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Preface Tom and I happened into the Río Mayo region independently and explored the land for several years unbeknownst to each other. We became caught in the same intellectual maelstrom, undertook this project, and have emerged deeply changed by the work we can never fully complete. This study occupied us for six years, and our studies continue. During that time we developed strong new ties to the land, to the people who live on the land and know it as part of their being, and to the plants of the region, which have become seeming extensions of our being. Tom found a bride; I found a best friend. The Río Mayo and the lands south to the Río Fuerte drew us because here the Sonoran Desert, where we have lived and worked for decades, dwindles away and merges into more tropical regimes. In the Río Mayo region the northernmost tropical deciduous forest flows from the foothills into the valleys. Sahuaro cacti give way to etchos; ironwoods disappear and kapoks appear; creosotebush vanishes and mautos pop up. At elevations where we find desertscrub and desert grasslands in the Sonoran Desert, we find tropical deciduous forest and pockets of oaks in the Mayo region. Not only could we head southward from Tucson, Arizona, and the Sonoran Desert and in eight hours or so find ourselves in the exotic forests of the tropics, but we could also venture to the east and climb into the junglelike slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Higher in the mountains we found life forms more typical of Chihuahua to the east. We could hardly lose. Yet while we were both drawn to the area for its natural history, we also came to know the people of the area. We established contacts, then friendships, and found ourselves always wanting to know more of the people and more of the landscapes. I first visited Navojoa, the largest city on the Río Mayo, in 1961, putt-putting along Mexico’s narrow highways on a motor scooter. Even then I had heard xi of Mayos. They are southern cousins of the better-known Yaquis, who lived along the Río Yaqui some fifty miles north of Navojoa. Many Yaquis who fled as refugees to the United States sixty years earlier now live in four barrios in Tucson. Their numbers included some Mayos, one of whom I met in Tucson. From Navojoa I visited nearby Alamos in Mayo country and, shortly thereafter , Las Bocas on the coast and the Río Fuerte in Sinaloa. I bought some Mayo rugs and taburetes, hide-covered stools. I came to know a small Mayo community in the slums of Navojoa and spent several days there. I also developed a vague curiosity about the region’s tropical vegetation, knowing that it was rich enough to support kapok trees and boa constrictors. Over the next few decades I made repeated visits to Alamos, to Los Tanques to the north, and to the Río Cuchujaqui to the east. It was not until 1990, however, that I began studying the Mayo region—its people, landscapes, and plants—in earnest. Coming back to the region to do more intensive study was like coming home. Tom and I teamed up on this study in 1993 and soon realized that we shared a passion for the Río Mayo and its people. Since then we have logged more than fifty trips to the Mayo region. Several Mayos have become good friends of ours, their families nearly extensions of our own. We have spoken with as many native Mayo plant consultants as possible , comparing plant names and uses and noticing the variation in cultural practices. This volume is a compilation of what we found and what further library and herbarium research revealed. We were intimately involved in the publication of Gentry’s Río Mayo Plants (Martin et al. 1998) and benefited from our many associations in compiling that volume. Scholars have for decades predicted the demise of Mayo culture. We, too, found in our fieldwork many distressing indications of erosion of Mayo cultural values, and of loss of identity and language. At times we have despaired that the Mayo culture could not possibly survive for another decade. But we were also heartened by the strength of much that we found. David Yetman xii / Preface ...

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