The State of Sinaloa, with a surface area of 58,200 square kilometers (22,471 square miles) is basically a narrow strip of land running along the Pacific Ocean and represents only 2.9% of the national territory, ranking it as the 17th largest state. Sinaloa is bordered to the north by Sonora and Chihuahua; to the south, by Nayarit; to the east by Durango, and to the west, by the Gulf of California.

Politically divided into eighteen municipios, Sinaloa had a 2010 population of 2,966,321, ranking Sinaloa as the 16th largest state by population. The twelfth largest city in Mexico, Culiacán Rosales, is the capital of Sinaloa with a population of 858,638, which represents 28.9% of the state’s total population.

Sinaloa’s Geography

Sinaloa’s western coastal plain stretches along the length of the state and lies between the ocean and the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental Range, which dominates the eastern part of the state. Sinaloa is traversed by many rivers, which carve broad valleys into the foothills. The largest of these rivers are the Culiacán, Fuerte, Sinaloa, Mocorito and Piaxtla rivers.

Because of its great mining potential, Sinaloa was coveted by the Spanish who sought to exploit its mineral wealth. However, the early Spaniards found some thirty groups inhabiting the region from the western slopes of the Sierra Madres to the Yaqui River. The indigenous groups that occupied Sinaloa are shown on the following map which shows the approximate territories of the indigenous Sinaloa tribes around the time of the Spanish contact [Jaontiveros, “Sinaloa 1530 de Acuerdo” derived from Sergio Ortega Noriega, “Breve Historia de Sinaloa” (1999) [Published Oct. 21, 2008].

The Ranchería People

As the Spaniards moved northward during the 1500s and 1600s, 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, but they also supplemented their crops with hunting and gathering.  They generally had a decentralized political structure, with no single tribal chief.

Guzmán’s Army Moves North (1529-1531)

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) northwest of Mexico City. 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.”

As they made their way from Nayarit into coastal region of Sinaloa, a tropical storm on September 20, 1530 brought a torrential downpour that flooded the Rio Acaponeta, drowning many of Guzmán’s Indian allies and most of his stock animals. Soon after, epidemic disease started spreading in the coastal region, eventually leading to the deaths of his 8,000 Indian allies. The symptoms of the epidemic were fever, chills and bloody stools, which can be indicative of either dysentery, typhoid and/or malaria.

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 Mr. 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 spoke eighteen closely related dialects in both Sinaloa and Sonora.

Epidemic Disease Ravages 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 coastal Sinaloa, never having been exposed to the 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.

Guzmán Retreats to the South (1531)

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, Mr. 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.

A Distant Enclave

In 1533, Diego de Guzmán (the nephew of Nuño) fought a brief battle with the Yaquis along the banks of the Yaqui River. “His force dispersed the Indians,” notes Professor Spicer, “…but he nevertheless seems to have lost heart for further conquest and did not follow up his victory. He was greatly impressed with the fighting ability of the Yaquis who opposed him.”  Thus, the small province of Culiacán, according to Peter Gerhard, “became a distant enclave of Spanish power, separated by a hundred miles of hostile territory from the rest of” the Spanish Empire.

Sinaloa as Part of Nueva Vizcaya (1562)

In 1562, Sinaloa was included in the newly established Spanish province of Nueva Vizcaya, which originally took up a great deal of territory (610,000 square kilometers), most of which today corresponds with four Mexican states, Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa and Sonora. (However, in 1733, Sinaloa and Sonora were detached from Nueva Vizcaya and given recognition as the province of Sonora y Sinaloa.)

The Encomiendas

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.” In practice, Mrs. Deeds concludes, encomiendas usually resulted in the “tacit enslavement of Indians.”

The combined effect of forced labor, smallpox and measles spread through the area in the 1590s and in the first decade of the 1600s. And in the second decade, typhus, smallpox and measles struck again. Initially a first epidemic of smallpox in a given location could take 40% of inhabitants, but subsequent epidemics took place, recurring with every generation. Because of the encomienda system and the ravages of epidemics, the indigenous people of the Sinaloa coastal area were reduced significantly over time.

Jesuits Arrive in Sinaloa

In 1591, the first Jesuit missionaries arrived in Sinaloa, establishing their missions along the Fuerte River.  Each Jesuit mission had a center (cabecera) and satellite villages called pueblos de visita, estancias, or rancherías. Building a highly structured and autonomous economic system, the Jesuits primary goal was economic self-sufficiency. Susan Deeds adds that the Jesuits’ “systematic congregation of Indians into villages” starting during the 1590s encouraged the development of encomiendas by making Indians more accessible to their encomenderos.

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.

The Acaxee Revolt (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.

Initial Contact with the Mayo and Yaquis (1609-1610)

The Mayo Indians occupied 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.

At contact, the Yaqui Indians occupied the coastal region of Sonora 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.

Conversion of the Yaquis and Mayos (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.

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 spirituality and dedication. Their concern for the well-being of the Indians won the confidence of the Yaqui people. In seeking to protect the Yaquis 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.

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. The historian Professor Susan M. Deeds commented that this detachment represented a recognition of “the growth of a mining and ranching secular society in this northwestern region.”

Rebellion of the Yaqui, Pima, and Mayo Indians (1740)

The Yaqui and Mayo Indians had lived in peaceful coexistence with the Spaniards since the early part of the Seventeenth Century. Professor 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. 

Professor 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 Professor 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.

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.

Indigenous Assimilation

From March 1531 to Mexican independence in 1822, the Spaniards of Colonial Sinaloa dealt with a large group of indigenous peoples, settling in their territory and occasionally fighting wars against them. Although Sinaloa’s northern neighbor Sonora continued to wage war on its Mayo and Yaqui residents well into the 20th Century, most of Sinaloa became pacified by the time of independence.

During the colonial period, the Tahue, Totorame, Acaxees, Xiximes and the numerous Cáhitan speaking groups became assimilated into Spanish colonial society.  However, they assimilated, but they did not disappear. They were transformed into Mexican citizens. And many of Sinaloa’s current inhabitants descend from these groups.

Independence and Statehood (1821-1830)

In 1821, Mexico became an independent country free of Spanish domination. Initially, Mexico was divided into 21 provinces. Among them was the State of Occidente (The State of the West), which was created on January 31, 1824 and was also called the State of Sonora y Sinaloa. The government was initially established with its capital at El Fuerte, Sinaloa. The state consisted of modern Sonora and Sinaloa, and also modern Arizona more or less south of the Gila River (although in much of this area the Yaqui, Pima, Apaches, and other native inhabitants did not recognize the authority of the state).

In 1825, the Occidente constitution decreed that all inhabitants — including indigenous individuals — were state citizens. This was resented by the Yaquis since they now had to pay taxes, which they had been exempt from before. The Yaquis also considered themselves possessed of sovereignty and territorial rights which were threatened by the state’s new constitution. This led to a new outbreak of war between the Mexicans and the Yaquis. As a result of this war the capital of Occidente was moved to Cosala.

On October 18, 1830 the National Congress approved the division of Sonora and Sinaloa into two different states. On March 13, 1831, the Constituent Congress of the State of Sonora was installed in Hermosillo and on December 13 of the same year, the first Political Constitution of the State of Sonora was issued.

Sinaloa in the 1921 Census

In the unique 1921 Mexican census, residents of each state were asked to classify themselves in several categories, including “indígena pura” (pure indigenous), “indígena mezclada con blanca” (indigenous mixed with white) and “blanca” (white). Out of a total state population of 341,265, only 3,163 individuals (0.9%) claimed to be of pure indigenous background in Sinaloa. A much larger number – 335,474, or 98.3% – classified themselves as being mixed, while only 644 individuals classified themselves as white (0.2% of the state population).

Indigenous Languages Spoken in Sinaloa in 2010

The 2010 Mexican census revealed that nearly half of the 23,841 indigenous language speakers 3 years and older in the State of Sinaloa spoke the Mayo language.  The other 46 languages spoken in the state were languages transplanted from other states, including:

Since most of the original indigenous inhabitants of Sinaloa were pacified and assimilated into the Spanish colonial society during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the only languages now spoken in state are transplants from other regions of the country.

While the Tarahumara are primarily from Chihuahua, the Yaquis are from Sonora. In addition, the Purépecha originated from Michoacán, while the Mixtecs and Zapotecs come from the State of Oaxaca. For this reason, the Mayo language is the only language truly indigenous to Sinaloa. All other languages are transplants from other regions.

Sinaloa’s Indigenous Municipios in 2010

In the 2010 census, Sinaloa’s El Fuerte and Ahome municipios contained 47% of the entire indigenous speaking population in the state. The Mayo language was the only language that was truly autochthonous language in the area. All the other languages — Tarahumara, Mixteco, Zapoteco and Náhuatl — are all transplants from other states. The following table illustrates Sinaloa’s municipios that contain the largest numbers of indigenous speakers:

Considered Indigenous Classification

One of the 2015 survey questions read “De acuerdo, con su cultura, se considera indígena?” Essentially, Mexican residents were being asked if they considered themselves indigenous through their culture. Survey respondents had four possible responses:

1. Sí (Yes)

2. Sí, en parte (Yes, in part)

3. No

4. No sabe (Do not know)

In the recent 2015 Mexican Intercensal, 12.83% of Sinaloa’s 2,966,321 citizens considered themselves (Se considera) to be of indigenous background by culture. And four Sinaloa municipios had populations in which more than 25% of their residents claimed to be of indigenous background: El Fuerte (43.47%), Choiz (39.38%), Elota (28.78%) and Ahome (28.49%).

The map below shows the present locations of the Tarahumara and Mayo Pueblos in the northern part of Sinaloa and the Tepehuanes pueblos in the southern part of the state [Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI), “Atlas de los Pueblos Indígenas de México: Sinaloa: Pueblos Indígenas con Mayor Presencia en la Entidad” (2018)]

Copyright © 2019 by John P. Schmal. All Rights Reserved.

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