"The Yaqui region is favourably situated, well irrigated, and the soil is extremely fruitful. The white men coveted the region and tried to despoil the Yaquis of what they had owned for centuries. The red men naturally became angry, enraged, and finally they rose, not in rebellion, but to defend and safeguard their homes, property, and families. Thus the origin of the Yaquis' struggle--a real struggle for life--was a despoliation perpetrated by the white people. "A few years ago President Diaz wanted to put an end to the long warfare, and he accomplished his purpose. A pact was signed with the Yaqui chiefs by which their properties were returned to them, with the guarantee that they should never more be molested or deported. Peace was re-established; but it was of short duration, being more a truce than a permanent peace, and it was so not because the Yaquis did not fulfil their obligations, but because the white men wanted to work their nefarious schemes again. With this end in view, they dexterously got rid of the chief Indian leaders and took every necessary measure to destroy the whole Yaqui race at the first sign of trouble. The Indians scented the plot a little late, but still in time to avoid being exterminated. They took the field again, forced to do so by the treachery of the whites. "The above is an epitome of the history of the Yaqui war, and it will be seen that justice and right are on the side of the Indians. The world does not know how the merciless war is carried on; but to give an idea of the ways and means used it will be enough to say that all the barbarous methods of the Spanish Captain-General Weyler during the last Cuban insurrection are civilised compared to what is being done to the Yaquis. There is no cruelty, torture, infamy, to which they are not subjected. Prisoners are condemned to a fearful martyrdom, and they suffer it with the sublime stoicism characteristic of their race. "Men, women, and children are sacrificed with the same cruelty. To prevent non-combatants from becoming hostiles, the Mexicans seize them and transport them from their fertile soil and benign climate to the death-breeding climate of Yucatan, where they are delivered as slaves to the landlords, who buy them at so much a head. The men who commit this crime make the public believe that they are performing an act of mercy, that these non-combatants are prisoners of war whom they forgive and send to work as free men, intending to civilise and protect them.