Located in northwestern Mexico, Sonora shares 588 kilometers of border with the United States, specifically with the States of Arizona and New Mexico. The state also shares a common border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua (on the east), Sinaloa (on the southeast), and Baja California (on the northwest). Sonora also shares a long shoreline along the Gulf of California.

 The State of Sonora occupies 179,355 square kilometers (69,249 square miles), which amounts to 9.2% of the national territory of Mexico and makes it the second largest state in Mexico (after Chihuahua). Politically, Sonora is divided into 72 municipios and had a population of 2,850,330 in 2010, ranking it 18th among the Mexican states and the Distrito Federal. The capital is Hermosillo, which has a population of 715,061, representing one-quarter (25.1%) of the state’s total population.

 The Geography of Sonora

Sonora consists of four physiographic provinces:

1. The Sierra Madre Occidental Range of the east

2. The Sierras y Valles Paralelos (also called the Plains of the North)

3. The Desert (central and northern regions)

4. The Coastal Region along the Gulf of California

 Indigenous Groups at Contact

Because of its great mineral wealth, the Spaniards took a special interest in the southern part of Sonora.  However, the indigenous people of Sonora waged a long battle of resistance against the Spaniards, a resistance that did not really end until the Twentieth Century.  The following map by artist Eddie Martinez shows the approximate territories of the indigenous groups at the time of the Spanish Contact (circa 1531):

Sonora’s dry coastal plains in the western part of the state give way to a transitional piedmont and thence to the mountainous region in the east.  Sonora’s center and north contain vast desert stretches.  According to Professor Raphael Brewster Folsom, in both Sonora and its southern neighbor Sinaloa, rivers and streams meander from the northeast to the southwest in a “rich geographic patchwork.” In each sub-region of both states lived native peoples who “developed strategies of survival that evolved and were refined over the course of centuries.”

According to the anthropologist Edward H. Spicer (1906-1983), when the Spaniards arrived in what is now present-day Sonora, they found natives who could be separated into four primary linguistic groups, each with its own set of customs, traditions and religious beliefs:

1. Cáhita Language Group, which is now represented by the Mayo and Yaqui Indians.

2. The Seri Group, which may have been composed of five or more different dialects, but by the 1800s was consolidated into the single language known as Seri.

3. The Opatan Group consisting of the Eudeve, Opata and Jova.

4. The Pima Group, which consisted of the Nebome, Sobaipuri and six or seven dialects of Upper Pima, which was later consolidated into Papago and Pima and is now more popularly known as Tohono O’odham.

The Cáhitan Language Group

At the time of the Spanish contact, the Cáhita group of tribes were living in pueblos and permanent villages along the banks of the Mocorito, Sinaloa, Fuerte, Mayo and Yaqui Rivers in the coastal regions of both southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa. Speaking eighteen closely related dialects, the Cáhitan group is part of the Uto-Aztecan Language Group and is most closely related to the Pima and Cora languages.

Numbering about 115,000 at contact, the Cáhitans were the most numerous of any single language group in northern Mexico and included the famous Yaqui and Mayo ethnic groups, who lived along the middle and lower portions of the valleys of the Yaqui, Mayo and Fuerte rivers in the southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa. Other Cáhitan groups included the Bamoa, the Sinaloa, Tehueco and the Zuaque, all of which are now culturally extinct. Living in the fertile valleys along these rivers, most of the Cáhita engaged in agricultural pursuits, growing corn, cotton, calabashes, beans, and tobacco, and also in cultivating the mezcal-producing agave.

The Ranchería People

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, but they also supplemented their crops with hunting and gathering.  They generally had a decentralized political structure, with no single tribal chief.

Yaqui Indians

At contact, the Yaqui Indians belonged to the Cáhita sub-branch of the Taracahitic group of the Uto-Aztecan Family.  They occupied the long coastal strip and valleys of southern Sonora, primarily in the present-day municipios of Guaymas, Bacum, Cajeme, and Empalme. Yaqui rancherías were densely populated and distributed along the middle Yaqui River, where they practiced floodwater recession farming. The Yaquis are believed to have numbered about 60,000 at the Spanish contact. From 1532 the Spaniards made several incursions into Yaqui territory, but the first real confrontation with them did not take place until 1607.

Papago-Pima (Tohono O’odham)

The Tohono O’odham were known until recently as the Papago and the Upper Pima (Pima Alto) Indians. Now the native term is more widely used, and for the language, O’odham is used as a short form. The O’odham occupied both desert and highlands regions of northern Sonora and were non-sedentary people who developed cultures based on hunting, gathering, fishing, and seasonal migration according to the availability of desert and ocean products.

The historian Cynthia Radding offered a detailed discussion of the Tohono O’odham agricultural systems in “Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700-1850.”  The Tohono O’odham lived on isolated ranches. The largest villages of about 250 people might have as many as forty ranch houses spread across several miles, all connected by trails through the desert.

Pima Bajo

The Nebomes were highland Pima speakers who occupied the territory located between the western margins of the Yaqui River and Seri country along the Gulf of California. They were closely related linguistically to the O’odham (Papago) farmers and gatherers of the desert plains. However, the name Nebome disappeared after 1680 and they were then simply referred to as Pima Bajos and their territory was called Primería Baja. The Pima Bajo were physically separated from the Pima Alto of northern Sonora by the Opata and Eudeve speakers of the central highlands.

The geographer Carl O. Sauer (1889-1975) writes that the Pima Bajo had three main divisions: the Yecora, neighbors of the Varohio (Guarijio) on the borders of Chihuahua and Sonora; the Nebome on both sides of the Yaqui River; and the Ures, who inhabited the flood plain of the  Sonora River below the gorge of Ures and downstream. The Pima language belongs to the Uto-Aztecan linguistic family and is considered to be closest to the Taracahíta branch.

The Opatería

Adjacent to the Pimería Baja was the Opata region, known as Opatería, which is located in the central and easternmost sections of Sonora. At the time of contact, the Opatería was a densely populated area that had “long distance trade networks” and “a well-known peasant base and a degree of social stratification.” The Opateria controlled the major river valleys of central Sonora.  The Opatería was originally comprised of various clusters of agrarian communities which, “under colonial rule, converged into a ‘nation” with common linguistic roots and cultural traditions.” The three primary closely-related Indian groups included the Opatas, the Eudeves and the Jovas.

According to David A. Yetman, an American academic expert on Sonora, the Opata, at the time of the Spanish conquest, numbered about 60,000 and had well-developed military skills. Yetman notes that “the presence of defensive tower structures located along the Río Sonora testifies to their military consciousness.”

According to Cynthia Radding, the Eudeves were “highland villagers similar to the Opatas in their culture and economy, but distinct in their language.” They “formed discernible clusters of communities in two separate zones located to the southeast and northwest of the Opateria proper.

Another tribe, the Jova, lived in rough canyon country, occupying the upper part of the valley of the Yaqui River and were seasonal agriculturalists who ranged from the canyons and mesas of the western Sierra Madre in Chihuahua to the east of Sahuaripa in east-central Sonora. Yetman describes the Jovas as being subservient to the militarily superior Opatas. Some analysts have described the Jovas as a remnant group that was in the process of being absorbed by the Opata. The Jova language is now extinct.

Professor Edward H. Spicer discussed both the Lower Pimas and Opatas in detail in Part I, Chapter 3 of his 1962 publication, “Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960,”

Guarijío (also spelled Huarijío, Vuarijío)

The Guarijío inhabited a considerable area that was “in the broken, isolated mountain and canyon country of the Western Sierra Madre” along the headwaters of the Mayo River from the Chinipas River on the east to the border of west-central Chihuahua and southeast Sonora.  In “The Guarijíos of the Sierra Madre: Hidden People of Northwestern Mexico,” David Yetman writes that the “early Guarijíos probably lived in dispersed, small hamlets” and “were bound by a common identity, linguistic and cultural, for they were known even then to the Spaniards as Varohíos or Uarojíos. The many settlements were isolated from each other by steep mountains and precipitous canyons.”

Seris (Konkaak)

The Seris call to themselves Konkaak, which – in their language – simply means “The People.”  However, the term Seri comes from the Yaqui language and means “Men of Sand.”  At contact, they inhabited an area that comprises about fourteen municipios in the west central coastal area of present-day Sonora.  Today they primarily live in Punta Chueca (in the Municipio de Hermosillo) and Desemboque (in the Municipio de Pitiquito), situated in the desert area of Sonora. Edward H. Spicer discussed the Seris in detail in Part I, Chapter 4 of his 1962 publication, “Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960.”

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 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, which ‒ as noted earlier ‒ spoke eighteen closely related dialects in both Sinaloa and Sonora.

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, 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.

Sonora as Part of Nueva Vizcaya (1562)

In 1562, Sonora 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.)

Prelude to Indigenous Sonora: Part II

Large-scale colonization and military action in Sonora did not start until the 1590s, when Jesuit missionaries and Spanish armed forces began to move through the area. For the next century, most of Sonora was at peace while missionaries did their work. However, in 1740, Sonora’s most important tribal groups — the Yaqui, Pima and Mayo Indians — rose in revolt, and for the next 160 years, Sonora was almost constantly at war. An invasion by a northern people called the Chiricahua Apaches complicated the already bad relationship between the Spanish colonial authorities and the indigenous people living in Sonora.  Not until 1929 did the last of the Yaquis surrender to the Mexican Government.

Copyright © 2019, by John P. Schmal.

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