Their children have usually no other education than that which they receive from the curates, priests, choirmasters, and teachers of the catechism, which education was formerly given to them at the church doors or in the mansions of the large ranches and farms, and they were compelled to assemble every morning from seven to eight to learn the catechism. At the present day, as it is not possible to force the parents to send their children to learn even this, there are but few who learn at all, especially among the boys. When the writer of this was governor of this state in the years 1841 and 1842, he succeeded in establishing primary schools in almost all the villages, and although averse to anything that looks or sounds like despotism, he authorized, nevertheless, the mayors, justices of the peace, and chieftains (_caciques_[1]) to use it in order to force parents to send their children to the said schools. Unfortunately, in 1842 came the invasion by the forces of general Santa Anna, and in the effort to resist them, all the resources of the state were spent for many years in advance. Then followed our own senseless revolutions and the almost general uprising of these same Indians against the other native races, consequently these schools passed out of existence without it having been possible until this day to reëstablish them. Hence this remains an unsolved problem and it is difficult to calculate the profit they might have brought (once the tenacious and persistent opposition of the Indians overcome), leaving them convinced of the advantages it might mean to further their knowledge even in the manual labor they perform. Generally they train their children from a very early age to help in their agricultural labor such as their forefathers did before the conquest, or else they teach them light manual labor, such as weaving little mats or matting in general, making small bags, baskets of all kinds and sizes, leather bands such as are used by the native porters, sacks, hammocks, ropes, to prepare henequen from agave fiber, to make straw hats, and so forth. In some villages they are taught to make common pottery, and in places near the coast they are shown how to extract salt, to fish, and seamanship in general. It is very rare that they are taught other arts and crafts or trades, with the exception perhaps in cities or principal towns, where, especially when they have been reared and educated in the households of white people, they may become efficient in the art of quarrying stone, though quite primitively, or they qualify as masons, shoemakers, tailors, muleteers, drivers, and cowboys. They also provide the town with firewood, charcoal, and fodder.