induce them to work. The scarcity of voluntary labor made the temptation to force the Indian to work greater and, where the employer could get the effective aid of the authorities, abuses of this sort were not infrequent. Some of the worst wrongs of the peonage system occurred in the southern states.

A very large share of the population in the southern states worked for no master and but little for themselves. They were satisfied with their native villages in which there were few social necessities. They lived in palm leaf houses, they needed almost no clothing. What little they used the women wove from local cotton in the hot lands. Those from the colder plateau districts