The classic and still powerful novel of a tragic people caught in the tail wind of a civilization both alien and hostile to them, from the first winner of the Mexican National Award in Literature. From their stick-and-mud village far up the mountains, the Indians can look across the wide Mexico that was once theirs and look down upon the houses and fields where they now do enforced labor for the mestizos and whites. Once proud and powerful, the tribe has added their conquerors to the natural perils of forest and jungle, famine and plague, as evils against which they and their witchcraft are powerless. Here, within this bounded and embattled world, a quietly moving story unfolds of a tragic people caught in the tail wind of a civilization both alien and hostile to them, a tale of brave men and lovers, of prophets and violence, of the tribal secrets put on every child's lips and impossible to forget.