As before, I stopped for months with a tribe, discharging all alien attendants, and roughing it with the Indians.

In this way I spent in all a year and a half among the Tarahumares, and ten months among the Coras and Huichols.

At first the natives persistently opposed me; they are very distrustful of the white man, and no wonder, since he has left them little yet to lose.

But I managed to make my entry and gradually to gain their confidence and friendship, mainly through my ability to sing their native songs, and by always treating them justly.
Thus I gained a knowledge of these peoples which could have been procured in no other way.

When after five or six months of such sojourns and travel my stock of "civilised" provisions would give out, I subsisted on what I could procure from the Indians.