Northwest Mexico history

NORTHWEST MEXICO: FOUR CENTURIES OF INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE
by John P. Schmal

The Sixteenth-Century Spanish province of Nueva Vizcaya took up a great deal of territory, most of which today corresponds with four Mexican states. This large chunk of northwestern Mexico, which consists of 610,000 square kilometers (372,200 square miles), witnessed almost four hundred years of indigenous resistance against the Spanish Empire and the Mexican Federal Government.

The State of Sinaloa, with a surface area of 58,487 square kilometers (22,582 square miles), is basically a narrow strip of land running along the Pacific Ocean. The state of Sonora, which lay north of Sinaloa, consists of 182,554 square kilometers (70,484 square miles) and has a common border with Arizona and New Mexico. Inland from Sinaloa and Sonora we will find Mexico's largest state, Chihuahua. With a surface area of 245,612 square kilometers (94,831 square miles), Chihuahua is divided into two main regions: the mountain area of the Sierra Madre in the west and the vast desert basins in the west and north. Durango, with a surface area of 123,520 square kilometers (47,691 square miles), lay to the south of Chihuahua and the east of Sinaloa.

From the First Contact in 1531 up until the Twentieth Century, the indigenous people of Nueva Vizcaya waged many wars of resistance against the federal authorities in Mexico City. The insurrections and conflagrations that raged on endlessly for so long can be classified into four main categories:

1) Confrontation at first contact. Some indigenous tribes decided to attack or oppose the Spaniards as soon as they arrived in their territory. These rebellions were an attempt to maintain pre-Hispanic cultural elements and to reject the introduction of a new culture and religion.

2) First-Generation Indian rebellions. Indigenous groups that had come under Spanish rule and embraced Christianity fall in this category. Such rebellions took place within the first generation of contact and usually represented an attempt to restore pre-Hispanic social and religious elements.

3) Second-Generation Indian rebellions. These rebellions took place in populations that had already been under Spanish rule for decades or even centuries. However, the two likely goals for such insurgencies were sharply divergent from one another. In the case of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, for example, the Indians sought to completely obliterate all traces of Spanish culture and Christian symbolism from Pueblo society. However, other second-generation revolts, such as the Yaqui Rebellion of 1740, sought to make changes within the Spanish system. Usually the goal of such insurgencies was to gain autonomy, address grievances, or maintain land ownership.

4) Indian attacks on other indigenous groups. Indigenous groups who attacked other indigenous groups may have done so for a number of reasons. Some attacks were the manifestation of traditional enmity between indigenous neighbors. Other attacks may have been designed to seek revenge on indigenous groups who had become Christian or cooperated with the Spaniards. Raids on Spanish and Amerindian settlements was usually carried out in order to seize materials such as food, clothing, horses, cattle, and arms.

First Contact: 1531. In December 1529, the professional lawyer turned Conquistador, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, led an expedition of 300 Spaniards and 10,000 Indian allies (Tlaxcalans, Aztecs and Tarascans) into the coastal region of what is now called Sinaloa. Before arriving in the coastal region, Guzmán's army had ravaged through Michoacán, Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Nayarit, provoking the natives to give battle everywhere he went. The historian Peter Gerhard, in The North Frontier of New Spain, observed that Guzmán's army "engaged in wholesale slaughter and enslavement."

In March 1531, Guzmán's army reached the site of present-day Culiacán (now in Sinaloa), where his force engaged an army of 30,000 warriors in a pitched battle. The indigenous forces were decisively defeated and, as Dr. Gerhard notes, the victors "proceeded to enslave as many people as they could catch." The indigenous people confronted by Guzmán belonged to the Cáhita language group. Speaking eighteen closely related dialects, the Cáhita peoples of Sinaloa and Sonora numbered about 115,000 and were the most numerous of any single language group in northern Mexico. These Indians inhabited the coastal area of northwestern Mexico along the lower courses of the Sinaloa, Fuerte, Mayo, and Yaqui Rivers.

During his stay in Sinaloa, Guzmán's army was ravaged by an epidemic that killed many of his Amerindian auxiliaries. Finally, in October 1531, after establishing San Miguel de Culiacán on the San Lorenzo River, Guzmán returned to the south, his mostly indigenous army decimated by hunger and disease. But the Spanish post at Culiacán remained, Dr. Gerhard writes, as "a small outpost of Spaniards surrounded on all sides but the sea by hostile Indians kept in a state of agitation" by the slave-hunting activities of the Spaniards. Nuño de Guzmán was eventually brought to justice for his genocidal actions.

Epidemic Disease - Sinaloa (1530-1536). Daniel T. Reff, the author of Disease, Depopulation, and Culture Change in Northwestern New Spain, 1518-1764, explains that "viruses and other microorganisms undergo significant genetic changes when exposed to a new host environment, changes often resulting in new and more virulent strains of microorganisms." The Indians of the coastal region, never having been exposed to Spaniards and their diseases previously, provided fertile ground for the proliferation of smallpox and measles. It is believed that as many as 130,000 people died in the Valley of Culiacán during the Measles Pandemic of 1530-1534 and the Smallpox Plague of 1535-1536.

The Expedition of Coronado. In 1540, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led an expedition of 225 cavalrymen, sixty-two foot soldiers, and 1,000 Indian warriors and slaves to the north. Seeking the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Coronado's expedition journeyed through what is today called Sinaloa, Sonora, Arizona, New Mexico and Kansas. In 1542, Coronado returned to Mexico, empty-handed.

Mixtón Rebellion (1540-1542). While Coronado's force was in the north, a massive rebellion of the indigenous people throughout Jalisco, Zacatecas, and Nayarit took place. For the better part of two years, the rebellion continued in this area called Nueva Galicia. However, eventually, the Spanish military authorities, with the help of Tlaxcalan, Tarascan, and Mexica warriors in their ranks, crushed the rebellion. A second rebellion, the Chichimeca War, centered in Guanajuato, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, and parts of Jalisco, San Luis Potosí, and Durango, started in 1550. This protracted guerilla war would be waged until the last decade of the Sixteenth Century.

Francisco de Ibarra. From 1563 to 1565, Francisco de Ibarra traveled through parts of Nueva Vizcaya, constructing settlements of a permanent nature. It was Ibarra who gave this area its name, after his home province of Vizcaya in Spain. The first capital of the province, Durango, founded in July 1563, was similarly named for his birthplace. Francisco de Ibarra's expedition was responsible for some of the first European observations on the Acaxee, Xixime, and Tepehuán groups of Durango.

By the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, Spanish authorities had organized many of the Indians in Durango and Sinaloa into encomiendas. Although encomienda Indians were supposed to provide labor "for a few weeks per year," the historian Ms. Susan M. Deeds explains that "they often served much longer and some apparently became virtual chattels of Spanish estates." She goes on to say that the Jesuits' "systematic congregation of Indians into villages" starting in the 1590s encouraged the development of encomiendas by making Indians more accessible to their encomenderos." In practice, Mrs. Deeds concludes, encomiendas usually resulted in the "tacit enslavement of Indians."

As the Spaniards moved northward they found an amazing diversity of indigenous groups. Unlike the more concentrated Amerindian groups of central Mexico, the Indians of the north were referred to as "ranchería people" by the Spaniards. Their fixed points of settlements (rancherías) were usually scattered over an area of several miles and one dwelling may be separated from the next by up to half a mile. The renowned anthropologist, Professor Edward H. Spicer (1906-1983), writing in Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960, stated that most ranchería people were agriculturalists and farming was their primary activity.

Hurdaide's Offensive in Sinaloa (1599-1600). In 1599, Captain Diego de Hurdaide established San Felipe y Santiago on the site of the modern city of Sinaloa. From here, Captain Hurdaide waged a vigorous military campaign that subjugated the Cáhita-speaking Indians of the Fuerte River - the Sinaloas, Tehuecos, Zuaques, and Ahomes. These indigenous groups, numbering approximately 20,000 people, resisted strongly.

Acaxee Revolt - Northwestern Durango and East Central Sinaloa (1601). The Acaxee Indians lived in dispersed rancherías in the gorges and canyons of the Sierra Madre Occidental in northwestern Durango and eastern Sinaloa. Once the Jesuit missionaries started to work among the Acaxees, they forced them to cut their very long hair and to wear clothing. The Jesuits also initiated a program of forced resettlement so that they could concentrate the Acaxees in one area.

In December 1601, the Acaxees, under the direction of an elder named Perico, began an uprising against Spanish rule. The author Susan Deeds, writing in "Indigenous Rebellions on the Northern Mexican Mission Frontier from First-Generation to Later Colonial Responses," states that the Acaxee Revolt "was characterized by messianic leadership and promises of millennial redemption during a period of violent disruption and catastrophic demographic decline due to disease." Claiming to have come from heaven to save his people from the false doctrines of the Jesuits, Perico planned to exterminate all the Spaniards. Although he promised to save his people from the Catholic missionaries and their way of life, his messianic activity included saying Mass, and performing baptisms and marriages.

Ms. Deeds observes that the Acaxee and other so-called first generation revolts represented "attempts to restore pre-Columbian social and religious elements that had been destroyed by the Spanish conquest." In the following weeks, the Acaxees attacked the Spaniards in the mining camps and along mountain roads, killing fifty people. After the failure of negotiations, Francisco de Urdiñola led a militia of Spaniards and Tepehuán and Concho allies into the Sierra Madre. Susan Deeds writes that "the campaign was particularly brutal, marked by summary trials and executions of hundreds of captured rebels." Perico and 48 other rebel leaders were executed, while other rebels were sold into slavery.

Xiximes Revolt - Northwestern and western Durango (1610). The Xixime Indians, referred to as "wild mountain people," inhabited the mountain country of western Durango, inland from Mazatlán. The Xiximes were the traditional enemies of the Acaxees and, according to Jesuit accounts, the "the most bellicose of all Nueva Vizcayan Indians." When Guzmán's scouts entered these foothills in 1531, Dr. Gerhard writes that they had "found the natives and the terrain so inhospitable that they soon retreated." However, in 1565, Francisco de Ibarra marched against the Xiximes and subdued them.

The first Xixime rebellion was a short-lived outbreak in 1601. A second uprising in 1610 coincided with the outbreak of a smallpox epidemic in an Acaxee village near the Acaxee-Xixime border. Seeing the Spaniards as the likely source of the disease, the Xiximes had begun to stockpile stores of arrows in stones fortifications. Seeking an alliance with the Tepehuanes and Acaxees, the Xixime leaders promised immortality to all warriors who died in battle.

After the summer rains subsided, Governor Urdiñola led a large force of 200 armed Spaniards and 1,100 Indian warriors into Xixime territory. Utilizing "scorched-earth tactics," Urdiñola's "relentless pursuit resulted in the surrender of principal insurgent leaders, ten of whom were hanged." After the revolt was completely suppressed, the authorities brought in Jesuit missionaries, bearing gifts of tools, seed and livestock. With the help of Spanish soldiers, the missionaries congregated the Xiximes from 65 settlements into five new missions.

Initial Contact with the Mayo Indians (1609-1610). The Mayo Indians were an important Cáhita-speaking tribe occupying some fifteen towns along the Mayo and Fuerte rivers of southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa. As early as 1601, they had developed a curious interest in the Jesuit-run missions of their neighbors. The Mayos sent delegations to inspect the Catholic churches and, as Professor Spicer observes, "were so favorably impressed that large groups of Mayos numbering a hundred or more also made visits and became acquainted with Jesuit activities." As the Jesuits began their spiritual conquest of the Mayos, Captain Hurdaide, in 1609, signed a peace treaty with the military leaders of the Mayos.

Spanish Contact with the Yaqui Indians (1610). At contact, the Yaqui Indians occupied the coastal region of Sinaloa along the Yaqui River. Divided into eighty autonomous communities, their primary activity was agriculture. Although the Yaqui Indians had resisted Guzmán's advance in 1531, they had welcomed Francisco de Ibarra who came in peace in 1565, apparently in the hopes of winning the Spaniards as allies in the war against their traditional enemies, the Mayos.

In 1609, as Captain Hurdaide became engaged with the pacification of the Ocoronis (another Cáhita-speaking group of northern Sinaloa), he reached the Yaqui River, where he was confronted by a group of Yaquis. Then, in 1610, with the Mayo and Lower Pima Indians as his allies, Captain Hurdaide returned to Yaqui territory with a force of 2,000 Indians and forty Spanish soldiers. He was soundly defeated. When he returned with another force of 4,000 Indian foot soldiers and fifty mounted Spanish cavalry, he was again defeated in a bloody daylong battle.

Conversion of the Mayo Indians (1613-1620). In 1613, at their own request, the Mayos accepted Jesuit missionaries. Soon after, the Jesuit Father Pedro Mendez established the first mission in Mayo territory. In the first fifteen days, more than 3,000 persons received baptism. By 1620, with 30,000 persons baptized, the Mayos had been concentrated in seven mission towns.

Conversion of the Yaqui Indians (1617-1620). In 1617, the Yaquis, utilizing the services of Mayo intermediaries, invited the Jesuit missionaries to begin their work among them. Professor Spicer noted that after observing the Mayo-Jesuit interactions that started in 1613, the Yaquis seemed to be impressed with the Jesuits. Bringing a message of everlasting life, the Jesuits impressed the Yaquis with their good intentions and their spirituality. Their concern for the well being of the Indians won the confidence of the Yaqui people. In seeking to protect the Yaqui from exploitation by mine owners and encomenderos, the Jesuits came into direct conflict with the Spanish political authorities. From 1617 to 1619, nearly 30,000 Yaquis were baptized. By 1623, the Jesuits had reorganized the Yaquis from about eighty rancherías into eight mission villages.

Tepehuanes Revolt - Western and Northwestern Durango, Southern Chihuahua (1616-1620). The Tepehuanes occupied an extensive area of the Sierra Madre Mountains from the southern headwaters of the Rio Fuerte to the Rio Grande de Santiago in Jalisco. Much of their territory lay in present-day Durango and Chihuahua. The first Jesuits, bearing gifts of seeds, tools, clothing and livestock, went to work among the Tepehuanes in 1596. Between 1596 and 1616, eight Jesuit priests had converted the majority of the Tepehuanes.

It is likely that the epidemics that struck the Tepehuanes population in 1594, 1601-02, 1606-07, and 1612-1615 became a catalyst for this rebellion. This apparent failure of the Jesuit God to save their people from famine and disease, writes Charlotte M. Gradie, the author of The Tepehuán Revolt of 1616: Militarism, Evangelism, and Colonialism in Seventeenth-Century Nueva Vizcaya, caused the Tepehuanes culture to undergo "enormous stress from various factors associated with Spanish conquest and colonization." This stress convinced the Tepehuanes to embrace a return to their traditional way of life before the arrival of the Spaniards.

This "reinstatement of traditional religious beliefs and deities," writes Ms. Gradie, would ensure that the Spaniards would never again enter Tepehuán territory. One of the leaders of the revolt, Quautlatas, spoke a message of hope, telling his listeners that they should not accept the Christian God, but instead return to worshipping their former gods.

On the night of November 16, 1616, the Tepehuán rose in rebellion, taking the Spaniards completely by surprise. Entering Atotonilco, the Indians killed ten missionaries and 200 civilians. That same night they surrounded to Santiago Papasquiaro, where the Christians resisted 17 days. The Tepehuanes Indians had limited success in trying to enlist the aid of the Conchos Indians who lived around the Parras mission, on the northern edge of the Tepehuán territory. On the other hand, they had considerable success in getting the Acaxees and Xiximes to attack Spanish mines and settlements in western Nueva Vizcaya. However, when the Tepehuanes advanced on the recently converted Acaxee pueblos of Tecucuoapa and Carantapa, the 130 Acaxee warriors decided to side with the Spaniards and decisively defeated their Tepehuán neighbors. Because the loyalties of the Acaxees and Xiximes were divided, the Spaniards were able to extinguish their uprising more rapidly.

Ms. Charlotte M. Gradie writes that "native allies [of the Spaniards] were crucial in mounting an effective defense against the Tepehuanes and in putting down the revolt." On December 19, Captain Gáspar de Alvear led a force of sixty-seven armed cavalry and 120 Concho allies into the war zone to confront the insurgents. The hostilities continued until 1620 and laid waste to a large area. When Mateo de Vesga became Governor of Nueva Vizcaya in 1618, he described the province as "destroyed and devastated, almost depopulated of Spaniards." By the end of the revolt, at least a thousand allied Indians had died, while the Tepehuanes may have lost as many as 4,000 warriors. Professor Spicer regards the Tepehuán revolt as "one of the three bloodiest and most destructive Indian attempts to throw off Spanish control in northwestern New Spain." Following the revolt, the Tepehuanes fled to mountain retreats to escape Spanish vengeance. Not until 1723 would the Jesuits return to work among them.

Tarahumaras - Western and Eastern Durango; Southern Chihuahua (1621-1622).
Occupying an extensive stretch of the Sierra Madre Mountains, the Tarahumara Indians were ranchería people who planted corn along the ridges of hills and in valleys. During the winters, they retreated to the lowlands or the deep gorges to seek shelter. Some of them lived in cave excavations along cliffs or in stone masonry houses. The Tarahumara received their first visit from a Jesuit missionary in 1607. But the ranchería settlement pattern of both the Tepehuanes and Tarahumara represented a serious obstacle to the efforts of the missionaries who sought to concentrate the Amerindian settlements into compact communities close to the missions.

In January 1621, the Tepehuanes from the Valle de San Pablo y San Ignacio, with some Tarahumara Indians, attacked estancias in the Santa Bárbara region. They looted and burned buildings and killed Spaniards and friendly Indians. Three separate Spanish expeditions from Durango were sent after the Indian rebels. With the death of their military and religious leaders, however, the Tarahumara rebels could no longer carry on an organized resistance.

The Silver Strike at Parral - Chihuahua (1631). As early as 1567, the silver mines at Santa Bárbara were established in the territory of the Conchos Indians. However, in 1631, a vast new silver strike was made at Parral in what is now southern Chihuahua. The strike in Parral led to a large influx of Spaniards and Indian laborers into this area of Tarahumara country north of Santa Bárbara. However, the steadily increasing need for labor in the Parral mines, according to Professor Spicer, led to the "forcible recruitment, or enslavement, of non-Christian Indians."

Revolt of the Tobosos, Salineros and Conchos - Eastern and Northwestern Durango; Southern Chihuahua (1644-1652). In Indian Assimilation in the Franciscan Area of Nueva Vizcaya, the anthropologist Professor William B. Griffen, commenting on the establishment of the silver mines at Parral in 1631, notes that the "influx of new people and the resulting development of Spanish society no doubt placed increased pressure upon the native population in the region." Griffen also cites "a five-year period of drought, accompanied by a plague," which had occurred immediately preceding the uprising as a contributing factor. The large area of southern Chihuahua inhabited by the Conchos Indians included the highway between the mining districts of Parral, Cusihuiriachic, and Chihuahua.

Very abruptly, in 1644, nearly all of the general area north and east of the Parral district of Chihuahua was aflame with Indian rebellion as the Tobosos, Cabezas, and Salineros rose in revolt. In the spring of 1645, the Conchos - long-time allies of the Spaniards - also took up arms against the Europeans. Professor Griffen wrote that the Conchos had "rather easily become incorporated into the Spanish empire. In the 1600s they labored and fought for the Spaniards, who at this time often lauded them for their industry and constancy." But now, the Conchos established a confederation of rebellious tribes that included the Julimes, Xiximoles, Tocones, and Cholomes. On June 16, 1645, Governor Montaño de la Cueva, with a force of 90 Spanish cavalry and 286 Indian infantry auxiliaries, defeated a force of Conchos. By August 1645, most of the Conchos and their allies had surrendered and return to their work.

Revolt of the Tarahumara (1648-1652). The 1648 rebellion began with an organized insurgency in the little Tarahumara community of Fariagic, southwest of Parral. Under the leadership of four caciques (chiefs), several hundred Tarahumara Indians moved northward, attacking missions along the way. The mission of San Francisco de Borja was destroyed before a Spanish expedition from Durango met the Indians in battle and captured two of their leaders.

The short-lived rebellion of 1648 was followed by more outbreaks in 1650 and 1652. According to Professor Spicer, relations between the Tarahumara and the Spanish settlers had grown tense in recent years as "the Spaniards appropriated farming sites, assumed domineering attitudes over the Indians, and attempted to force the Indians to work for them." The Villa de Aguilar and its associated mission of Papigochic became the targets of Tarahumara attacks in both 1650 and 1652. A contingent of Tarahumara under Tepórame attacked and laid waste to seven Franciscan establishments in Concho territory. Eventually, the Spanish forces defeated the insurgents and executed Tepórame.

Revolt of the Salineros, Conchos, Tobosos, and Tarahumaras - Northeastern Durango; Southern and Western Chihuahua (1666-1680). In 1666, some of the western Conchos rose in rebellion following a drought, famine and epidemic. But in the following year, the rebellion spread to the Tobosos, Cabezas, and Salineros. Although Spanish forces were sent to contain the rebellion, the turmoil continued for a decade. Professor Jack D. Forbes, the author of Apache, Navaho, and Spaniard, writes that "the Nueva Vizcaya region was a land of continual war in the early 1670's." By 1677, in fact, Nueva Vizcaya was in great danger of being lost. However, in a series of campaigns, the Spaniards killed many of the enemy and captured up to 400 Indians. But even after these battles, the Conchos, Tobosos, Julimes and Chisos continued to wage war against the European establishment.

Developments in New Mexico. By 1626, the Franciscan missionaries in the Spanish province of New Mexico claimed to have converted some 34,000 Indians. By 1630, the colony at Santa Fe consisted of 250 Spaniards and 750 people of Indian and Spanish mixture. Starting around 1660, drought and crop failure started to plague New Mexico with increasing frequency. Tensions increased between the Indian population and the Spaniards, who had forbade the Pueblos from performing their rainmaking ceremonies. By 1680, epidemics had reduced the Pueblo Indian population by fifty percent from 1630.

The Great Northern Revolt of the Pueblos, Salineros, Conchos, Tobosos and Tarahumaras - New Mexico, Northeastern Durango, Southern and Western Chihuahua (1680 - 1689). In 1680, Pope, a Pueblo Indian medicine man, having assembled a unified Pueblo nation, led a successful revolt against Spanish colonists in New Mexico. Beginning at dawn on August 11, 1680, the insurgents killed twenty-one Franciscan missionaries serving in the various pueblos. At least 400 Spanish colonists were murdered in the first days of the rebellion. On August 15, Indian warriors converged on Santa Fe. They cut off the water supply to the 2,000 men, women and children there, and they sang, "The Christian god is dead, but our sun god will never die." The Spaniards counterattacked, causing the Pueblos to pull back momentarily. Then, on August 21 the Spaniards and mestizos trapped inside of Santa Fe fled, making their way southward down the Rio Grande to El Paso al Norte Mission, which had been built in 1659.

Once the Spaniards had been expelled, Pope initiated a campaign to eradicate Spanish cultural elements, disallowing the use of the Spanish language, and insisting that Indians baptized as Christians be bathed in water to negate their baptisms. Religious ceremonies of the Catholic Church were banned and the Indians were stopped from verbally using the names of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints.

The Pope Revolt, in addition to driving the Spaniards from the Santa Fe-Albuquerque region for more than a decade, also provided the Pueblo Indians with three to five thousand horses. Almost immediately, they started breeding larger herds, with the intention of selling horses to the Apache and Comanche Indians. As a result, the widespread use of the horse revolutionized Indian life. While mounted Indians found that buffalo were much easier to kill, some tribes - such as the Comanche - met with great success when they used the horse for warfare.

The revolt in New Mexico jostled many of the indigenous tribes of Nueva Vizcaya into action. As the rebellion spread, hundreds were killed but the Spanish military, caught woefully off-guard, could only muster small squads for the defense of the settlements in Chihuahua and Sonora. During the power vacuum in New Mexico and Nueva Vizcaya following the 1680 revolt, the Apache Indians started to push far to the southwest, arriving at the gates of Sonora to attack Spanish and Opata settlements. Then, in 1684, as the Spaniards nursed their wounds at their new headquarters in El Paso, more rebellions popped up across all of northern Chihuahua. From Casas Grandes to El Paso, Conchos, Sumas, Chinarras, Mansos, Janos, and Apachean Jócomes all took up arms.

In November 1684, Governor Joseph de Neyra of Nueva Vizcaya reported that the indigenous rebels had taken 40,000 head of livestock from the northern frontier area. Unrest in the province continued into the following year as the Viceroy called for the construction of a presidio of fifty men near Casas Grandes (Chihuahua). In July 1688, the Janos and Jócome Indians once again attacked Casas Grandes. However, in a retaliatory raid a month later, a large Spanish force defeated the Janos, Jócomes, and Sumas, killing 200 warriors and capturing many women and children. Eventually the rebellion was put down, resulting in the execution of fifty-two Indians at Casas Grandes and twenty-five more in the Sonora mission area.

Uprisings of the Tarahumara Indians and other Sierra Madre Indians - Chihuahua (1690-1698). A general uprising of the Tarahumara and other tribes in 1690 and 1691 took place. The Tarahumara Indians at the northern mission of Tepómera rebelled and killed their missionaries. The Indians participating were led to believe that their leaders had the power to make Spanish guns useless. In addition, the Tarahumara were told that any of their warriors killed in battle would rise again after three days. However, within months, Spanish troops arrived from Parral and were able to kill the primary leader, ending the rebellion.

Epidemics of measles and smallpox broke out among the Tarahumara in 1693 and 1695. During this time, a belief developed that the ringing of church bells spread measles and smallpox. This may have contributed to two more uprisings in 1696 and 1698. The Tarahumara country from Sisoguichic in the south to Yepómera in the north was in open revolt. Units from several presidios were utilized in bringing the rebellious Tarahumara under control one more time.

The Reconquest of New Mexico (1692). The Pueblos lived as a free and independent people for twelve years. However, in 1692, missionaries and Spanish government officials focused on working together to invade New Mexico once again. By this time, Pope had died and the Pueblos had disbanded and returned to their old ways, which included each pueblo being autonomous from the others. Governor Diego de Vargas saw that the time was ripe for the Spaniards to return to New Mexico.

Pulling together a re-colonizing expedition of one hundred soldiers, seventy families, and eighteen Franciscan friars, together with some Indian allies, de Vargas left El Paso for Santa Fe on October 4, 1693. Pledging an end to the abuse that the Spaniards had inflicted on the Pueblo Indians up to 1680, Vargas' forces surrounded Santa Fe and then cut off the water supply. By 1694, Vargas had ended all effective resistance in New Mexico.

Pueblo Revolt of 1696 - New Mexico. On June 4, 1696, the Pueblo Indians attempted another revolt that resulted in the killing of five missionaries and twenty-one settlers. After a few churches were burned down, Spanish forces defeated the insurgents. Unlike the Revolt of 1680, this rebellion had been poorly planned and lasted only six months. Although the Pueblos had been subdued, the Hopi, Navajo and Apache tribes in New Mexico and Chihuahua continued to elude Spanish rule.

Rebellion of the Conchos - Chihuahua (1696). In this year, the Concho Indians attacked Nacori not far from the borders of the Tarahumara country a hundred miles south of Janos. Lieutenant Solis marched against the Conchos and captured three of their leaders. He executed all three, and the Conchos ceased hostilities

Detachment of the Province of Sinaloa and Sonora (1733). In 1733, Sinaloa and Sonora were detached from Nueva Vizcaya and given recognition as the province of Sonora y Sinaloa. Ms. Deeds commented that this detachment represented recognition of "the growth of a mining and ranching secular society in this northwestern region."

Rebellion of the Yaqui, Pima, and Mayo Indians - Sinaloa and Sonora (1740). The Yaqui and Mayo Indians had lived in peaceful coexistence with the Spaniards since the early part of the Seventeenth Century. Ms. Deeds, in describing the causes of this rebellion, observes that the Jesuits had ignored "growing Yaqui resentment over lack of control of productive resources." During the last half of the Seventeenth Century, so much agricultural surplus was produced that storehouses needed to be built. These surpluses were used by the missionaries to extend their activities northward into the California and Pima missions. The immediate cause of the rebellion is believed to have been a poor harvest in late 1739, followed in 1740 by severe flooding which exacerbated food shortages.

Ms. Deeds also points out that the "increasingly bureaucratic and inflexible Jesuit organization obdurately disregarded Yaqui demands for autonomy in the selection of their own village officials." Thus, this rebellion, writes Ms. Deeds, was "a more limited endeavor to restore the colonial pact of village autonomy and territorial integrity." At the beginning of the revolt, an articulate leader named El Muni emerged in the Yaqui community. El Muni and another Yaqui leader, Bernabé, took the Yaquis' grievances to local civil authorities. Resenting this undermining of their authority, the Jesuits had Muni and Bernabé arrested.

The arrests triggered a spontaneous outcry, with two thousand armed indigenous men gathering to demand the release of the two leaders. The Governor, having heard the complaints of both sides, recommended that the Yaqui leaders go to Mexico City to testify personally before the Viceroy and Archbishop Vizrón. In February 1740, the Archbishop approved all of the Yaqui demands for free elections, respect for land boundaries, that Yaquis be paid for work, and that they not be forced to work in mines.

The initial stages of the 1740 revolt saw sporadic and uncoordinated activity in Sinaloa and Sonora, primarily taking place in the Mayo territory and in the Lower Pima Country. Catholic churches were burned to the ground while priests and settlers were driven out, fleeing to the silver mining town at Alamos. Eventually, Juan Calixto raised an army of 6,000 men, composed of Pima, Yaqui and Mayo Indians. With this large force, Calixto gained control of all the towns along the Mayo and Yaqui Rivers.

However, in August 1740, Captain Agustín de Vildósola defeated the insurgents. The rebellion, however, had cost the lives of a thousand Spaniards and more than 5,000 Indians. After the 1740 rebellion, the new Governor of Sonora and Sinaloa began a program of secularization by posting garrisons in the Yaqui Valley and encouraging Spanish residents to return to the area of rebellion. The Viceroy ordered the partition of Yaqui land in a "prudent manner." The Yaquis had obtained a reputation for being courageous warriors during the rebellion of 1740 and the Spanish handled them quite gingerly during the late 1700s. As a result, the government acquisition of Yaqui lands did not begin began until 1768.

Pima Rebellion of 1751-1752. The Pima Indians have lived for many centuries in scattered locations throughout what are today the western two-thirds of southern Arizona and northern Sonora. While the Pimas Altos (Upper Pima Indians) lived in the north, their linguistic brethren, the Pima Bajo (Lower Pima) lived farther south in lower Sonora.

During the 1740s, the Pima Indians began to feel agitated by the presence of the Spaniards in their territory. In November 1751, under the leadership of a Pima leader, Captain-General Luís Oacpicagigua, the Pima rose in revolt. Within a few days more than a hundred settlers, miners, and ranchers were killed. Churches were burned, and two priests were also killed. However, on January 4, 1752, approximately 2,000 northern Pimans attacked less than one hundred Spaniards, only to be repulsed with a loss of forty-three dead. The Pima Revolt lasted only four months, ending with the surrender of Luís Oacpicagigua, who offered himself in sacrifice and atonement for his whole people, endeavoring to spare them the consequences of their uprising.

Apache Offensives in Sonora and Chihuahua (1751-1774). The word "Apache" comes from the Yuma word for "fighting-men". It also comes from a Zuni word meaning "enemy". Cynthia Radding, the author of The Colonial Pact and Changing Ethnic Frontiers in Highland Sonora, 1740-1840, refers to the Apaches as "diverse bands" of hunter-gatherers "related linguistically to the Athapaskan speakers of Alaska and western Canada." The Apaches were composed of six regional groups: (1) the Western Apaches (Coyotero) of eastern Arizona; (2) the Chiricahua of southwestern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona, Chihuahua and Sonora; (3) the Mescalero of southern New Mexico; (4) the Jicarilla of Colorado, northern New Mexico and northwestern Texas; (5) the Lipan Apache of New Mexico and Texas; and (6) the Kiowa Apache of Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The first Apache raids on Sonora appear to have taken place during the early part of the late Seventeenth Century. In fact, to counter the early Apache thrusts into Sonora, presidios were established at Janos (1685) in Chihuahua and at Fronteras (1690) in northern Opata country. The Apache depredations continued into the Eighteenth Century and prompted Captain Juan Mateo Mange in 1737 to report that "many mines have been destroyed, 15 large estancias along the frontier have been totally destroyed, having lost two hundred head of cattle, mules, and horses; several missions have been burned and two hundred Christians have lost their lives to the Apache enemy, who sustains himself only with the bow and arrow, killing and stealing livestock. All this has left us in ruins."

In the 1750s, the fiercest of all Apache tribes, the Chiricahua, began hunting and raiding along the mountainous frontier regions of both Sonora and Chihuahua. In 1751, the Sonorans mounted a punitive campaign against the Chiricahua, capturing two of their leaders. In 1753 and 1754, the Apaches once again attacked the settlements and ranches near Valle de San Buenaventura and Casas Grandes. As a result, another expedition of 190 Sonorans, 140 Opata allies, and 86 Spanish troops from Chihuahua went out in search of the marauders during 1756. When Apache raiders hit the region south of San Buenaventura in late 1760, an expedition of 100 Spanish troops and 130 Indian auxiliaries attacked the raiders.

In March 1771, several bands of Apaches struck numerous locations near Chihuahua City and Parral. On April 21, Bernardo de Galvez, leading a force of 110 men, fought a battle with 250 Apaches, killing fifty-eight of the enemy. In the spring of 1774, Apaches attacked many places in Chihuahua. On September 27, they invaded the Janos jurisdiction and engaged the Spaniards in battle. Once the battle had ended, the Spaniards followed them in hot pursuit until two days later, when they were ambushed by 100 Apaches who killed the Spanish commander and several soldiers.

The pressure of constant warfare waged against these nomads led the Spanish military to adopt a policy of maintaining armed garrisons of paid soldiers (presidios) in the problem areas. By 1760, Spain boasted a total of twenty-three presidios in the frontier regions. But the Apaches, responding to these garrisons, developed "important adaptations in their mode of subsistence, warfare, and social organization. They became highly skilled horsemen whose mobility helped them elude presidio troops.

Professor Robert Salmon, the author of Indian Revolts in Northern New Spain: A Synthesis of Resistance (1680-1786) writes that the continuing Indian attacks eventually "broke the chain of ineffective presidios established to control them." As the end of the Eighteenth Century approached, the Apaches represented a major threat to the continued Spanish occupation of Sonora and Chihuahua. And, as Professor Salmon concludes, "Indian warriors exacted high tolls in commerce, livestock, and lives." The damage caused by Apache raids was calculated in hundreds of thousands of pesos, and many ranches, farms and mining centers throughout Chihuahua had to be abandoned.

Professor Griffen mentions that the Apache raiders in Chihuahua "displaced or assimilated other groups of hunter-gatherers known as the Sumas, Mansos, Chinarras, Sumanos, Jócomes, and Janos." As a result, Ms. Radding observes, the Spaniards, Pimas, and Opatas found it necessary to form "an uneasy, but necessary, alliance against the Apaches." The Opata Indians controlled the major river valleys of Central Sonora.

Comanche Raids into Chihuahua (Second Half of the Eighteenth Century). The Comanche Indians had begun raiding Spanish settlements in Texas as early as the 1760s. Soon after, the Comanche warriors began raiding Chihuahua, Sonora, Coahuila, Durango and Nuevo León. T. R. Fehrenbach, the author of Comanches: The Destruction of a People, writes that "a long terror descended over the entire frontier, because Spanish organization and institutions were totally unable to cope with war parties of long-striking, swiftly moving Comanches."

Mounting extended campaigns into Spanish territory, the Comanches avoided forts and armies. T. R. Fehrenbach states that these Amerindians were "eternally poised for war." They traveled across great distances and struck their victims with great speed. "They rampaged across mountains and deserts," writes Mr. Fehrenbach, "scattering to avoid detection surrounding peaceful villages of peasants for dawn raids. They waylaid travelers, ravaged isolated ranches, destroyed whole villages along with their inhabitants."

Seri Offensives (1757-1766). At the time of contact, the Seri Indians lived along the arid central coast of Sonora and shared boundaries with the Yaqui on the south and the Pima and Pápago on the east and north. The first known battle between the Seris and the Spaniards took place in 1662. A century later, on November 3, 1757, a war party of Seris and rebel northern Pimans struck the settlement of San Lorenzo (Sonora), killing thirty-two persons. This brazen affront called for military reprisal, and the Spaniards collected troops to chase the offenders back to the coastal area.

In 1760, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza took over command of the Tubac Presidio in Southern Arizona and embarked into Seri country near the Gulf of California. In 1761, presidios were denuded of troops in order to supply personnel and materials for the offensive. A force of 184 Spanish soldiers, 217 allied Indians and twenty citizens went on the offensive against the Seris. They succeeded in slaying forty-nine Seris and capturing sixty-three, while recovering 322 horses.

The Jesuits are Banished (1767). In 1767 King Carlos III, for political reasons, abruptly banished the Jesuits from all his realms. Hundreds of mission establishments, schools and colleges had to be turned over to other missionary orders or converted to other uses. The Franciscans who took over the missionary effort in Sonora and Chihuahua inherited all the woes that had frustrated the Jesuits: restless neophytes, Apache hostility, disease, encroaching settlers, and lack of government support.

The Sonora Campaign (1767-1771). The Sonora Expedition of 1767 was led by Colonel Domingo Elizondo. The expedition was the result of demands by settlers in Sonora who had for decades suffered raids by warring ranchería groups of that province. Pacification of rebel Indian warriors of the coastal region was the main objective of the expedition that was comprised of an extraordinary 1,100 men. This expedition represented the greatest military effort yet seen in this Spanish frontier province.

During 1768, Colonel Elizondo's forces split up in an attempt to drive the Seri Indians into one area where a decisive battle could be fought. This mission failed to achieve its objective. The Indians, now well-trained in the art of hit-and-run and ambush style warfare, avoided direct confrontations with large Spanish armies. In 1771, after thirty-eight months of fighting, the Central Government in Mexico City put a stop to the Sonora Campaign, which was regarded as both costly and unsuccessful.

Peace Negotiations with the Apaches and Comanches (1777 - 1796). In 1777-78, Teodoro de Croix, the Commandant General of the Interior (frontier) provinces of Nueva España, called together three great conferences to discuss the Apache problem. "The Apache problem had existed on the frontier since the Spanish entered the country," writes Mr. Fehrenbach, "and each year it grew worse. The Apaches had five thousand warriors, armed with bows, lances, and firearms. They attacked only by surprise and only when they had the advantage."

Croix determined that it would take an army of at least 3,000 soldiers to confront and eliminate the Apache threat. He thus came to the conclusion that an alliance with the Comanches - the dreaded enemies of the Apaches - would bring about a resolution of the Apache problem. However, bogged down with "bureaucratic delays and obfuscation," de Croix was never able to get the money or men to implement this plan.

In 1779, Juan Bautista de Anza, the commander of the Tubac Presidio, gathered together an army of 600 men, which included 259 Amerindian auxiliaries and Spanish civilians, and marched north to the Colorado Plateau, in search of Comanches. Having estimated the Comanche population at 30,000 warriors spread across a large area, Anza attacked and surprised several bands of Comanches during 1783-84. Mr. Fehrenbach writes that Anza, operating with native allies and utilizing Indian tactics, earned the respect of the Comanches.

Finally, in 1785, the Comanches started negotiations with Anza. The following year, a peace treaty was signed in which several of the Comanche tribes pledged to assist the Spaniards against the Apaches. Through this agreement, Mr. Fehrenbach observed, "the Comanches could now ride openly into Spanish settlements [and] New Mexican traders could move safely on the Comanche plains."

In 1786, the Viceroy of Nueva España, Bernardo de Galvez, instituted a series of reforms for the pacification of the frontier. His Instrucción of that year called for the formation of peace establishments (establecimientos de paz) for Apaches willing to settle down and become peaceful. Oscar J. Martínez, the author of Troublesome Border, described Spain's new policy of "pacification by dependency" toward the indigenous peoples. "Henceforth," writes Mr. Martínez, "Spaniards would endeavor to make treaties with individual bands, persuade them to settle near military stations where they would receive food rations, give them low-quality weapons for hunting, encourage trade, and use 'divide and conquer' tactics where appropriate."

Soon, several Apache bands were induced to forgo their raiding and warfare habits in exchange for farmlands, food, clothing, agricultural implements and obsolete hunting arms. Mr. Martínez concludes: "The Spaniards hoped that these measures would result in the establishment of a dependency relationship, which is precisely what materialized, and for nearly twenty-five years peaceful relations came to exist between the two groups."

In February 1786, the Spaniards established a general peace with the Comanches. At the same time, the level of Apache hostilities in both Chihuahua and Sonora decreased, giving way to small-scale skirmishes. However, the peace policy did not last and Apaches began a new series of raids. In eighteen months of action between April 19, 1786 and December 31, 1787, Apaches caused the deaths of 306 people and took thirty prisoners. In the same period, the Spanish forces had killed 326 Apaches and captured 365 prisoners.

Eventually, however, the Apaches were brought back to the peace table. In the years to follow, peaceful Apaches settled down at Janos, Bacoachi, Carrizal, San Buenaventura and Namiquipa. By 1796, Antonio Cordero y Bustamante was reporting that this policy had met with considerable success on the frontier. However, Professor William B. Griffen, the author of Apaches at War and Peace: The Janos Presidio, 1750-1858, writes that "because of high administrative costs, and apparently because of restricted funds on the frontier due to the war with France," Spanish authorities started removing the peaceful Apaches from the presidios and urged them to return to the hinterland but to continue to keep the peace.

Mexico Wins Independence - 1822. Mexico won independence from Spain. Following independence, Nueva Vizcaya in 1824 was divided into the states of Chihuahua and Durango.

Apache Depredations in Mexico (1820-1835). During the late Eighteenth Century and early Nineteenth Century, the establecimientos de paz (establishments of peace) had helped to pacify the Apaches. Dr. Shelley Bowen Hatfield, the author of Chasing Shadows: Indians Along the United States-Mexico Border 1876-1911, observed, "Due to the maintenance of the establecimientos, Apache raids had diminished by 1800, to the point that Spanish frontier settlement could resume."

However, during Mexico's War for Independence (1810-1821), the rations guaranteed by the Spaniards almost disappeared, leading to a resumption of raiding in the frontier states. As a matter of fact, during the 1820s, the Apaches had returned to a state of war with Mexico. An estimated five thousand Mexicans in the frontier regions died at the hands of the Apaches between 1820 and 1835. Sonora and Chihuahua both adopted Apache extermination policies, offering significant amounts of money for an adult male Apache's scalp.

War with the Comanche Indians - 1820s. In the 1820s, the newly independent Mexican Republic was so preoccupied with political problems that it failed to maintain an adequate defense in its northern territories. Comanches ended the peace that they had made with the Spaniards and resumed warfare against the Mexican Federal Government. By 1825, they were making raids deep in Texas, New Mexico, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Chihuahua and Durango.

"Such conditions were permitted to continue in the north," writes Mr. Fehrenbach, "because independent Mexico was not a homogeneous or cohesive, nation it never possessed a government stable or powerful enough to mount sustained campaigns against the Amerindians." As a result, Comanche raiders killed thousands of Mexican soldiers, ranchers and peasants south of the Rio Grande.

Yaqui, Mayo and Opata Rebellions of 1825-1833. After Mexico gained independence in 1822, the Yaquis became citizens of a new nation. During this time, there appeared a new Yaqui leader. Ms. Linda Zoontjens, the author of A Brief History of the Yaqui and Their Land, referred to Juan de la Cruz Banderas as a "revolutionary visionary" whose mission was to establish an Indian military confederation. Once again, the Mayo Indians joined their Yaqui neighbors in opposing the central authorities. With a following of 2,000 warriors, Banderas carried out several raids. But eventually, Banderas made an arrangement with the Government of Sonora. In exchange for his "surrender," Banderas was made the Captain-General of the Yaqui Militia.

By early 1832, Banderas had formed an alliance with the Opatas. Together, the Opatas and Yaquis were able to field an army of almost 2,500 warriors, staging repeated raids against haciendas, mines and towns in Sonora. However, the Mexican army continued to meet the indigenous forces in battle, gradually reducing their numbers. Finally, in December 1832, volunteers tracked down and captured Banderas. The captive was turned over to the authorities and put on trial. A month later, in January 1833, Banderas was executed, along with eleven other Yaqui, Mayo and Opata leaders who had helped foment rebellion in Sonora.

The Yaqui people, after the capture and execution of Banderas, subsided into a tense, uneasy existence. Some, during periods of food shortage, would take up "peaceful" residence outside the presidios, to ask for rations. Others undertook low-level raiding.

Confrontations with Comanches - Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango (1834-1853). In 1834, Mexico signed its third peace treaty with the Comanches of Texas. However, almost immediately Mexico violated the peace treaty and the Comanches resumed their raids in Texas and Chihuahua. In the following year, Sonora, Chihuahua and Durango reestablished bounties for Comanche scalps. Between 1848 and 1853, Mexico filed 366 separate claims for Comanche and Apache raids originating from north of the American border.

A government report from 1849 claimed that twenty-six mines, thirty haciendas, and ninety ranches in Sonora had been abandoned or depopulated between 1831 and 1849 because of Apache depredations. In 1852, the Comanches made daring raids into Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Durango and even Tepic in Jalisco, some 700 miles south of the United States-Mexican border.

The Yaqui Indians (1838-1868). After the death of Banderas, the Yaqui Indians attempted to forge alliances with anyone who promised them land and autonomy. They would align themselves with the Centralists or Conservatives as long as those groups protected their lands from being encroached upon. But when General José Urrea took power in 1841, he oversaw the division of Yaqui lands from communal plots into private plots.

Governor Ignacio Pesqueira of Sonora drew up a list of preventative measures to be used against the Yaquis, Opatas and their allies. These orders called for the execution of rebel leaders. In addition, hacienda owners were required to make up lists of all employees, including a notation for those who were suspected of taking part in rebellious activity against the civil government. These measures were ineffective in dealing with the growing unrest among the Yaqui and Opatas.

In 1867 Governor Pesqueira of Sonora organized two military expeditions against the Yaquis under the command of General Jesus Garcia Morales. The expeditions marched on Guaymas and Cócorit, both of which lay in the heart of Yaqui territory. These expeditions met at Medano on the Gulf Coast near the Jesuit-founded Yaqui town of Potam. The two expeditions, totaling about 900 men, did not meet with any organized resistance. Instead, small parties of Yaquis resisted their advance. By the end of the year, the Mexican forces had killed many Yaquis. The troops confiscated much livestock, destroyed food supplies, and shot most of the prisoners captured.

Apache Depredations - Chihuahua and Sonora (1836-1852). In 1836, the famous Chiricahua leader, Cochise, took part in the signing of a peace treaty at Arizpe, Sonora. The peace did not last for too many years. From 1847 into the 1850s, Sonora was laid to waste by the Chiricahuas, whose leader was Miguel Narbona, who died in 1856.

Geronimo, the legendary Bedonkohe Apache leader of the Chiricahua Apaches, led his people in raids against the United States military and Mexican federal forces. Born sometime around 1823, Geronimo's real name was Goyahkla ("He Who Yawns"). In 1851, Geronimo was leading a party from the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico into Mexico to trade at Casas Grandes in Chihuahua. His mother, wife, and three children were with him. His band set up a village on the outskirts of Casas Grandes.

One day he and some others were returning from town and found that their village had been attacked by Mexican troops. The sentinels had been killed, the ponies stolen, weapons taken, supplies destroyed, and many women and children had been killed. Among the murdered were his mother, wife, and children. From this day forward, Geronimo was a changed person. He is said to have become bitter and quarrelsome and determined to oppose the nations he saw as his enemies.

Over the next few months he met with other Apache leaders, including Cochise, the leader of the Chiricahuas. Within four months of the massacre, Geronimo and the other leaders prepared for revenge. In January 1852, near Arizpe, Sonora, Geronimo battled about a hundred Mexican irregular soldiers.

Yaqui Insurgencies - Sonora (1868-1875). During these years, the Yaquis regained their strength and periodically attacked Mexican garrisons in their territory. In March 1868, six hundred Yaquis arrived near the town of Bacum in the eastern Yaqui country to ask the local field commander for peace terms. However, the Mexican officer, Colonel Bustamante, arrested the whole group, including women and children. When the Yaquis gave up forty-eight weapons, Bustamante released 150 people but continued to hold the other 450 people. Taking his captives to a Yaqui church in Bacum as prisoners of war, he was able to identify ten of the captives as leaders. All ten of these men were shot without a trial.

Four hundred and forty people were left languishing in the church overnight, with Bustamante's artillery trained on the church door to discourage an escape attempt. However, during the night a fire was started in the church. The situation inside the church turned to chaos and confusion, as some captives desperately tried to break down the door. As the Yaquis fled the church, several salvos fired from the field pieces killed up to 120 people.

In 1875, the Mexican government suspected that a Yaqui insurrection was brewing. In an attempt to pacify the Yaquis, Governor Jose J. Pesqueira ordered a new campaign, sending five hundred troops from the west into the Yaqui country. A force of 1,500 Yaquis met the Mexican troops at Pitahaya. In the subsequent battle, the Yaquis are believed to have lost some sixty men.

Cajeme and the Yaqui Rebellions During the Porfiriato (1876-1887). During the reign of Porfirio Díaz, the ongoing struggle for autonomy and land rights dominated Yaqui-Mexican relations. An extraordinary leader named Cajeme now took center stage in the Yaquis' struggle for autonomy. Cajeme, whose name meant "He who does not drink," was born José María Leyva. He learned Spanish and served in the Mexican army. Although Cajeme's parents were Yaqui Indians, he had become very Mexicanized. Cajeme's military service with the Mexican army was so exemplary that he was given the post of Alcalde Mayor of the Yaqui River area. Soon after receiving this promotion, however, Cajeme announced his intention to withdraw recognition of the Mexican Government if they did not grant the Yaquis self-government. Cajeme galvanized a new generation of Yaquis and Mayos and led his forces against selected towns in Yaqui Country.

Apache Attacks in Chihuahua (1878-1886). From 1878 to 1886, Geronimo and his small band of Apaches escaped from captivity several times. In September 1881, on the run from the American military, Geronimo led a raiding party of seventy Chiricahua, along with their families, across the Rio Grande where they struck ranches throughout the state of Chihuahua. In November, the raiding party moved on to Sonora. He was captured soon after, but escaped American captivity again in 1884, when led 144 of his followers to freedom. As a free man, Geronimo led raids on pack trains, stealing supplies, arms, and ammunition. On a few occasions, the Apaches also attacked stagecoaches, frequently killing the settlers.

Early in 1883, Apaches staged raids in the Arizpe, Moctezuma, Sahuaripa, and Ures districts of Sonora. In May 1885, after escaping one more time, Geronimo led 134 warriors back to his old haunts in Mexico's Sierra Madre. On March 27, 1886, General George Crook managed to arrange a two-day parley with Geronimo in Mexico's Cañon de los Embudos. Geronimo agreed to surrender and accept a two-year imprisonment at Fort Marrion, 2,000 miles away in Florida. However, once across the American border, Geronimo and several of his followers escaped.

Soon after, Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles replaced General Crook. With 5,000 troops and 400 Apache scouts on his payroll, General Crook traveled 1,645 miles in five months in search of Geronimo. Finally, on August 23, 1886, Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood, leading 25 men and two Apache scouts through the Sierra Madre, located Geronimo, along with twenty men and fourteen women and children. The Apache leader agreed to talk to General Miles and joined Gatewood on the journey north. This would be Geronimo's final surrender. In October 1886, Geronimo arrived in Florida, thus ending his life on the run. Eight years later, Geronimo and his followers were moved to a reservation near Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Mexican Offensives Against the Yaquis (1885-1901). Dr. Hatfield, in studying the struggle over Indian lands, wrote, "Rich Yaqui and Mayo valley lands possessed a soil and climate capable of growing almost any crop. Therefore, it was considered in the best national interest to open these lands to commercial development and foreign investors." During the 1880s, the Governor of Sonora, Carlos Ortiz, became concerned about his state's sovereignty over Indian lands. In the hopes of seizing Indian Territory, Ortiz withdrew his state troopers from the border region where they had been fighting the Apache Indians. In the meantime, Cajeme's forces began attacking haciendas, ranches and stations of the Sonora Railroad in the Guaymas and Alamos districts.

With rebel forces causing so much trouble, General Luis Torres, the Governor of Sonora, petitioned the Federal Government for military aid. Recognizing the seriousness of this rebellion, Mexican President Porfirio Díaz authorized his Secretary of War to begin a campaign against the Sonoran rebels. In 1885, 1,400 federal troops arrived in Sonora to help the Sonoran government put down the insurrection. Together with 800 state troops, the federal forces were organized into an expedition, with the intention of meeting the Yaquis in battle.

During 1886, the Yaquis continued to fortify more of their positions. Once again, Mexican federal and state forces collaborated by making forays into Yaqui country. This expedition confiscated more than 20,000 head of livestock and, in April 1886, occupied the Yaqui town of Cócorit. On May 5, the fortified site of Anil was captured after a pitched battle. After suffering several serious military reverses, the Yaqui forces fell back to another fortified site at Buatachive, high in the Sierra de Bacatet, to make a last stand against the Mexican forces.

Putting together a fighting force of 4,000 Yaquis, along with thousands of Yaqui civilians, Cajeme prepared to resist. On May 12, after a four-day siege, Mexican troops under General Angel Martinez, attacked Buatachive. In a three-hour battle, the Mexican forces killed 200 Yaqui soldiers, while capturing hundreds of women and children. Cajeme and a couple thousand Yaquis managed to escape the siege.

After this staggering blow, Cajeme divided his forces into small bands of armed men. From this point on, the smaller units tried to engage government troops in small skirmishes. Although Cajeme asked the Federal authorities for a truce, the military leaders indicated that all Yaqui territory was part of the nation of Mexico. After a few months, expeditions into the war zone led to the capture of four thousand people. With the end of the rebellion in sight, General Luis Torres commenced with the military occupation of the entire Yaqui Nation.

With the end of hostilities, Mexican citizens began filtering into Yaqui territory to establish permanent colonies. On April 12, 1887, nearly a year after the Battle of Buatachive, Cajeme was apprehended near Guaymas and taken to Cócorit where he was to be executed before a firing squad in 1887. After being interviewed and photographed by Ramon Corral, he was taken by steamboat to Medano but was shot while trying to escape from the soldiers.

Government forces, searching for and confronting armed Yaquis, killed 356 Yaqui men and women over a period of two years. A comprehensive search for the Yaqui holdouts in their hiding places forced the rebels into the Guaymas Valley where they mingled with Yaqui laborers on haciendas and in railroad companies. As a result, the Mexican Government accused owners of haciendas, mining and railroad companies of shielding criminal Yaqui fugitives. Circulars were issued which forbade the owners from giving money, provisions, or arms to the rebels. During this time, some Yaquis were able to slip across the border into Arizona to work in mines and purchase guns and ammunition. The Mexican border guards were unable to stop the steady supply of arms and provisions coming across the border from Arizona. Eventually, Mexico's Secretary of War ordered the recruitment of Opatas and Pimas to hunt down the Yaqui guerillas.

In 1894-95, Luis Torres instituted a secret police system and carried out a meticulous survey of the entire Sierra de Bacatete, noting locations of wells supplying fresh water as well as all possible entrances and exits to the region. Renegade bands of Yaquis, familiar with the terrain of their own territory, were able to avoid capture by the government forces. During the campaign of 1895-97, captured rebels were deported to southern Mexico to be drafted into the army.

In 1897, the commander of the campaign forces, General Torres initiated negotiations with the Yaqui leader Tetabiate, offering the Yaquis repatriation into their homeland. After a number of months of correspondence between the guerilla leader and a colonel in one of the regiments, a place was set for a peace agreement to be signed. On May 15, 1897, Sonora state officials and the Tetabiate signed the Peace of Ortiz. The Yaqui leader, Juan Maldonado, with 390 Yaquis, consisting of 74 families, arrived from the mountains for the signing of the peace treaty.

In the six years following the signing of peace, Lorenzo Torres, the Governor of Sonora, made efforts to complete the Mexican occupation of Yaqui territory. Ignoring the terms of the peace treaty, four hundred Yaquis and their families defied the government and assembled in the Bacatete Mountains. Under the command of their leader Tetabiate, the Yaquis sustained themselves by making nighttime raids on the haciendas near Guaymas.

In the meantime, Federal troops and army engineers, trying to survey the Yaqui lands for distribution, found the terrain to be very difficult and were constantly harassed by defiant rebel forces. The government could not understand the Yaqui refusal to divide their land and become individual property owners. Their insistence of communal ownership based on traditional indigenous values also supported their objection to having soldiers in their territory. However, resentful of the continuing military occupation of their territory, the Yaqui colonies of Bácum and Vícam took up arms in 1899. Large detachments of rebel Yaqui forces confronted troops on the Yaqui River and suffered large casualties. Afterwards, a force of three thousand fled to the sierras and barricaded themselves on a plateau called Mazocoba where they were defeated by government troops.

When Tetabiate and the rebel forces fled to the Sierras, the government sent out its largest contingent to date with almost five thousand federal and state troops to crush this latest rebellion. Laws restricting the sale of firearms were reenacted and captured rebels were deported from the state. On January 18, 1900, three columns of his Government forces encountered a party of Yaquis at Mazocoba in the heart of the Bacatete Mountains. The Yaquis, mostly on foot, were pursued into a box canyon in a rugged portion of the mountains.

After a daylong battle, the Yaquis ceased fighting. The soldiers had killed 397 men, women, and some children, while many others had committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs. Roughly a thousand women and children were taken prisoner. By the end of 1900, there were only an estimated 300 rebels holding out in the Bacatete Mountains. Six months later, Tetabiate was betrayed and murdered by one of his lieutenants and the Secretary of War called off the campaign in August 1901.

Deportation of Yaqui Indians (1902-1910). Following the Battle of Mazocoba and the killing of Tetabiate, Mexican forces continued to patrol the Bacatetes. The Mexicans pursued Yaqui rebels wherever there were alleged to be. The government also put pressure on Seri Indians to kill and cut off the hands of Yaquis who had sought refuge on Tiburon Island.

Meanwhile the federal government had decided on a course of action for clearing Yaquis out of the state of Sonora. Colonel Emilio Kosterlitzky was placed in charge of Federal Rural Police in the state with orders to round up all Yaquis and arrange to deport them southward. Between 1902 -1908, between eight and possibly as many as fifteen thousand of the estimated population of thirty thousand Yaquis were deported.

The years 1904 through 1907 witnessed an intensification of guerilla activities and corresponding government persecution. The state government issued passports to Yaquis and those not having them were arrested and jailed. The Sonoran Governor Rafael Izábel was so intent on pacifying the Yaquis that he conducted his own arrests. These arrests included women, children as well as sympathizers. "When Yaqui rebellion threatened Sonora's mining interests," writes Dr. Hatfield, "Governor Rafael Izábel deported Yaquis, considered superior workers by all accounts, to work
on Yacatán's henequen plantations."

In analyzing the Mexican Government's policy of deportation, Dr. Hatfield observed that deportation of the Yaquis resulted from "the Yaquis' determination to keep their lands. Yaqui refusal to submit to government laws conflicted with the Mexican government's attempts to end all regional hegemony. The regime hoped to take Yaqui lands peacefully, but this the Yaquis prevented."

The bulk of the Yaquis were sent to work on henequen plantations in the Yucatán and some were sent to work in the sugar cane fields in Oaxaca. Sonoran hacendados protested the persecution and deportation of the Yaquis because without their labor, their crops could not be cultivated or harvested. In the early Nineteenth Century, many Yaqui men emigrated to Arizona in order to escape subjugation and deportation to southern Mexico. Today, some 10,000 Yaqui Indians live in the United States, many of them descended from the refugees of a century ago.

The Yaquis Indians Today. Dr. Hatfield, in looking back on the long struggle of the Yaqui against the federal government, writes "A government study published in 1905 cited 270 instances of Yaqui and Mayo warfare between 1529 and 1902, excluding eighty-five years of relative peace between 1740 and 1825." But from 1825 to 1902, the Yaqui Nation was waging war on the government almost continuously.

By 1910, the Yaquis had been almost entirely eliminated from their homeland. However, today, there are some 25,000 Yaquis living in the world. Many of the indigenous peoples discussed earlier no longer exist as cultural entities. They were destroyed by disease, enslavement and warfare or they were assimilated with other Indians. The Apaches are one the indigenous groups who have survived to the present. It was estimated that 30,000 were living in 1989.

The four-century battle of the indigenous people against the Spaniards and their allies is a long story that would fill volumes. However, I have attempted to depict the highlights of this extraordinary and ongoing campaign. In the bibliography below, you will be able to find very good sources for further studies into this subject.

Copyright © 2008 by John P. Schmal. All rights under applicable law are hereby reserved. Reproduction of this article in whole or in part without the express permission of John P. Schmal is strictly prohibited.

Sources:

Susan M. Deeds, "Indigenous Rebellions on the Northern Mexican Mission Frontier: From First-Generation to Later Colonial Responses," in Susan Schroeder, Native Resistance and the Pax Colonial in New Spain. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, pp. 1-29.

Dr. Henry F. Dobyns, Tubac Through Four Centuries: An Historical Resume and Analysis. Online: http://www.library.arizona.edu/images/dobyns/welcome.html . September 8, 2001.

T. R. Fehrenbach, Comanches: The Destruction of a People. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.

Jack D. Forbes, Apache, Navajo, and Spaniard. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994 (2nd ed.)

Charlotte M. Gradie, The Tepehuan Revolt of 1616: Militarism, Evangelism, and Colonialism in Seventeenth-Century Nueva Vizcaya. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000.

William B. Griffen, Apaches at War and Peace: The Janos Presidio, 1750-1858. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

William B. Griffen, Indian Assimilation in the Franciscan Area of Nueva Vizcaya. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1979.

Shelley Bowen Hatfield, Chasing Shadows: Indians Along the United States-Mexico Border 1876-1911. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

Oscar J. Martínez, Troublesome Border. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1988.

Cynthia Radding, "The Colonial Pact and Changing Ethnic Frontiers in Highland Sonora, 1740-1840," in Donna J. Guy and Thomas E. Sheridan (eds.), Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire, pp. 52-66. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1998.

Daniel T. Reff, Disease, Depopulation and Culture Change in Northwestern New Spain, 1518-1764. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991.

Robert Mario Salmon, Indian Revolts in Northern New Spain: A Synthesis of Resistance (1680-1786). Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1991.

Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1997.

Edward H. Spicer, The Military History Of The Yaquis From 1867 To 1910: Three Points Of View. <Online: http://usaic.hua.army.mil/History/Html/spicer.html . September 12, 2001.

Linda Zoontjens, Brief History of the Yaqui and their Land. Online: http://sustainedaction.org/Explorations/history_of_the_yaqui.htm .  July 8, 2001