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In Indian Mexico (1908) cover

In Indian Mexico (1908)

Chapter 81: INDEX
By Frederick Starr
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About This Book

The narrative recounts extended travels through southern Mexico among indigenous communities, combining on-the-ground travel writing with ethnographic fieldwork. It describes region-by-region encounters — landscapes, towns, customs, dress, and daily occupations — and reports systematic physical measurements, portraits, and plaster busts collected to document population types. The account explains logistical arrangements, interactions with local authorities, and the practical challenges of fieldwork, and it includes maps, a glossary, itinerary, and analytical notes that summarize observations about cultural diversity, survivals of older practices, and the varied material life of the peoples encountered.

THE PURPLE SPOT ON MAYA BABIES

When I was in Yucatan in 1901 the parish priest of Texax told me that it was said that every pure blood Maya Indian has a violet or purple spot on his back, in the sacral region. He stated that this spot was called by the native name, uits, "bread," and that it was vulgar or insulting to make reference to it. I at once examined three Mayas of pure blood—a boy of ten years and two adult males—but found no trace of such a spot. I concluded that the presence of the spot might be an infantile character, as it is among the Japanese, but at that time I had no opportunity to examine Maya babies.

Dr. Baelz, a German physician, who has spent many years in Japan, long ago called attention to the existence of such spots on Japanese infants. The spots described by him were of a blue or purple color, were located upon the back (especially in the sacral region), and were variable in form and size. They were temporary, disappearing at from two to eight years of age. The occurrence of these infantile color blotches was so common in Japan as to be almost characteristic of the race.

In time, other students reported similar spots on other Asiatic babies, and on non-Asiatic babies of Mongolian or Mongoliod peoples. Chinese, Annamese, Coreans, Greenland Eskimos, and some Malays are now known to have such spots. Sacral spots have also been reported among Samoans and Hawaiians.

Practically, all these people belong to the great yellow race, as defined by De Quatrefages, and are, if not pure representatives of that race, mixed bloods, in part, of it. Baelz and some other writers have, therefore, gone so far as to consider the purple sacral spot a mark peculiar to that race, and to believe its occurrence proof of Mongolian origin. They have asked whether the spot occurs among American Indians, and would consider its occurrence evidence of an Asiatic origin for our native tribes. Satisfactory observations had not been made. Baelz himself found two cases among Vancouver Island Indians.

In my recent trip to Mexico I planned to look for this spot among several Indian tribes. Out of six populations that I expected to visit I really saw but two—the Aztecs and the Mayas. I do not believe that the sacral spot exists among Aztecs. I made no search, because Aztec friends, who would be sure to know, all agreed in denying its occurrence. Among the Mayas, the case is different. In the little Maya town of Palenque I examined all the pure blood babies. The back of the first little creature bared for my inspection bore a clearly defined, dark blue-purple spot, just where it might be expected. The spot was almost two inches wide and nearly three-fourths of an inch high. The child was a boy of eight months. A brother, two years old, showed no trace of the spot, but the mother says it was formerly well defined.

Every one of the seven pure Maya babies, below ten months old, in the town was purple-spotted. A pair of boy twins, two months old, were marked in precisely the same place with pale blue-purple spots, of the same size and form. In one boy of ten months the spot seemed to be disappearing and was represented by three ill-defined and separated blotches. In the village, there were three babies of suitable age, but of mixed—Spanish-Maya—blood; no one of these showed any trace of the colored spot. We may say, then, that in Palenque every Maya baby below ten months of age was sacral spotted, and that no Mestizo baby was.

Does this prove that the Mayas are Asiatics by ancestry? The daily press asserts that I make that claim; it is mistaken. I am free to say I don't know what to do with my spotted Maya babies. I presume that Baelz will cousin them with his little Japanese.

FREDERICK STARR.
From The Chicago Tribune: January 11, 1903.

INDEX