The Enduring Legacy of the Yaquis: Perpetual Resistance (1531-1927)

Introduction

According to the historian Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Northwestern New Spain (Mexico) was inhabited for thousands of years before the arrival of the Spaniards in the 1530s. Roughly 100 Indigenous nations, with an estimated aboriginal population of 540,000, lived in the region at the time of the Spanish contact.[1] In the present-day world, many of these Indigenous groups have disappeared as “distinguishable cultural entities,” the casaulties of war, disease, slavery, assimilation into the mainstream Spanish culture, and/or absorption into other Indigenous groups. However, one of these Indigenous nations was the Yaqui people. And their culture, language, and heritage survives and thrives.

Starting with the first appearance of the army of Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán in 1531 until their last official battle in 1927, the Yaquis fought most of the intruders who came to their land and tried to usurp their ownership. These 396 years of frequent conflict were interrupted by several periods of peaceful tolerance as the Yaquis became Christianized by the Jesuit missionaries. The eighty-five years of relative peace between 1740 and 1825 has been noted by historians, but it represented an interlude that would be followed by a century of almost constant war.

Mexican Independence in 1821 — treasured by so many Mexicans — created more problems for the Yaquis who, in essence, wanted their own land and their own state. Both the Mexican Government and the Sonora Government did not agree with the Yaqui aspirations and chose to wage a war of genocide against them, and this “ethnic cleansing” was frequently reported by both Mexican and American newspapers over a period of several decades.

But the Porfiriato of President Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911) brought the worst onslaught of all, one that was almost continuous from 1882 to 1910. In addition to killing Yaqui citizens, Díaz and Sonoran authorities deported and enslaved thousands of Yaquis, sending them to work on the henequin plantations of Yucatán or the sugar cane fields of Oaxaca. This systematic genocide of the Yaquis sent many Yaquis fleeing across the international border into Arizona (where they created their own reservation with federal recognition in 1978).

Over time, the Yaquis realized that continued resistance might eventually lead to extinction. Even in 1927, the government conducted widespread operations against them and the result was that they were forced to surrender. Things improved for them in the 1930s, especially when President Lázaro Cárdenas promoted a “vigorous development project” for the Yaquis and created the Yaqui Zona Indígena (the Yaqui Indigenous Zone). This was able to solve some of their problems, while other issues remained unresolved.

On September 28, 2021, many years later, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obredor (known as AMLO) issued an apology for "crimes of the state" committed against native tribes, including the Yaquis. Today, the Yaquis are dealing with many of the same problems that other groups are experiencing (cartel, mining and water issues). However, the Yaquis now understand that the majority of their countrymen respect and admire them. The challenges will continue but the resilience of the Yaqui people stands out as a beacon to the world.

The Cáhita Language Group

The native people occupying the Sinaloa and Sonora coastal region 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. The Spaniards called them "ranchería people." The Cahitans’ 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.

Although many works discuss the Cáhita language group, Edward H. Spicer, provided the following map entitled “The Cahitans and Their Neighbors Before 1600” in his landmark work, The Yaquis: A Cultural History (Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1980), page 8:

What Determines a Cáhita Language?

Not all historians and linguists agree on the disposition of each tribal group. In addition, some researchers disagree on what constitutes a tribe that spoke a Cáhitan language.  Because all but two of the Cáhitan groups have gone extinct (having assimilated and blended into the Yaquis, Mayos, or the central Spanish colonial culture), it is difficult to ascertain the classification of one tribal group or another as a Cáhitan group when some of them disappeared over three centuries ago. Another interpretation by Jonathan D. Rodriguez of the Cáhita group utilizes the more recent analysis of Los Pueblos Indígena de Noroeste Atlas Etnográfico (2013). In this map, he shows the Cáhita speakers, as well as some of the other language groups in the northeast.

The Cáhita language groups is believed to have included the following groups, each speaking their own distinct language and inhabiting their own specific territory:[2]

1.     The Yaquis: The territory of the Yaquis was the northernmost of the Cáhita language group and was bordered on the north by the Valley of Guaymas, on the south by the Valley of Yaqui, on the west by the Gulf of California and the Sea of Cortés. The Yaquis mostly inhabited the area along the Rio Yaqui in Sonora.

2.     The Mayos: The Mayos had a nearly identical language and cultural background as the Yaquis. They lived along the Rio Mayo and were “hemmed in between two persistent adversaries, the Yaquis to the north and the Tehuecos to the south.”[3] According to Perez de Ribas, the Mayo were similar to the other Cáhita-speaking groups of northern Sinaloa in terms of their customs, subsistence, houses, weapons, dancing and drinking, and polygamy. Perez de Ribas remarked that the Mayo could field 8,000 or 10,000 warriors, with a total population of 30,000 who lived in rancherias distributed along the riverbank.[4]

3.     The Conicari lived near the junction of the Mayo and Cedros Rivers, inland from the Mayo people.

4.     The Mcoyahui lived inland from the Conicari.

5.     The Chinipa lived inland from the Macoyahui and occupied the rugged Sierra country above the Huite, in what is today southwestern Chihuahua.

6.     The Temori lived south of the Chinipa region and just to the north of the Tubar people.

7.     The Ahomes were a small group that occupied the Fuerte River Delta. In the early 1600s, they sought the protection of General Hurdaide against their neighbors, the Tehuecos, after which Hurdaide attacked the Tehuecos and took two hundred women and children captive.[5] Some researchers claim that the Ahomes were not Cáhita speakers and have deemed their language as unclassified.

8.     The Tehuecos lived just south of the Mayo along the Rio del Fuerte and were considered among the most warlike of the Cáhita speakers.

9.     Inland from the Tehuecos lived the Sinaloa who inhabited the headwaters of the Rio Fuerte.

10. The Zoe lived in the hill country of the Rio Fuerte along the Sinaloa-Chihuahua border, inland from the Sinaloa people.

11. The Guasave were another Cáhita group that lived along the coast between the Estero de Agiabampo and the Rio San Lorenzo in Sinaloa.

12. The Ocoroni lived along the river of the same name, inland from

13. South of the Tehuecos lived the Zuaque who lived along the course of the Rio del Fuerte, inland from the Guasave.

14. The Tepahue inhabited an area that was inland from the Mayo Indians were the Tepahue who lived along the Rio Credros (a northern branch of the Rio Mayo in Sonora)

15. The Baciroa were located south of the Conicari and between the Mayo and Tehueco people.

16. Farther inland from the Tehuecos were the Tubar, who were located in the river gorge between the Chinipas and Urique rivers.

17. South of the Guasave lived the Mocorito who lived along the Rio Mocorito in Sinaloa

18. The Nio occupied a small area in the middle of the coastal plain a few kilometers upstream from the Guasave. More recent analysis believes that they were not a member of the Cáhita group.

19. South of the Mocorito lived the Tahue who lived in the coastal region north of Mazatlán, extending to the mouth of the Rio San Lorenazo

20. Inland from the Mocorito and the Tahue were the Acaxee who inhabited the headwaters of the Culiacán River and in the Valley of San Andreas and Topia.

Edward Spicer’s map includes the Guarijío (also known as Huarijío, Varihío or Varohio) as a Cáhitan language, but most linguists now state that the Varihío speak a Tarahumaran language. This would make sense as they presently live in 17 villages of the Sierra Madre Mountains in both Chihuahua and Sonora, and their territory is in close proximity to the Tarahumaras, who occupy portions of southwestern Chihuahua.

The Assimilation of the Cáhita People

Over time, the Yaquis and the Mayos became the two most prominent Cáhita groups, and in the 1700s, most of the other groups died out or were absorbed into those two primary groups. Professor Edward H. Spicer, in The Yaquis: A Cultural History (page 288) noted that “adjacent to the Yaquis and Mayos on the east and south were at least a dozen other peoples, first distinguished by the Spaniards in perhaps the 16th Century, whose names do not appear in the record after the early 1700s.” Some of them are believed to “have been absorbed into the Yaqui-Mayo population” or they were “absorbed into the mestizo Mexican population leaving no trace of native language and very little of [their] native custom[s].” There is some agreement that the Tehueco, Sinaloa, Zuaque were ultimately absorbed into the Mayo people.

The Sonora of the Present Day

Today, most of the Indigenous populations from the 1500s are gone, but several ethnic groups still inhabit the Mexican State of Sonora, including the Yaquis, Pimas, Opatas, Mayos, and Seris. However, they are all very small populations, not resembling in any way the robust ethnic groups they were around the 1520s before their first contacts with the Spaniards. The following map, uploaded by María Rebeca Gutiérrez Estrada at ResearchGate, shows the present-day disposition of the indigenous groups in the State of Sonora at this time. The map was derived from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), the census bureau of Mexico.

The Present-Day Disposition of Sonora’s Indigenous People.

While many indigenous people of southern Sonora were defeated and/or assimilated, several thousand Yaquis decided to maintain their traditional way of life. They referred to themselves as "Yoreme," a word that means man or person. And they referred to the Spanish Caucasians as "Yoris."

The Yaqui Indians at Contact

At contact, the Yaqui Indians were seminomadic agriculturalists who occupied the long coastal strip and valleys of southern Sonora, primarily in the present-day municipios of Guaymas, Bacum, Cajeme, and Empalme. The territory of the Yaquis was the northernmost of the Cáhita language group and was bordered on the north by the Valley of Guaymas, on the south by the Valley de Yaqui, on the west by the Gulf of California and the Sea of Cortés.

Yaqui rancherías were densely populated and distributed along the middle Yaqui River, where they practiced floodwater recession farming. The Yaquis complemented their agriculture with some hunting and fishing. The Yaquis are believed to have numbered about 60,000 at the Spanish contact[6] From 1532, the Spaniards made several incursions into Yaqui territory, but the first real confrontation that had lasting consequences did not take place until 1607. To the south of the Yaquis lived the Mayo Indians who had a langauge and culture very similar to the Yaquis. However, according to historians, they had frequently been at war with each other in the pre-Hispanic period.

Professor Edward H. Spicer discussed both the Mayo and Yaqui Indians in detail in Part I, Chapter 2 of his 1962 publication, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960.[7] Evelyn Hu-DeHart also described the Yaquis in some detail in her book, Missionaries, Miners & Indians: Spanish Contact With the Yaqui Nation of Northwestern New Spain, 1533-1820.[8]

According to Father Andrés Pérez de Ribas (1576-1655) – a Jesuit priest and missionary who studied the Cáhita people and published three works – the Yaquis had an estimated 30,000 people distributed among 80 rancherias of the Yaqui River Valley, comprising an area of approximately 900 square miles. The Mayo Indians had another 20,000, while the Nebome had 9,000.[9]

The First Spanish Contact with the Cáhita People (1531)

In March 1531, Guzman'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 Professor Peter Gerhard notes, the victors "proceeded to enslave as many people as they could catch." The indigenous people confronted by Guzman belonged to the Cáhita language group. At this time, the Yaquis — who represented the northernmost tribal group of the Cáhita people — called themselves Yoeme. But when the first missionaries came, they classified the Yoeme/Yaqui language with the other 17 languages, giving them the name Cáhita.[10] 

Missionary Efforts Begin (1591)

Jesuit missionaries first started their efforts to convert the Cahitans to Christianity in 1591 when two Jesuits, Gonzalo de Tapia and Martin Perez, arrived in Sinaloa, followed a short time later by six more Jesuits. They were protected by twenty-five presidial soldiers under the command of Captain Diego Martínez de Hurdaide at San Felipe on the Petatlán (Sinaloa).[11] The first Jesuit missions were established along the Rio Fuerte in Sinaloa. Thirty miles north of the Villa de San Felipe, the Rio Fuerte had four Cáhita groups living by its shores: the Sinaloas near the headwaters, the Tehuecos downstream, the Zuaques closer to the coast, and the Ahomes by the river delta. By this time, most of these groups had adopted “a stance of wary neutrality toward the Spanish.”[12]

The Conquest of the Cáhita People Begins (1599)

In 1599, Captain Diego de Hurdaide established a headquarters at San Felipe y San Santiago (the site of the modern City of Sinaloa). From here, he waged a campaign to subjugate all the Indians of the Fuerte River – the Sinaloas, Tehuecos, Zaques and Ahomes. All but the Ahomes resisted strongly.  By about 1601, Hurdaide had brought these indigenous peoples – numbering some 20,000 – under Spanish domination. Hurdaide brought more Jesuits in to work among them.[13]

Conversion of the Mayo Indians (1609-1620)

The Mayo Indians were an important Cáhita-speaking tribe occupying some fifteen towns along the Mayo and Fuerte rivers of present-day southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa. The Mayo River is located about thirty miles north of the Fuerte River and thirty miles south of the Yaqui River, and the Mayos were surrounded by hostile groups on both sides.[14] 

As early as 1601, the Mayos had developed a curious interest in the Jesuit-run missions of their neighbors. The Mayos sent delegations south to the Jesuit headquarters on the Rio Fuerte to inspect the Catholic churches[15] 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."[16] It is believed the first missionary work with the Mayo may have begun as early as 1605.[15] By 1606, the Jesuits had fully missionized the nations of the Fuerte River, reporting over 40,000 converts in a total population of 100,000.[17]

The Mayos Sign a Peace Treaty (1609)

After the Jesuits had begun their spiritual conquest of the Mayos, General Hurdaide signed a 1609 treaty with the Mayos to ensure that the Jesuits who came to live among the Mayos would be safe.[19] By 1620, with 30,000 persons baptized, the Mayos had been concentrated in seven mission towns.[20]

Hurdaide Moves Against the Ocoronis and Yaquis (1609-1610)

In 1608, the missionized Ocoronis – one of the the Cáhita groups in Sinaloa living along the Fuerte River – rebelled under the leadership of a charismatic leader named Juan Lautaro.  The Ocoronis were able to provoke some Yaqui rancherías into supporting them.  In 1609, 400 Spanish soldiers and Indian auxiliaries under Captain Hurdaide became engaged with the pacification of the Ocoronis. Hurdaide tried to persuade the Yaquis to renounce Lautaro but failed. Hurdaide was thus forced to withdraw temporarily.[21]

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 mounted Spanish soldiers. The Spanish force went into battle with a wide array of Spanish weapons, including lances, steel swords, arquebuses and one cannon, but were up against a Yaqui force of about 7,000 warriors. In a day-long battle, the forces of Hurdaide were repelled by a furious assault from the Yaquis and retreated back to San Felipe.[22]  When Hurdaide returned with another force of 4,000 Indian foot soldiers and 44 mounted Spanish cavalry, he was again defeated in a bloody daylong battle.[23]

Conversion of the Yaqui Indians (1617-1623)

Although the Yaqui Indians had resisted Guzman's advance in 1531, and won successive battles against Hurdaide, the Yaquis sensed the Spanish superiority in weaponry and their ability to make alliances with other indigenous groups. They also believed that the Spaniards were preparing to send more and larger forces to subdue them. As a result, the Yaquis sent emissaries 250 miles to the Villa de Sinaloa to request Jesuit missionaries to join them and to help make peace with the Mayos and the Spaniards. At least one of the Yaqui delegations consisted of about 400 members who represented most of the 80 Yaquis rancherías. [24] According to Professor Evelyn Hu-DeHart, the Yaquis had perceived a threat in the Spanish advance northward and eventually, “Yaqui pragmatism and flexibility prevailed, prompting them to choose peace over a futile, protracted struggle.”[25]

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 several years earlier, the Yaquis seemed to be impressed with the Jesuits and their missionary work. Bringing a message of everlasting life, the Jesuits impressed the Yaquis with their good intentions and their spirituality.[26] In the same year, the Jesuit priest Andrés Pérez de Ribas entered the Yaqui delta to convert the Yaquis living in the area. Because he had worked among other Cáhita-speaking people in northern Sinaloa, Pérez de Ribas was able to communicate well with the Yaquis. At that time, he estimated that some 30,000 Indians lived in about 80 Yaqui rancherías along the river delta. By 1623, he and his successors had persuaded the Yaquis to congregate a large portion of the population into eight pueblos, each occupied by 2,500 to 3,000 inhabitants.[27]

Unity, Solidarity and Cultural Identity Among the Yaquis

According to Professor Hu-DeHart, the creation of the eight missions “produced a greatly heightened sense of unity, solidarity, territoriality, and cultural identity among the 30,000 Yaquis, in short, a deeper consciousness of being one people.”[28] In Raphael Brewster Folsom’s work, The Yaquis and the Empire: Violence, Spanish Imperial Power, and Native Resilience in Colonial Mexico, the historian discusses the missionization of the Yaqui mission towns.[29]

The Jesuit Mission System

Under Jesuit rule up to 1767, Professor Evelyn Hu-DeHart, writes that the Yaqui mission became the “cohesive, productive, secure, stable, and docile.”[30] By 1672, there were 62 Jesuits serving the Sinaloa-Sonora region which had a native population of 250,000 or more.[31] At its height, the Jesuit mission system encompassed 103 villages of both Sinaloa and Sonora.[32]

Peace Reigns (1620-1740)

For the next 120 years, both the Yaquis and Mayos embraced their Catholic faith, but the period was interrupted by a widespread epidemic in 1641, which caused the Mayo River villages to lose half of their population. (The Yaquis were not hit as hard.) This peaceful period represented up to 1740 “unusual tranquility for any northwestern outpost of Spanish civilization.”[33]

Epidemics Ravage the Northwest (1593-1625)

Starting in 1593, epidemics began to ravage the coastal Sinaloa area. In his book Disease, Depopulation, and Culture Change in Northwestern New Spain, 1518-1764 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991), anthropologist Daniel T. Reff discusses each of these epidemics and has created maps to show the range of the affected areas. Professor Reff has indicated that Father Gonzalo de Tapía may have brought persons infected with smallpox from Mexico City to Sinaloa, setting off the first epidemic in 1593. On pages 132 through 168 in his book, Reff discusses at least eight major epdiemics in the Sinaloa-Sonora region from 1593 to 1625.

Silver Is Discovered in Alamos (1683)

In 1683, the Spaniards discovered rich silver deposits in the vicinity of Alamos in Mayo territory (now in present-day southern Sonora). According to Robert C. West, the mines at Alamos became among “the most productive and enduring mining centers of northwestern Mexico.”[34] These silver mines soon attracted large numbers of Spaniards and Christianized Indians from far away regions. In a short period of time, Alamos became the largest and most powerful city in the Sinaloa-Sonora region. Eventually, the wealthy miners and merchants of Alamos came to resent Jesuit control over the Yaquis and Mayos. They tried to pry the Yaquis and Mayos loose from the mission system that had dominated them for so long. The Spaniards came into the Mayo region (which had been decimated by disease) and started building haciendas. But the Yaqui River lands were relatively far from Alamos, the center of Spanish settlement, and the Yaqui population was still too dense to permit an “easy appropriation of land” by the Spaniards and their allies.[35]

The 1680 Rebellion

Beginning in 1680, many of the native peoples of northern Mexico started responding to “the ill effects of the accelerated, intensified Spanish-Indian contact of the last several decades” by erupting into a wave of rebellions that continued into the next century. These rebellions affected New Mexico, Chihuahua, Durango, as well as northern Sonora. The Pueblos, Apaches, Seris, and Tarahumaras all rebelled and there were growing “fears that the contagion of rebellion would spread to the quiescent, industrious Yaqui, Mayo, and Fuerte missions.”[36] The increased hostility of the Mayos and the Yaquis after 1711 toward both the missionaries and the settlers grew as new Spanish settlements and more silver strikes in Sonora increased tension between settlers and the Jesuits.[37]

Sinaloa and Sonora Become a Separate Territorial Unit (1733)

In 1733, the provinces west of the Sierra Madre Occidental – Sinaloa and Sonora – were detached from the large territorial unit of Nueva Vizcaya and given recognition as the Province of Sonora y Sinaloa, with its own governor. This area consisted of the five coastal provinces of Rosario, Culiacán, Sinaloa, Ostimuri, and Sonora. In her work, Indigenous Rebellions on the Northern Mexican Mission Frontier: From First-Generation to Later Colonial Responses, the author Susan Deeds commented that this detachment represented a recognition of “the growth of a mining and ranching secular society in this northwestern region.”

The establishment of the Gobierno de Sonora y Sinaloa – separate from Nueva Vizcaya – created “a parallel secular authority to whom the Indians could and did address specific grievances.”[38] The Yaquis and Mayos lived primarily in the Provinces of Sonora, Ostimuri and Sinaloa. The following map — published in Edward H. Spicer’s The Yaquis: A Cultural History (page 39) — shows the settlements of the area in the Eighteenth Century. It is noteworthy that the Baroyeca Mine was located up river from the Yaqui settlements, and the mines at Alamos were located inland from the Mayo villages. [Silver had been discovered at Baroyeca in 1701, two decades after the discoveries that took place in Alamos.]

In 1734, Manuel Bernal Huidobro became the first governor of the new province of Sonora and Sinaloa, with the capital at San Miguel de Horcasitas.[39] The new governor announced that he would take full political control of all Spaniards, mestizos and Indians whether they were in missions or in other types of communities. Up to this time, the Jesuits had thwarted the right of mine owners to obtain laborers in the Indian communities. But, the new governor felt that the lack of tribute to the king by the missionaries was not in the best interest of the Spanish Empire.[40]

The Causes of the 1740 Revolt: Growing Yaqui Resentment

Author Susan Deeds, in describing the causes of the 1740 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. Over time, the Jesuits had increasingly diverted labor, cattle and surplus produce from the Cáhita pueblos to the struggling missions of Baja California and the Pima in Northern Sonora. 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.[41]

The Negotiations to Avoid Conflict (1739)

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." The two most prominent Yaqui spokesmen— Juan Ignacio Usacamea (known as El Muni), the Governor of Rahum, and Bernabé Basoritemea, the Governor of Huirivis—attempted to advance the Yaqui cause through peaceful means by taking the Yaqui grievances to local civil authorities.[42]  

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 the Archbishop.  In July 1739, Muni and Bernabé had a private audience with the Viceroy, to whom they presented a petition, consisting of 14 separate requests. The requests included asking for the removal of the Jesuits and the right to carry their own traditional arms (bows and arrows). Also, they requested the termination of compulsory labor in the missions without compensation. And, more important, they did not want to be forced to work in the mines. They also demanded free elections. 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. Essentially, the Yaquis were given more independence from Jesuit control.[43]

Resenting this undermining of their authority, the Jesuit authorities 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.[44] The famine that had followed the floods also led to desperation among the Indigenous groups who started raiding missionary granaries because the Jesuits decided to send the surplus to California.

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

The Yaqui and Mayo Indians had lived in peaceful coexistence with the Spaniards from the early part of the Seventeenth Century to 1740. Suddenly, the Yaquis and Mayos developed an alliance which was also supported by a number of the Seris and Lower Pimas from the north. Initially, in February 1740, there were “widespread acts of banditry” which led to what became “a massive, but uncoordinated, often leaderless uprising.” Soon, “large numbers of Mayos had joined forces with their Yaqui neighbors, plundering and raiding to such alarming proporitons that vecinos [neighbors, residents] in more isolated locations began to abandon their mines and homes for more secure, larger towns and haciendas.”[45]

In March and April 1740, the activity included, especially in the Mayo territory and in 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.[46] In May 1740, Juan Calixto Ayamea, a Yaqui military leader, became the leader of the Yaqui “insurrectionary movement.” Eventually Juan Calixto raised an army of 6,000 men, composed of Pima, Tehuecos, Ocoronis, Ahomes, Yaqui and Mayo Indians. With this large force, Calixto gained control of all the towns along the Mayo and Yaqui Rivers.[47]

As the year 1740 progressed, “all mining operations in the district” were at a standstill and all communications between Sonora and Sinaloa was effectively cut off, and the Mayos and Yaquis held a large chunk of their territory which is illustrated in the following map from Evelyn Hu-DeHart’s Missionaries, Miners & Indians, page 69:

Governor Manuel de Huidobro of Sinaloa y Sonora estimated the rebel strength at 12,000 to 14,000. He noted that attack units usually consisted of 300 to 400 men. The rebellion was aggravated by the sudden and surprising news that Muni and Bernabé were both executed by the Spaniards who feared their power.[48] Both men were executed despite their protestations of innocence; they were decapitated, their heads impaled on poles stuck in the ground in their hometowns. Another forty-three Yaquis and Mayos were subsequently punished, ten of whom were finally executed.[49]

The Rebellion Ends

In August 1740, an estimated 2,000 Indian combatants descended on Tecoripa ‒ their second assault. The sergeant of the Sonora militia Captain Agustín de Vildósola ‒ with 1,200 horsemen ‒ came out to meet them. A three-hour battle hurled back the Yaqui rebels who lost 36 men and then retreated.[50] By December, the rebellion was over, with Ayamea and six of the insurrection’s leaders arrested.[51]  The rebellion, however, had cost the lives of a thousand Spaniards and more than 5,000 Indians.[52]

The Post Rebellion Period

After the 1740-41 revolt, the Jesuits did not have the same level of control as they had prior to the revolt. As a result of the revolt, haciendas and farms had been burned and mining operations had been shut down in the Yaqui and Mayo valleys. For some time, settlers did not penetrate th area.[53] The 1740 revolt by the Mayos and Yaquis would be their first major rebellion against Spanish colonial rule and would be followed by a long series of revolts by both the Mayos and Yaquis lasting well into the nineteenth century. Although the Pima and Mayos would eventually make peace with the Mexican Government and become pacified, the Yaquis continued their resistance well into the twentieth century.

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 administrative role of the Jesuits in Sonora was taken over by Franciscans from the College of Querétaro and the Province of Jalisco.[54] The Franciscans who took over the missionary effort in Sonora inherited all the woes that had frustrated the Jesuits: restless neophytes, Apache hostility, disease, encroaching settlers, and lack of government support. At the time of their removal, the Jesuits had ten missionaries at work in the Yaqui-Mayo territory. “Their enforced departure,” according to Professor Edward Spicer, “resulted in an immediate disintegration of the Yaqui and Mayo mission communities.” The four Franciscan missionaries who had replaced the Jesuits in 1768 had considerably less success.[55]

Acquisition of Yaqui Lands Begin (1768)

After the Jesuits were expelled in 1767, all mission properties were confiscated by the Spaniards on the assertion that the land had belonged to the Jesuits rather than the Indians. In essence, the mission pueblos became secular parishes under the care of diocesan priests.[56] At this time, the Governor of Sinaloa and Sonora started a program of secularization by posting garrisons in the Yaqui Valley. He also encouraged vecinos (residents) and mineros (miners) to return to the war-torn area and restart their enterprises. The Yaqui lands were becoming widely known as the most fertile in all of Sonora. Many Yaquis even began to go of their own accord to work in mines.

According to Edward H. Spicer’s map in The Yaquis: A Cultural History (pages 126-127), Yaquis started working the mines in the east, including those in Hidalgo de Parral [Chihuahua], 325 miles from the Yaqui homeland. Spicer reports that this migration started around the 1640s [as reported by Father de Ribas] and continued for the next century. But, Spicer noted that the majority of Yaqui mine workers went to nearby places like Soyopa [where gold and silver mines existed] and in the Chinipas District [which included Alamos].

Since the Yaquis had obtained a reputation for being warriors during the rebellion of 1740, the Spanish authorities handled them quite gingerly during the late 1700s. As a result, the effort to partition the land was not realized until 1778 when the Viceroy ordered the partition of Yaqui lands to proceed in a “prudent manner.”[57]

Mexican Independence (1821)

Mexico fought a long and difficult eleven-year war of independence against Spain. Finally, on February 24, 1821, the Plan of Iguala was proclaimed. This document declared Mexico’s independence from Spain.  The plan also declared that all Mexican nationals were citizens, without any racial or ethnic distinctions. Suddenly all Indians living within the borders of Mexico became citizens and, as a result, no longer had the special and discernable status they had held under Spanish colonial law and which had provided them with some protections.[58]

What Independence Meant For the Yaquis

According to Maurice Crandall, “When Mexico declared Yaquis to be citizens of the republic, signaling an end to Yaqui communal land-tenure practices and tax exemptions, Yaquis felt alarmed at these attacks on community sovereignty. Division of land and the sale of excess lands to other people [Spaniards & mestizos], along with the establishment of multiethnic ayuntamientos (city councils), meant that Mexico considered the Yaquis part of the larger municipicios in which their voice would be only one of many. To the Yaquis, the idea of outsiders having the final say in their governance was “insufferable."[59]

The Politics of Statehood (1824-1831)

With Mexican independence, Sonora and Sinaloa became part of the new republic. At first, Sonora was set up as an independent state with its capital at Ures in 1823. However, under a new constitution drafted in 1824, the State of Sonora y Sinaloa was created as a single state within the Mexican Republic. The state constitution adopted on 31 October 1825 used the name Estado de Occidente. The Sonora y Sinaloa state capital was located at El Fuerte, Sinaloa. However, on September 30, 1830, due to ongoing internal disputes, the state was divided into two free and sovereign states: Sonora and Sinaloa.[60]

A Century of Continuous War Begins (1825)

Starting in 1825, the Yaquis began to have almost continuous problems with the Mexican Federal and Sonoran State governments. These problems would result in frequent skirmishes and battles lasting for more than a century up to 1927. There would be short periods of peace, usually interrupted by a new rebellion.  The eyes of the Mexican and American people watched the news of this ongoing conflict with interest. Following the surrender of the Comanches (1875), the Apache leader Geronimo (1886), and the Battle of Wounded Knee (1890), the resistance of the Yaquis seemed to be the only Native American insurgency still taking place on either side of the border.

The New Yaqui Status in the Mexican Republic

According to Alexandra Sanchez’s Bachelor of Arts thesis for the University of Texas at Arlington (May 2020):[61]

“At the time of Mexican independence, the newly formed yet amorphous Mexican government had qualms with the Yaqui which eventually led to armed conflict. To the Yaqui, the beginning of an independent Mexican only meant that another foreign power deemed themselves in charge and in possession of historically, culturally, and religiously significant Yaqui land. At this point, the Yaqui were almost fully sedentary and generally worked either in agriculture or in mining. While they engaged in some commercial agriculture, they still relied on tribal plots of lands to produce minimal amounts of food. This is known as ‘subsistence agriculture,’ and exists outside the market driven economy. The Yaqui did not have much opportunity to farm outside of their low paying jobs, so any actions that resulted in instability of their dwindling food sources were major threats to the very existence of their people.”

According to the author Steven E. Sanderson, “The Yaquis greeted independence enthusiastically, expecting more local self-government and less contact with the Yori (white man). But, in addition to the usual problems of local corruption and caciquismo, as new citizens they had to pay newly imposed taxes. But the Yaquis simply refused to pay the state taxes, after which, the army was dispatched to collect the debt.”[62] At the same time, the Yaquis tried to stop any Spanish or mestizo colonization of the Yaqui Valley. From their mission experience, they had inherited a strong conviction that the Yaqui nation as a whole was the sole and rightful owner of the entire Yaqui territory.[63]

The Yaqui Revolt of 1825-1832

During this time, there appeared a new Yaqui leader known as Juan de la Cruz Banderas. Some historians have called him a "revolutionary visionary" whose mission was to establish an Indian military confederation. Banderas was also able to enlist the help of the Opatas and Pimas to the north and the Mayos to the south. With a following of 2,000 warriors, Banderas carried out several raids and confrontations with state government forces between 1826 and 1833. During this time, Banderas had hoped to unify all the indigenous peoples of the northwest “under the messianic appeal of returning to the golden past.”[64]

According to Professor Spicer, the leadership of Banderas “was able to challenge Mexican dominance for seven years.” But this leadership also “involved religious symbols having roots in the new synthesis of Indian and Europoean cultures which had taken place during the Jesuit era and subsequently.” Spicer also stated that the ideas of the movement “were linked with distinctive Indian religious concepts and a form of messianism.”[65]

By early 1826, Banderas’ troops controlled all the settlements of the lower Yaqui and Mayo valleys, as noted in the following map from Edward H. Spicer’s The Yaquis: A Cultural History, page 132:

Banderas maintained his control over the insurgent territory for two years and tried to extend it farther north but began to meet with greater resistance from Mexican forces. When the Occidente government engaged Banderas south of Hermosillo, the Yaquis and their allies suffered a devastating defeat. A temporary setback in 1827 forced him to adopt a more “realistic approach.”[66] Eventually, Banderas made an arrangement with the Government of Occidente. In exchange for his "surrender," Banderas agreed to make peace. Banderas and other leaders were pardoned, and Banderas was made the Captain-General of the Yaqui Militia.[67]

In 1828, the Occidente government set up eight towns of the Yaquis on the eastern boundary between the Yaqui and Lower Pima territories as a separate political district. Thus, the Mayo and Yaqui lands were put into the hands of non-Indians, and various decrees then led to the erosion of the Yaquis’ and Mayos’ autonomy. As a result, Banderas prepared his people for a new resistance.[68]

Banderas’ Revised Tactics (1831-1832)

In 1831 and 1832, Banderas and the Yaquis came back with “renewed vigor and revised tactics,” forming an alliance with the Opatas, who had also rebelled earlier in August 1824. 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, who 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.[69]

The Yaqui Alliances (1838-1868)

After the death of Banderas, the Yaquis from 1838 to 1868 formed alliances with anyone who promised them land and autonomy. In the post-independence era, the Yaquis aligned themselves at various points with the Federalists, Centralists, Liberals, and the French invaders (1862-1866).[70] Their goal was both autonomy and separation from the state of Sonora. According to Steven E. Sanderson, “They enjoyed autonomy by constantly besieging a weak state government and protecting the entrance to the Yaqui Valley at Boca Abierta.”[71]

A Time of Peace (1842-1856)

According to Professor Spicer, there were 13 years from 1842 to 1856 in which “no fighting was offically reported in the Yaqui country. Some settler infiltration may have taken place, but it … [was] insufficient to cause the kind of disturbances which were common in the previous decade.” Governor Manuel Gándara had left well enough alone by “not pushing the state programs for taxation, land distribution, or political reorganization [on the Yaquis].”[72]

A New Revolt (1859-1860)

Some politicians tried to placate the Yaquis by granting amnesty to all rebels and restoring some of their political power by appointing Yaquis they trusted to local government posts. But, in 1859, both the Yaquis and the Opatas rebelled against the Sonoran Government again.[73] Sonora sent troops to quell the revolt and, on October 22, 1860, a force of 1,200 Indians was defeated at Hermosillo. After this defeat, the Yaquis broke up into small brands and spread to areas outside of the Yaqui territory. But by the middle of 1861, some of the Yaquis were asking for both peace and amnesty. The government then stationed surveillance forces to watch over both the Yaquis and the Mayos.[74]

Pesqueira Attempts to Colonize Yaqui Territory (1858-1876)

Sonoran Governor Ignacio Pesqueira, who served most of the period from 1857 to 1876, attempted to promote colonization of the Yaqui and Mayo rivers as a method of assimilating the rebels into Mexican society. Professor Hu-DeHart writes that Pesquera saw this colonization as a way to “exploit the agricultural potential of the land” and to “help assimilate the intransigent rebels as good Mexicans and good citizens into the population at large.”[75]  

Starting in 1858, Governor Pesquera invaded deep inside of Yaqui territory, penetrating to the Yaqui port of Medano and to Torim and Cocorit. The goal of Pesquera’s state troops appears to have been “to support the ever-encroaching settlers.” In fact, Pesquera tried “to establish state troopers as colonists, to get them to farm pieces of land which they could then defend for themselves, when attacked by the Yaquis.” At the same time, the Mexican press was reporting that the troops were responding to “rebellions.” Pesquera’s policy became more brutal over time. In 1861, in the vicinity of Torim, the troops put into effect “a scorched earth policy” as women and children were murdered. In response, Yaquis ambushed and killed government soldiers.[76]

On March 16, 1861, the Weekly Butte Democrat (page 2) reported that as of February 1, 1861, “fights and skirmishes between the Yaquis and the Government troops are of almost daily occurrence.” On Jan. 25, a train loaded with salt and other goods was reportedly attacked and captured by the Yaquis between Hermosillo and Guaymas. Seven men guarding the wagon were killed.

The Indigenous People and the French Invaders (1865-1866)

Pesqueira’s policy caused many of the Yaquis and Mayos to ally themselves with every anti-governmental movement to oppose him and that included foreign invaders. The French invaded Mexico and occupied significant portions of the country from 1861 to 1866. But the French forces did not come to Sonora until March 1865 when they arrived in Guaymas. For the most part, however, the French were confined to the ports of Guaymas and Mazatlán. But the French did make some advances thanks to their support from some of the Yaqui, Mayo and Opata Indians. The Charleston Daily News (August 22, 1865), reported that “wherever the French soldiers have gone, their cordiality and openness of manners has found an echo in the hearts of the Yaquis.”

The Yaqui Situation (1868)

A couple years after the French departure 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.[77] 

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 field pieces killed up to 120 people.[78]

The Yaqui Insurrection (1875)

In 1875, the Mexican government suspected that another 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. Fighting broke out in the towns of Cocorit, Médano, and Pitahaya, all towns which already had considerable populations of Mexicans. 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.[79]

The Porfiriato (1876-1911)

During the Porfiriato [The Reign of President Porfirio Díaz from 1876 to 1911], the stakes changed, as the Yaquis became a potential laboring force and their rich land the nucleus of northwestern development plans.”[80] Eventually, Díaz’s policy towards the Yaquis would be “unconditional surrender or war, death or exile.” Under Díaz, Yaqui tribal members would be deported into slavery or semi-slavery in southern Mexico. Some were sent to the henequen fields of the haciendas in Yucatan, while others were sent to sugar plantations in Oaxaca.[81]

At the beginning of the Porfiriato, according to Alexandra Sanchez, “the Mexican government wanted to expand the mining and railroad industries in Sonora. Thus, “there was an influx of foreign companies which brought capital and investment into the Mexican economy. However, this meant the break-up and destruction of sacred Yaqui ancestral lands.” During the Porfiriato, “the Mexican mindset returned to colonization.” However, “the Yaquis had an independent mindset and refused to completely submit to the Mexican government.”[82]

According to Sanchez, the Yaqui lands were “threatened on a regular basis, but they and their culture survived foreign influence.” On the other hand, the Mayos who “fought alongside the Yaquis for part of the nineteenth century… [eventually] succumbed to the fate” that the Yaquis later faced. Unfortunately, “Mexican and American governments and journalists demonized the Yaquis once they outlived their usefulness for the Sonoran state government… Tensions escalated at the beginning of the Porfiriato and reached levels that proved to be impossible from which to recover.”[83]

Colonization of Yaqu and Mayo Lands (1880)

In 1879, the Mexican government began to more seriously and systematically “colonize” the Yaqui and Mayo lands of Sonora. In 1880 Luis E. Torres became the Governor of Sonora and supported this method because the act of “forcing the Yaquis onto the ‘road of civilization” and displacing them from their native lands could supplement the Sonoran workforce in the agriculture, mining, and railroad sectors of the economy.[84] To accomplish this goal, Torres “opened the state up for exploitation” in the mining industry, and furthered foreign investments in the state’s railroads.[85]

José María Leyva (Cajeme)

Yaqui resistance in the early years of the Porfiriato was embodied in the great chief Jose Marla Leyva (known by his Yaqui name of Cajeme), a highly acculturated Indian who had learned his military skills from service in the state and federal armies. He had been born in Hermosillo in 1837 but reared in the town of Bacum until he was eight years old.[86]

In 1874, Governor Ignacio Pesqueira appointed José Maria Leyva as the Alacalde Mayor of the Yaqui and Mayo towns.  But Leyva soon came to be known as Cajeme (He Who Does not Drink) by his Yaqui subjects. Cajeme had fought with Pesqueira against the French during the previous decade. According to the historian Jeffrey M. Schulze, from about 1875 to 1887, Cajeme led between 4,000 and 5,000 Yaquis in “a bitter and violent bid for independence that displaced and nearly destroyed the tribe.” As a result, the Yaquis became, according to anthropologist Edward Spicer, “the most widely scattered people in North America,” with some of them fleeing to Arizona and California, while others were exiled to the Yucatán Peninsula.[87]

From 1875 to 1886, Cajeme single-handedly organized and maintained a Yaqui state-within-a-state.[88] But Cajeme was betrayed by his former lieutenant, Loreto Molino, who – at the instigation of the government – rebelled against him. Although the plot to overthrow Cajeme was thwarted, Molino's defection signalled the beginning of an exodus of war-weary Yaqui families out of the Yaqui River Valley and the end of the war.

A Remorseless Campaign of Attrition (1887)

Throughout the 1880s, the Yaquis had defeated every army Porfirio Diaz sent against them. In the end, a remorseless campaign of attrition starved them into surrender in 1887.  On January 15, 1887, the San Francisco Examiner reported in a dispatch from A.T. Prescott that “the Yaqui war is virtually ended, more than 1,000 Yaquis having surrendered at one time to General Hernandez.” The Yaquis were reportedly on the verge of starvation and their chief, Cajeme, had become a refugee who was “being closely pursued by Mexican troops.”[89]

The Capture and Execution of Cajeme (1887)

Three months later, on April 14, 1887, a private telegram to the San Francisco Examiner revealed that Mexican troops under General Hernandez had captured Cajeme at San Jose, a town about ten miles from Guaymas. The report stated that “Cajeme had been hidden by an Indian family for the last two months” but he offered to surrender if his life would be spared by Sonora Governor Torres. It was revealed that “Cajeme was captured through the treachery of one of his followers.”[90] A week after his surrender, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Cajeme was executed on April 22, 1887 by a firing squad in the small seaport of Modano, about 20 miles from Guaymas. It was believed that Cajeme was not given a trial and he was “executed before the eyes of his tribe.”[91] Afterwards, the Governor of Sonora sold the Yaqui warriors for $75 a head as slave labor for in the plantations of Yucatan, where many of them died early on. The following photograph of Cajemé was taken in April 1887 after his arrest. This is one of two known photos commissioned by Ramon Corral.[92]

A Photo of Cajeme.

The End of the Native American Resistance in the U.S. (1886-1890)

During the 1880s, the confrontations that took place between several Native American tribes and the U.S. Government occupied considerable space on the front pages of many American newspapers. But the active resistance of Native Americans in the United States was coming to an end. On September 4, 1886, Geronimo, the leader of the Chiricahua Apache, surrendered to the U.S. Army in Arizona. Then, on December 29, 1890, the last major battle on American soil ended with the defeat of the Lakota Sioux at the Battle of Wounded Knee Creek, also known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.

The Yaquis Take Center Stage (1890s)

With the end of Apache and Sioux resistance, the Yaquis in northwestern Mexico became the last representatives of Indigenous defiance to governmental authority. And soon, The Los Angeles Times and other American newspapers were following their activities with careful but sometimes very biased scrutiny. Some articles would describe the entire history of the Yaqui people taking up nearly an entire page, although some of that history was not necessarily accurate.

Díaz Offers Bounties on Yaqui Ears

In the 1890s, following another Yaqui rebellion, President Diaz offered a bounty of $100 for the ears of all dead Yaqui warriors. Bounty hunters slaughtered unarmed peasants, cut off their ears, and claimed they were Yaqui organs, and, in 1892, the entire male population of Navojoa was exterminated, while, that same year, 200 Yaqui prisoners were taken out in a gunboat into the Pacific Ocean off Guaymas and thrown into the sea to drown or be eaten by sharks.

The Mayos Bow Out (1893)

While Yaqui armed aggression continued as late as 1927, no fighting took place in the Mayo country after 1893. The Mayos were pacified thirty-five years sooner than the Yaquis. But, like the Yaquis, they have been able to preserve their language and customs. Because their resistance ended earlier, the Mayos did not experience the dispersal and deportation that the Yaquis experienced.  Thus, in the 2020 census, 38,507 Mayo speakers lived in Mexico, while there were only 19,376 Yaqui speakers. 

The Peace of Ortiz (1897)

Renegade bands of Yaquis, familiar with the terrain of their own territory, were able to avoid capture by the government forces and carry on their resistance. In 1897, the commander of the Sonora forces, General Torres, initiated negotiations with the Yaqui leader Juan Maldonado (known by the native name of Tetabiate), offering the Yaquis repatriation into their homeland. Eventually, on May 15, 1897, Sonora state officials and the Tetabiate signed the Peace of Ortiz. The Yaqui leader, accompanied by 390 Yaquis (consisting of 74 families), arrived from the mountains for the signing of the peace treaty. According to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, this peace agreement ended 12 years of war in which “money and rich presents” were given to the “red warriors” by the representatives of Díaz.[93]

Resurgence under Tetabiate (1898-1901)

The peace did not last very long. Ignoring the terms of the peace treaty, 400 Yaquis and their families defied the government and assembled in the Bacatete Mountains, taking up once again guerilla raids and attacks on the edges of the Yaqui territory. Under the command of Tetabiate, the Yaquis sustained themselves by making nighttime raids on the haciendas near Guaymas. For the next thirty years, Yaqui rebels would frequently take to the Bacatete Mountains to seek refuge and to attack their enemies.  

The following map from Edward H. Spicer’s The Yaquis: A Cultural History (page 264) shows the location of the Bacatete Mountains relative to their original eight Yaqui towns (circa 1620-30). The map shows the approximate border of the “Yaqui Tribal Boundary as Mythically Sanctioned” and the location of the Yaqui Indigenous Community Boundary as drawn up by presidential decree in 1939.

The Massacre of Mazocaba (1900)

In time, Mexican troops made progress against Tetabiate and his insurgents. By early 1900, the Mexican government had launched a new campaign to end the Yaqui war, with the goal of clearing the Yaquis out of the Bacatete Mountains. On January 8, 1900, the Mexican army raided the Bacatete Mountains, killing hundreds of Yaquis and driving thousands deeper into the mountains. This battle is well known in Yaqui oral history as the Massacre of Mazocoba. At this time, 864 Yaquis were taken prisoner with the San Francisco Chronicle reporting a “crushing blow for the Yaquis.” The newspaper described Mazocoba as “an almost impregnable spot in the center of the mountains” where 200 Yaquis were killed and more than 500 were taken prisoner. The newspaper noted that the Yaqui losses “certainly must have depleted the enemy’s forces to such an extent that they will be compelled to surrender.”[94]

The Death of Tetabiate (1901)

By the end of 1900, there were only an estimated 300 rebels still holding out in the Bacatete Mountains. Six months later, on July 9, 1901, Tetabiate was betrayed and murdered by one of his lieutenants in the Bacatete Mountains, ending his 14-year leadership of the Yaqui insurrection. However, Mexican forces continued to pursue the Yaqui rebels wherever they were. An article in the Quad-City Times of Davenport (Iowa) on Sept. 9, 1902 reported that the Mexican government was determined to continue its “extermination and deportation” of the Yaquis. It was stated that General Torres, the military governor of Sonora, had become “convinced in 1898 that the only solution of the puzzling Yaqui problem was to exterminate” them.[95]

270 Instances of Warfare between 1529 and 1902

According to Dr. Shelley Bowen Hatfield, a government study published in 1905 cited 270 instances of either Yaqui or Mayo warfare between 1529 and 1902, excluding eighty-five years of relative peace between 1740 and 1825.

The Systematic Deportation of Yaqui Indians Begins (1902)

Professor Hu-DeHart argues that the Yaqui deportations actually began in the years leading up to 1900. At first, only the “most incorrigible leaders” were deported. The massive and systematic deportation that took place later was considered too radical a measure at first because the Sonoran government still recognized that many of the Yaquis were a source of valuable, cheap, and easily accessible labor.[96] The government still harbored the hopes that if the rebel leaders could be extracted from the population, the rest of the Yaquis would become sufficiently reformed into a “civilized and progressive” contribution to the growing prosperity of the state. [97]

Governor Izábel’s New Policy (1902)

In April 1902, Sonoran Governor Rafael Izábal executed a new plan that was authorized by President Díaz. All employers of Yaqui workers were ordered to gather them into rancherías (camps) in specifically designated areas to facilitate vigilance over them. In these camps, the movements of Yaqui mansos (peaceful laborers) were monitored carefully as a means for locating the rebels and picking out potential troublemakers. The prefect of each district was required to register each month all Yaquis over 15 years of age and issue passports to them. Any Yaquis found wandering around without passports would be considered rebels and subject to arrest and possible deportation from the state. At the same time, Governor Izabel pursued and arrested the active rebels in their mountain strong holds.[98]

Sending the Yaquis to the Henequen Hacendados

During this time, Colonel Emilio Kosterlitzky was placed in charge of Federal Rural Police in Sonora with orders to round up all Yaquis and deport them southward. By the early 1900s, henequen in Yucatan was rapidly growing in economic importance. It had become one of the major exports of the Mexican economy, prompting the giant henequen hacendados in the southern state of Yucatán to pride themselves as the leaders of national progress. Despite the enslavement of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, the rapidly expanding henequen economy still suffered from a shortage of workers.[99] Soon, the hacendados found that the imported Yaquis were even superior to their own Mayas in “hard work and vigor.”[100] 

The Sonoran Hacendados Protest the Deportations of the Yaquis

The bulk of the Yaquis deported were sent to work on henequen plantations in the Yucatan, but some were also sent to work in the sugar cane fields in Oaxaca. But the deportation of the Yaquis actually hurt Sonora’s economy, and soon, Sonoran hacendados protested the persecution and deportation of the Yaquis because, without their labor, many of the Sonoran crops could not be cultivated or harvested. [101]

The Flight of Yaquis to Arizona

At the same time, many Yaquis were fleeing north across the international border into Arizona to seek refuge. Starting in the 1890s, Yaquis started resettling in Arizona, where they usually gained employment as migrant farm laborers. Many of them would form their own communities. By the 1940s, there were approximately 2,500 Yaquis in Arizona. Eventually they would achieve a reservation in Arizona with federal recognition (in 1978). The beginnings of these Yaqui communities in Arizona are discussed in Jonathan Rodriguez’s article entitled “The Yaqui Arizona Diaspora,” which can be viewed at the following link: 

https://www.indigenousmexico.org/articles/the-yaqui-arizona-diaspora

The Yaqui Deportations (1902-1908)

According to various sources, between 1902 and 1908, somewhere between 8,000 and 15,000 Yaquis (out of a population of 30,000) were deported to henequen plantations in the Yucatán and the sugar cane fields in Oaxaca. This deportation became evident in the census, when Yaqui speakers began to appear in the southern Mexican states, far from their native land. In the 1910 census, for example, 1,072 Yaqui speakers were tallied in the State of Yucatán. In Oaxaca, 112 Yaqui speakers were reported in the same year.

An official correspondence from 1904 estimated that 822 Yaquis had been deported or were awaiting deportation. By 1908 – the peak year for deportations – that number reached 1,198.  But most historians believe these numbers were purposely downgraded. Most scholars believe that several thousand were deported over a period of several years.[102]

In Governor Izabal's 1903-1907 report to the Sonoran State Congress, he listed that some 2,000 Yaquis had been forced to “leave the territory,” while another 6oo captives were freed for informing on their fellow Yaquis. Most of those deported were men and women, although occasionally boys and girls were also found on the deportation lists.[103]  The children were usually farmed out to the service of prominent families of the state, or simply left to die in crowded and unsanitary conditions. Some Yaquis were not deported. Instead, they were sentenced to hang on the spot; others were sent to the state penitentiary in Hermosillo to await further sentencing; still others were shipped to the port of Guaymas and elsewhere to work. [104]

Negotiations with the Yaquis (1908)

In May 1908, Governor Luis Torres attempted to negotiate with the Yaqui rebel leader, Luis Bule. In June, the day before the deadline for turning in all arms and ammunition, Bule received an ominous warning from Torres: “For the last time we communicate to you that if you do not comply with your first offer and turn in all arms and ammunition immediately, the war will return and deportation of Yaquis to Yucatan will continue. You should understand that you are the cause for the death of your tribe.” Torres added that the government would was “disposed to concede to you all kinds of guarantees in the case of surrender,” but also stated that it was “disposed to exterminate all of you if you continue to rebel.” Despite the warning, Bule missed the deadline. The Government resumed their practice of deporting as many Yaquis as possible.[105]

American Newspapers Take Notice

As a result of the missed deadline, June and July of 1908 saw the largest shipment of Yaquis to Yucatan. One shipment in July on the steamship named "Corral" loaded some 8oo Yaqui men, women and children.[106] Some of the American newspapers began to take notice of Mexico’s deportation and enslavement of the Yaquis. According to The Boise Citizen, on November 12, 1909, Yaquis were “being gathered up at the rate of 500 a month and sold into slavery in the Yucatan.” In the Spring of 1908, a dispatch was published in American and Mexican newspapers saying that “President Díaz had issued a sweeping order decreeing that every Yaqui, wherever found, men, women and children, should be gathered up by the War Department and deported to Yucatan.”[107]

Deportation Totals Up to 1908

The exact number of Yaquis deported to Yucatán and elsewhere is difficult to calculate. Turner cites a figure above 15,000, based on the testimony of a boastful deportation officer.[108] This might have been an exaggeration, since the Yaqui population at the time could not have totaled more than 30,000. The census of 1910 stated that 2,757 Sonorans lived in Yucatán; but this figure surely did not include all the Yaqui slaves on the henequen haciendas and those Yaquis who were sent to Oaxaca.[109]

Francisco Madero and the Yaquis

The Mexican Revolution would bring death and destruction throughout Mexico, starting with the presidential election of 1910 and continuing at least through the early 1920s. One of the early personalities of the Mexican Revolution was the Coahuila landowner, Francisco Madero. In 1908, he wrote The Presidential Succession of 1910, in which he devoted ten pages to the “Yaqui War.” Madero strongly condemned President Díaz’s handling of the Yaqui affair. In 1911, Díaz was ousted from the presidency and exiled, and President Francisco Madero took office. Just before assuming office in 1911, Madero received a delegation of Yaquis from Sonora and came to an agreement with them on Sept. 1, 1911.[110] 

On September 5, 1911, the Los Angeles Times reported that “peace has been made with the Yaqui Indians of Sonora. After warring for almost half a century against the government for oppressions and wrongs inflicted by Federal officers, the Yaquis have won from the national government a promise to surrender them certain public lands in two townships on the Yaqui reservation in Sonora.” The Times also noted that “all Yaquis deported to Southern Mexico are to be returned home and every married couple among the Indians is to get five acres of land and two horses.” Madero also promised that the Yaquis would not be taxed in any way for thirty years.[111]

The Yaquis and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)

With Madero’s assassination in February 1913, Spicer notes that “the agreement remained a scrap of paper” and was soon forgotten by the subsequent leaders of Mexico.[112]  However, most scholars agree that the Yaquis benefited “from the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution which temporarily eased the pressure on them. Some of the deportees were enabled to come back to their native Sonora.”[113] During the Revolution, Yaqui warriors joined all of the armies of the major rebel factions. They also began resettling their ancestral lands along the Rio Yaqui.

Obregón and the Yaquis

One of the foremost leaders of the Mexican Revolution, General Alvaro Obregón was from the State of Sonora and would serve as President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. According to Edward Spicer, Obregón “made prompt contact with Yaqui leaders and began efforts to work out the century-old problems.” [114] Thanks to Obregón and the Revolution, Spicer writes that “Yaquis thus played a national role from the beginning of the Revolution, a role which reached its culmination in 1927… The Revolution gave Yaquis the opportunity to participate in the life of Mexico on the national level, no longer at the lowest grade as deported or deportable peons, but on a par with other citizens.”[115] Obregón is said to have promised the Yaqui people compensation for their losses but by 1920, when the main phase of the war ended, the promises were forgotten. In fact, as early as 1916, Obregón had begun establishing estates on Yaqui land. This would eventually lead to renewed hostilities between the natives and the military. 

Ricardo Flores Magón’s Take on the Yaquis

On February 21, 1914, the Oaxacan anarchist and reformer Ricardo Flores Magón, writing in the Los Angeles Spanish language newspaper, Regeneración on February 21, 1914 mentioned that “the rich Yaqui region in the state of Sonora is under the control of the inhabitants of the area, the courageous, dignified and honorable Indians of the Yaqui tribe.” Flores Magón called the Yaquis “these exceptional men, models of firmness and energy, who’ve been in a state of continuous warfare for four centuries.” His analysis of the Yaquis was in contrast to many of the negative articles being written about the Yaquis in California. The following photo was affiliated with the article.[116]

The Yaqui Diaspora

In The Yaquis: A Cultural History, Edward H. Spicer discusses what is now known as The Yaqui Diaspora. By 1910, Spicer noted that there were at least 15,000 Yaquis in the world, but in the Yaqui River towns [of the Yaqui Homeland], there were fewer than 3,000 Yaquis, “the lowest number of Yaqui residents thus far in their history.”  By this time, at least a thousand Yaquis had crossed the international border into Arizona. Spicer described the Yaqui movements in the following map.[117]

The Yaquis Are Scattered

According to Alexandra Sanchez’s Bachelor of Arts thesis for the University of Texas at Arlington (May 2020), “Some of the Yaquis disappeared into the folds and joined other Native American tribes to escape the persecution their people experienced under the Porfiriato. Although Yaquis number in the thousands in the present day, they are scattered throughout the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico thanks to Porfirio Díaz’s deporation and intimidation program. Sanchez states that “the spread of Yaqui Indians and their integration into different indigenous communities to escape violence and persecution began long before the porfiriato. The agenda of Porfirio Díaz was the final nail in the coffin for the Yaqui people just as Adolf Hitler was later on in the twentieth century for the Jewish people of Western Europe.[118]

Dealing With the Yaquis in Arizona

The Mexican government sought the cooperation of U.S. and Arizona authorities to control the cross-border activities of the Yaquis. Although the U.S. authorities tried to locate and deport Yaquis, many of the “Yaquis quickly learned not to divulge their true identities, claiming instead to be Opatas or Pimas” or simply Mexicans. Any person who had been in Arizona for over a year was not subject to deportation and, according to Hu-DeHart, many Arizonans who employed Yaquis “refused to give up their industrious and cheap workers.”[119]

The Yaquis in 1920: A Thorn in the Side for 48 Years

In 1920, the Mexican government estimated that 6,000 Yaquis were living in the main tribal towns of Cocorit, Vicam, Turin, Potum and Bacum, and they were joined by some Yaquis who were returning from exile in the United States. On August 16, 1920, the LA Times reported that “the Yaquis have been pacified permanently.” According to the article, Governor F.A. Berquez of Sonora had reported that the Mexican government was spending $100,000 a month “toward the development and civilization of the tribe.” Through this arrangement, Yaquis were furnished “with food, agricultural implements, horses and livestock.”

However, on September 14, 1920, The Los Angeles Times quoted Governor Berquez as complaining that the Yaquis had “been a thorn in the side of the Sonoran and the Mexican governments for forty-eight years,” but recently, he had received assurances that the Yaquis were “completely pacified and ready to settle down” and return to peaceful agricultural pursuits on their reservation lands. However, the peace was short lived and new outbreaks took place during the next year. On January 19, 1921, the Los Angeles Times indicated that a small band of Yaquis had “resumed the warpath” and killed three Mexican cowboys south of Guaymas. It was alleged that the towns of Cócorit and La Dura were raided by the Yaquis and the Mexican government forces quickly responded to the incident.

A Drastic Retrogression in Yaqui-Mexican Relations

At the end of his term as President of Mexico (1920–1924), General Alvaro Obregón returned to Sonora and carried out business projects in Navojoa and Cajeme (the latter city was renamed Ciudad Obregón in his honor in 1928). According, to Edward H. Spicer, the Yaquis tried to talk to Obregón and other Mexican leaders about the “matter of the unfulfilled promises” made by authorities in the past. However, “the outcome” of that action was a “drastic retrogression in Yaqui-Mexican relations – the renewed military occupation.”[120]

No Benefits, Only More Destruction

Soon, 20,000 Mexican troops were brought into the Yaqui territory, and they were complemented by aerial bombardment of the Yaquis. Suddenly, most Yaquis were becoming convinced “that military resistance to Mexicans would bring no benefits, only more destruction.” Soon, the new military occupation resulted in “the establishment of an army unit in every Yaqui settlement… All entrance and exit to the area of the Eight Towns was checked by soldiers, and around the waterholes in the Bacatete Mountains encampments of soldiers were set up.” These actions created “an atmosphere of repression for the Yaquis, but also considerable interference with the legitimate Yaqui plan for rebuilding the Eight Towns.”[121]

On September 15, 1926, the Fort Worth Record-Telegram reported that Francisco Anehata, the commandant of the garrison at Nogales in Sonora, had been advised that a battle between 1,500 Yaqui Indians and Mexican troops near Vicam had taken place. As a result, the Mexican garrisons stationed at Hermosillo, Guaymas and Navajoa had been mobilized for war against the Yaquis.[122]

The End of the Yaqui Revolt (1927)

According to reports from Nogales (Arizona), The Grand Rapids Press on April 1, 1927 noted that approximately 14,000 Mexican federal troops had been concentrated at Critz in Sonora and would begin moving toward the Sierra de Bacetate Mountain range “in a concerted drive against the mountain stronghold of the Yaqui Indian rebels, which is defended by 1,500 warriors.”[123] Historians agree that the Yaquis fought their last major battle at Cerro del Gallo (Hill of the Rooster) in 1927. On April 28, 1927, the Los Angeles Times reported that Mexican Federal Troops had captured 415 Yaquis, including 214 women and 175 children. These prisoners were put aboard a transport to Manzanillo, where they were turned over to the government.[124]

The Last Gasp of Rebellion (1927-1929)

On September 30, 1927, the Lawrence Journal-World headline reported “Yaqui War Near End.” The newspaper noted that “the end of a century of warfare which the Yaquis have waged against the Mexican government appeared near today.”  A week earlier, Chief Mori and about 600 braves had unconditionally surrendered at Ortiz to General Francisco R. Manzo, Commandant of the military in Sonora. At the same time, General Manzo reported that Chief Luis Matuz, the recognized leader of the Yaquis, was “in the Sierra de Bacatete Mountains, the Yaqui stronghold, rounding up scattered bands preparatory to making a complete and unconditional surrender.”  Earlier, Chief Mori and Chief Matuz had split up and taken their respective followers with them.[125]

By October 1927, the Yaquis chieftain, Luis Matius, surrendered, after holding out in the Bacatete Mountains for more than a year. By the end of 1927, Mexican garrisons had been established in all the Yaqui pueblos and villages. Operations were directed by General Obregón, a familiar figure to the Yaquis who would be assassinated in July 1928.[126] According to another report published on October 5, 1927, 12,000 "federales" were soon to present in the state of Sonora, equipped with 8mm machine guns, airplanes and poison gas.[127]

The 1927 rebellion had required a yearlong effort on the part of the Mexican military to suppress. After this, some minor warfare continued into 1929, but the violence was quelled mainly by bombings from the recently formed Mexican Air Force. In an effort to ferret out the Yaqui rebels in the Bacatete Mountains, the Mexican pilots “dropped ignited dynamite sticks into the fields of Yaqui fighters… causing death and chaos.” The Yaqui rebels called them “Yori Birds.”[128] The 1927 campaign also produced another temporary surge in Yaqui migration to Arizona. Meanwhile, centuries of conflict with the Yaquis had left their non-Indian neighbors with an irrational fear of the Indians that bordered on the absurd. The Indians, for example, were thought to possess mysterious powers, such as immunity to rabies, and were also believed to have an inhumanly long lifespan.[129]

Sonora Becomes Mexico’s Breadbasket

During the 1930s, many Yaquis settled down to a peaceful existence in their Sonoran homeland. Although some small outbreaks took place, major hostilities had come to an end in 1927, and many Yaquis worked hard to live in peace with their neighbors and the authorities. In addition, by the mid-1930s, Sonora had become Mexico’s breadbasket, producing about 11 percent of the nation’s wheat. Assisting this growth was a series of government-sponsored reclamation projects that gradually brought thousands of hectares of land into production. In fact, the Yaqui River valley had only 10,000 hectares of arable land in 1911. By 1943, that number reached 70,000 – a startling figure considering that as late as 1890 the region was, as one scholar put it, “a largely uninhabited wasteland,” with the exception of small strips along the river.[130]

Cardenas Presidential Campaign (1934)

In December 1934, the Yaquis found a new and important ally in the person of President Lázaro Cárdenas, a mestizo from Jiquilpan, Michoacán. Cárdenas had emerged as a major champion of the Indian causes even before he became President. While traveling the country during his 1934 presidential campaign, he could not help but notice the dire poverty in which indigenous peoples in Mexico lived. He actually passed through Yaqui country that year and called for land restitution, the establishment of agricultural zones, and the shoring up of irrigation infrastructure, all in an effort to, as he put it, “resolve definitively the eternal Yaqui problem.” He considered them “a strong and pure race that should fully expect vindication for the despoliation of their lands by past governments.”[131]

In July 1936, the Cárdenas Administration promised that returning Yaquis could participate in government-sponsored agricultural projects. The Government hoped that if Yaquis owned small farms, they would become more self-sufficient and stoke the regional economy. However, even though the Mexican political climate turned in the Yaquis’ favor during the 1930s, it appears that very few Arizona Yaquis of the younger generation had a desire to return to the Yaqui River. As Yaqui Cayetano Lopez remembered during the 1930s, “there wasn’t anything to do in Sonora. This is the only country we know.”[132]

Initiating a Vigorous Development Project

Cárdenas’s plan called for the initiation of a “vigorous development project” along the Yaqui River under the departments of agriculture, economy, and defense. It promised federal funding for potable water and irrigation, road construction, the construction of power and light plants, credit for agricultural workers, the clearing of timber, the planting of coconut, orange, and lime trees, and the distribution of 10,000 hectares of “high-grade” land on the right bank of the Yaqui River to tribal members, among other goals. Soon, the Yaquis would receive livestock, farm machinery, trucks, shovels, machetes, hatchets, barbed-wire fencing, as well as seeds and fertilizer. The objective of this “generous experiment,” according to one decree, was to bring “work and prosperity to a sizable nucleus of the Yaqui population.”[133]

Cardenas Opens Up Negotiations (1936)

President Cárdenas opened up negotiations with the Yaquis to ensure that peace would continue. The Los Angeles Times of May 22, 1936 reported that “President Cárdenas, proud of his Indian blood,” had served notice that his government would provide extensive benefits for the Yaquis. These plans included: 

1.     Construction and improvement of irrigation canals in Yaqui territory

2.     Construction of a dam along the Yaqui River

3.     Establishment of agricultural and industrial schools at Vicam

4.     A comprehensive program of cultural uplift for Yaquis

On July 19, 1936, the Lynchburg (Virginia) newspaper The News and Advance reported that “three huge irritation projects” that would bring 1.5 million acres of “raw land” under cultivation (at a cost of 80 million pesos). One of those projects would be the Angostura dam on the Yaqui River which would irrigate many thousands of Yaqui Valley acres.[134]

Creation of the Yaqui Zona Indígena

On October 28, 1937, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas created the Yaqui Zona Indígena (the Yaqui Indigenous Zone) and designated 485,235 hectares for the Yaquis as a restitución of Indigenous territory. The new Yaqui territory included the municipios of Guaymas, Bácum, Cajeme, and Empalme. Cárdenas took lands from the big landowners of the valley and distributed it among the Yaquis in the form of ejidos. The new zone included approximately half of the territory that the Yaquis had claimed as their traditional homeland. The new homeland was a de facto reservation on the north bank of the Yaqui River. However, the Yaquis did not enjoy the concurrent guarantee of water, and most of them were limited to subsistence agriculture.[135]

On October 30, 1937, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported that Governor Roman Yocupicio of Sonora and other government officials had arrived in Hermosillo “to launch an agrarian program designed to benefit the long-neglected Yaqui and Mayo Indian peons.” The plan – worked out during a week of conferences with President Cárdenas – would provide individual plots of land in the Yaqui River Zone, which would be provided water from the Angostrua Dam [to be completed in 1942]. Under the Cárdenas plan, each Indian would receive eight hectares (about 20 acres) of arable land and grazing land according to their needs. Thirteen Yaqui villages would benefit from this project. President Cardenas’ decree recognized Indian tribal rights to all land on the right bank of the Yaqui River. [136]

The Cárdenas Strategy

Cárdenas also recognized the Yaquis’ right to rebuild on new sites traditional pueblos which had been taken over by Yoris [White People]. Although the Yaquis lost two of their traditional towns (Cócorit and Bácum), two new towns (Loma de Guamúchil and Loma de Bácum) were established to compensate the tribe for their loss. In doing this, Cárdenas hoped to end the cycle of warfare and violence that had existed between Mexico and the Yaquis for so long. In the long run, the armed Yaqui resistance had succeeded in pressuring Mexico to recognize its distinct, semi-autonomous status.[137]

Part of Cárdenas’s strategy had been to incorporate the Yaquis into the regional economy as industrious and virtuous farmers. But he also believed that the Yaquis wanted to maintain some elements of their culture. Another component of his strategy thus involved establishing boarding schools throughout Yaqui country staffed by teachers who spoke the Indians’ language. Yaqui students learned about tribal history and the spiritual significance of their land base, all while surrounded by murals celebrating tribal culture. Cárdenas also instituted a ban on alcohol, overconsumption of which had long plagued the Yaquis, in the Zona. His efforts were warmly received. As one scholar put it, “If there is any Mestizo whom the Yaqui regard as a tribal hero, it is Lázaro Cárdenas.”[138]

On February 20, 1938, the Arizona Daily Star reported the President Cárdenas “made public a sweeping program to help the once warlike Yaqui Indians of Sonora.” One of the major points was to order the Agriculture Department to push completion of irrigation projects in the Yaqui River Valley, while also furnishing the Yaqui farmers with animals and farm implements. In addition, the Education Department would “build schools and cooperate with the Indian affairs department in their operation.” Delegates would also be sent into the area to “establish maternity homes and parks for children.”[139]

New Challenges to Territorial Integrity

In the decades that followed the Cárdenas projects, the Yaquis in Sonora faced new challenges to their territorial integrity, sovereignty and prosperity.  Cárdenas had left the southern boundary of Yaqui territory vaguely defined and, over time, thousands of Mexican farmers and ranchers purchased a great deal of land in the southern Yaqui River Valley.[140]

The Yaqui Reservation of Arizona (1978)

On September 18, 1978, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona became federally recognized by the United States. The Pascua Yaqui Indian Reservation is located within the Tucson metropolitan area in Pima County. In the 2000 census, the reservation had a resident population of 3,315 persons, of which more than 90 percent were Native American. The Yaquis of Arizona currently represent a northern extension of Sonora’s Yaquis and many of them are descended from refugees that fled the war more than a century ago.

Yaqui Ethnic and Cultural Identity

In 1981, historian Professor Evelyn Hu-Dehart wrote that “most Yaquis proudly claim a separate ethnic and cultural identity” — distinct from the Mexican cultural mainstream of any other cultural class. And the Yaquis stand out “for having waged the most determined, enduring and successful war against involuntary absorption into the dominant culture or integration with the larger society.” Hu-Dehart also said that the Yaquis “have held on tenaciously to their land, community, and culture, [the] guarantees of their autonomy.” The tightly organized Jesuit mission system gave the Yaquis “a more precise definition of their territorial boundaries, a stronger sense of cultural unity, and a greater degree of economic security…. In short, the mission accelerated in all Yaqui speakers the sense of being one people, or, in the Jesuits’ preferred term: one nation.” [141]

One website recently paid tribue to the Yaquis, stating “The Yaqui were a war-like people, full of Pride and Courage, and maybe even the only native tribe in Mexico that did not yield under the weight of blows caused by Yori (both Spanish and Mexican) steel and gunpowder.” They were considered to be "cunning as demons" by many of their adversaries, yet also naive by others. In any case, the combined attributes of an indomitable spirit and physical strength posed great difficulties for both Spanish and Mexican occupation of the Sonoran region.”[142]

The Chief Villain in the History of Yaqui Oppression: Porfirio Díaz

Although there are many villains in the history of Yaqui oppression, Porfirio Díaz stands out as the most pernicious antagonist of all. Díaz openly called for the colonization of the Yaqui and Mayo Valleys, ignoring the titles that protected the Yaquis and their land. The Yaqui People took up arms against Díaz in 1882 and endured abhorrent genocide as a result. And at the turn of the century, he engineered widespread deportations of the Yaquis to faraway lands in southern Mexico. The overthrow and exile of Díaz in 1911 was a gift to many Mexicans but was undoubtedly welcomed by the Yaquis who cheered the end of their most dedicated antagonist.

The Yaquis and Mayos in the 2020 Census

In the 2020 Mexican census, the Mayos and Yaquis were tallied and the results of that census are shown in the following table:

There were 38,507 Mayos in Mexico at the time of the 2020 Census. The majority of the Mayos (69%) lived in Sonora, while nearly 29% lived in Sinaloa. Some of the Mayos living in Sinaloa are believed to be descendants from some of the other Cáhita-speaking tribal groups [i.e., Tehueco, Sinaloa, Zuaque, and others] that gradually blended into the dominant Mayo people during the 1600’s.  The Yaqui population in Mexico was much smaller (19,376) than the Mayo population, and nearly 95% of them lived in either Sinaloa or Sonora. There were an additional 535 Yaqui speakers in Baja California.[143]

Where Do the Yaquis Live?

In the present day, the majority of the Yaquis are now concentrated in the municipios of Guaymas and Bácum, followed in importance by the municipios of Cajeme and Empalme. In total, there are eight Yaqui towns belonging to the four aforementioned municipios: Cócorit, Loma de Bácum, Tórin, Vícam, Pótam, Belem, Ráhum and Huirivis, all of them located in the vicinity of the Yaqui River, except for the last two.

The following map and its legend show a cluster of native people who live in the Southern part of Sonora. In the very southern portion of the state are the Mayo Indians, represented by the yellow circles. Slightly to the northwest of the Mayo are the Yaquis, represented by brown circles [not to be mistaken with the Pápago, who are in the northern part of Sonora]. The Guarijío live in the mountains of the east near the border with Chihuahua.[144]

The following maps shows the locations of the towns where the Yaquis live in Sonora. The first map shows the section of Sonora where the Yaquis live. As stated earlier, the Yaquis generally lived along the Yaqui River. The second map shows the primary Yaqui towns that are shown in the insert of the first map.[145]

The Mayos in 2020

In the state of Sinaloa, the Mayo communities are located in the northern part in the municipios of Ahome, El Fuerte and Guasave. In Sonora, they live in the southern portion of the state, mainly in the municipios of Etchojoa, Huatabampo and Navojoa. The following map shows that two Indigenous groups are primarily found in Northern Sinaloa: the Mayos (yellow circles) in the west and the Tarahumara (purple circles) in mountainous border region adjoining the State of Chihuahua.[146]

López Obredor (AMLO) Apologizes for Crimes of the State (2021)

On September 28, 2021, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obredor (known as AMLO) issued an apology for "crimes of the state" committed against native tribes. Speaking in Vicam, Sonora, to representatives of 68 Indigenous and Afro-Mexican groups, AMLO apologized on behalf of the Mexican state for the treatment of Indigenous peoples and promised to carry out reforms as part of the Pueblo Yaqui Justice Plan, an initiative to recognize greater rights to land, water and self-sovereignty for Native and Afro-Mexican peoples and deliver compensations for displacing them.[147]

“The Mexican state should never again allow the marginalization, the abuse and the injustices against the Yaquis nor of any other ethnic or cultural group in our country,” the Mexican president said during a meeting with Yaqui and other Indigenous and Afro-Mexican leaders. “Now we’ve come here to endorse our compromise to carry out justice to the Yaqui people. First, we want to offer them an apology for the crimes of the state that have been committed against their ancestors.”[148]

Continuing Problems

As The Arizona Republic reported on October 2, 2022, the Yaquis today still suffer from the same poverty that many Mexicans – especially Indigenous peoples – in other states endure. The Republic reported that “even today, most Yaquis in Potam live in reed houses… While some still farm the surrounding fields, most Yaquis work as gardeners, bricklayers or laborers in neighboring cities.”[149] 

In fact, the newspaper reported that “The Yaquis find themselves at the center of a perfect storm: Everybody from Mexican drug cartels to water-hungry lithium miners covet their land.” Recently, drug cartels have moved in because “they view Yaqui territory as a lucrative path to smuggle drugs to the U.S.” And lithium deposits lie to the north of the Yaquis, and possibly within their own territory. According to the Yaquis, seven mining concessions have already been granted in their territory, but no one asked for the permission of the Yaquis to grant them.[150]

The Lack of Water Threatens Yaqui Culture

But the most significant problem is the lack of water which threatens the survival of Yaqui culture in Sonora. Although the Yaquis are the legal owners of at least half the water in the Yaqui River Basin, “they have seen much of their water redirected to feed burgeoning industries and projects to plant vineyards and avocados in the desert.” The lack of water and widespread poverty in some communities have driven Yaquis to nearby cities or to the border town of Nogales.[151]

In 2015, anthropologists concluded that “the massive extraction of water from the Yaqui River and the drying out of a large part of its historical channel ‘will affect important aspects of tradition, rituality and daily life.’” Record-setting heat and dry seasoins have accentuated this problem. According to Aimee Gabay, the “sacred waters” of the Yaqui people “have dried up after decades of overexploitation, unequal water distribution and drought.” This affects Yaqui culture which depended on the Yaqui River for its traditional ceremonies.[152]

Continuing Challenges

In the Sonora of the present-day, issues relating to water access and land disputes continue to affect the Yaqui community. However, the most obvious change they have experienced is the perception of the Mexicans towards their Yaqui countrymen. The Yaqui people are respected and admired by most Mexicans and by most Americans for their resilience, their cultural heritage, and their ongoing fight for land and water rights.

Many have recognized the historical injustices the Yaquis faced during their seemingly perpetual war against the Mexican government. The San Francisco Call said it all in their newspaper headline in 1909 when they emblazoned “The Yaquis – Most Stubborn Fighters on Earth” across the top of one page, but also paid tribute to their women (which included the following photograph taken at that time.[153]

The big difference between 1909 and 2024 is that the Yaquis are now respected by most Mexicans and by their government. Their traditional Deer Dance and other ceremonies are celebrated and considered valuable parts of Sonoran culture. And the Mexican government has recognized the abhorrent course of action they took during the Nineteenth Century [and continued well into the Twentieth Century]. Yes, the Yaquis still face challenges but instead of being despised and feared, they are looked upon as resilient, capable and admired.

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Military, Frank M. “Cajeme and the Mexico of His Times,” The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1967).

Pasillas, Enrique F., “Multiculturalism and fundamental rights in Northwestern Mexico: The Case of the Yaqui Tribe,” Estudios Fronterizos, Vol. 19 (2018).

Perez de Ribas, Andres. Historia de Los Triunfos de Nuestra Santa Fe Entre Gentes Las Mas Barbaras. Tomo II, Libros IV, V, VI, VII. Mexico: Layac, 1944.

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Radding, Cynthia. "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.

Radding, Cynthia, “The Coműn, Local Governance, and Defiance in Colonial Sonora” in Jesús F. de la Teja and Ross Frank (eds.), Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion, pp. 179-199. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

Radding, Cynthia. Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700-1850. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1997.

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Roca, Paul M. Paths of the Padres Through Sonora: An Illustrated History & Guide to its Spanish Churches. Tucson, Arizona: Arizona Pioneers’ Historical Society, 1967.

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

Sanchez, Alexandra, "The Yaqui and Porfirio Díaz: Explaining One of the Largest Forgotten Genocides of Modern Mexico” Honors Capstone Projects 42 (Spring 2020). Online: https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/honors_spring2020/42 [Accessed 12/10/2024].

Sanderson, Steven F. Agrarian Populism and the Mexican State: The Struggle for Land in Sonora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

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Sauer, Carl O. “Aboriginal Population of Northwestern Mexico,” Ibero-Americana: 10. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1935.

Schulze, Jeffrey M. Are We Not Foreigners Here? Indigenous Nationalism in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Chapell Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

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Spicer, Edward H. "The Yaqui and Mayo." in Handbook of Middle American Indians, edited by Robert Wauchope. Vol. 8, Ethnology, Part Two, edited by Evon Z. Vogt, 830-845. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969.

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Footnotes

[1] Evelynn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners and Indians: Spanish  Contact with the Yaqui Nation of Northwestern New Spain, 1533-1820 (Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1981), p. 8.

[2] Several sources have provided information about the territories of the Cáhitan groups, especially James R. Jaquith, The Present Status of the Uto-Aztecan Languages of Mexico: An Index of Data Bearing on Their Survival Geographical Location and Internal Relationships (Greeley, Colorado: Museum of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado, August 1970), pp.6-75. Another useful source was: Peter Gerhard, The North Frontier of New Spain (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982).

[3] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, p. 25.

[4] Perez de Ribas, Andres. Historia de Los Triunfos de Nuestra Santa Fe Entre Gentes Las Mas Barbaras (México, D.F., Editorial Layac, 1944), II, 10.

[5] Raphael Brewster Folsom, The Yaquis and the Empire: Violence, Spanish Imperial Power, and Native Resilience in Colonial Mexico (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 45-46, 64-66.

[6] Susan M. Deeds, “Indigenous Rebellions on the Northern Mexico Mission Frontier: From First-Generation to Later Colonial Responses,” in Donna J. Guy and Thomas E. Sheridan (eds), Contested Ground: Comparative Frontiers on the Northern and Southern Edges of the Spanish Empire (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1998), pp. 34-35.

[7] 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: The University of Arizona, 1962), pp. 46-85.

[8] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, pp.10-13.

[9] Perez de Ribas, op. cit., 11:64; Evelyn Hu De-Hart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, p. 33.

[10] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis: A Cultural History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980), p. 5; Edward H. Spicer, “Potam, A Yaqui Village in Sonora.” American Anthropological Association Memoir No. 77 (Menasha, Wisconsin), p. 23; Ralph L. Beals, “The Aboriginal Culture of the Cahita Indians,” Ibero-Americana, no.19 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1943), pp. 1-3.

[11] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, p. 25; Harry Prescott Johnson, “Diego Martínez de Hurdaide: Defender of the Northwestern Frontier of New Spain,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jun., 1942), p. 175.

[12] Raphael Brewster Folsom, op. cit., p. 64.

[13] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 46-47.

[14] Raphael Brewster Folsom, op. cit., pp. 68-69.

[15] Paul M Roca, Paths of the Padres Through Sonora: An Illustrated History & Guide to its Spanish Churches (Tucson, Arizona: Arizona Pioneers’ Historical Society, 1967), p. 6.

[16] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 47; Raphael Brewster Folsom, op. cit., p. 69.

[17] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, p. 25.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 47; Paul M. Roca, Paths of the Padres, p. 6.

[20] Robert C. West, Sonora: Its Geographical Personality (Austin, Texas:  University of Texas Press, 1993), p. 29; Pérez de Ribas, 1985, II, p. 14; Roca, 1967, p. 327; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 48; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 19.

[21] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, p. 26; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 16.

[22] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, pp. 26-27; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, pp. 16-17.

[23] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 47; Raphael  Brewster Folsom, op. cit., pp. 71-95

[24] Raphael Brewster Folsom, op. cit., pp. 84-87; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 17;  Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, pp. 26-30; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 48, 297.

[25] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners and Indians, p. 28.

[26] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 47-48; Raphael Brewster Folsom, op. cit., pp. 87-95.

[27] Robert C. West, Sonora: Its Geographical Personality, pp. 29-30.

[28] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners and Indians, p. 39.

[29] Raphael Brewster Folsom, op. cit., pp. 71-95

[30] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821-1920 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), p. 13.

[31] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 21.

[32] Cynthia Radding, “The Coműn, Local Governance, and Defiance in Colonial Sonora” in Jesús F. de la Teja and Ross Frank (eds.), Choice, Persuasion, and Coercion, pp. 179-199 (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), p. 183.

[33] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 49.

[34] Robert C. West, Sonora: It’s Geographic Personality, p. 53.

[35] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 51.

[36] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners and Indians, p. 56.

[37] Alan Knight, Mexico: The Colonial Era (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 133; Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 51ff; Cynthia Radding, Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700-1850 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 283, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, p. 56ff.

[38] Cynthia Radding, Wandering Peoples, p. 284.

[39] Albert M. Macias, The Defense of Pimería Alta, 1600-1800: Study in Spanish-Apache Military Relations (Master’s Thesis, University of Arizona, 1966), p. 61.

[40] Zoontjens, Linda and Yaomi Glenlivet. “A Brief History of the Yaqui and Their Land.” Sustained Action [Accessed on August 12, 2007].

[41] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 42; Susan Deeds, “Legacies of Resistance, Adaptation, and Tenacity: History of the Native Peoples of Northwest Mexico,” in Richard E. W. Adams and Murdo J. MacLeod, The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica, Part 2 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 58; Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival, p. 14.

[42] Ibid.; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 42.

[43] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival, p. 14; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 42; Cynthia Radding, Wandering Peoples, pp. 284-285

[44] Susan Deeds, Legacies of Resistance, p. 59; Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival, pp. 14-15.

[45] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, p. 68.

[46] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 43-45

[47] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 52; Raphael Brewster Folsom, The Yaquis and the Empire, pp. 164-175.

[48] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners & Indians, pp. 70-71.

[49] Ignacio Almada Bay, José Marcos Medina Bustos, María del Valle Borrero Silva and Jeff Banister. “Towards a New Interpretation of the Colonial Regime in Sonora, 1681-1821,” Journal of the Southwest, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Winter, 2008), p. 387.

[50] Raphael Brewster Folsom, The Yaquis and the Empire, p. 177; Susan Deeds, Rebellions on the Mission Frontier, p. 43.

[51] Raphael Brewster Folsom, The Yaquis and the Empire, pp. 177-179.

[52] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 52.

[53] Stuart F. Voss, On the Periphery of Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Sonora and Sinaloa, 1810-1877 (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1982), p. 16.; John Augustine Donohue, After the Kino-Jesuit Missions in Northwest New Spain, 1711-1767 (St. Louis: Jesuit Historical Institute, 1969), pp. 89-104.

[54] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 54; Cynthia Radding, The Común, Local Governance, p. 183.

[55] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 54.

[56] Cynthia Radding, Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press Books 2006), p. 61.

[57] Linda Zoontjens and Yaomi Glenlivet, A Brief History of the Yaqui and their Land.

[58] Claudia B. Haake, The State, Removal and Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Mexico, 1620-2000 (New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2007), p. 91.

[59] Maurice Crandall, These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019) p. 175.

[60] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 60-64.

[61] Alexandra Sanchez, "The Yaqui and Porfirio Díaz: Explaining One of the Largest Forgotten Genocides of Modern Mexico,” Honors Capstone Projects, 42 (Spring 2010), p.10. Online: https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/honors_spring2020/42 [Accessed 12/10/2024].

[62] Steven F. Sanderson, Agrarian Populism and the Mexican State: The Struggle for Land in Sonora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 21.

[63] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, “Development and Rural Rebellion: Pacification of the Yaquis in the Late Porfiriato,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Feb., 1974), p. 74.

[64] Evelyn Hu-De-Hart, Yaqui Resistance, p. 21.

[65] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis: A Cultural History, p. 130.

[66] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 61; Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival, p. 20.

[67] Ibid., pp. 20-35; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 61-63.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival, pp. 35-48; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 62-64; Cynthia Radding, Wandering Peoples, pp. 293-295.

[70] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Development and Rural Rebellion, p. 74;  Steven E. Sanderson, Agrarian Populism and the Mexican State, p. 46.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 143.

[73] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival, pp. 76-78.

[74] Ibid., p. 82;

[75] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 65; Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance, pp. 74-77.

[76] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 144.

[77] Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 66-67.

[78] Ibid., pp. 66-67.

[79] Ibid., pp. 67-68, Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 145.

[80] Steven E. Sanderson, Agrarian Populism and the Mexican State, p. 46.

[81] Enrique F. Pasillas, “Multiculturalism and fundamental rights in Northwestern Mexico: The Case of the Yaqui Tribe,” Estudios Fronterizos, vol. 19, 2018, p. 14.

[82] Sanchez, Alexandra, The Yaqui and Porfirio Díaz, p. 13.

[83] Ibid.

[84] Message of the Governor of Sonora to the federal government on pacification of Yaquis, Hermosillo, January 19, 1881, PHS 2:167-68, published in in Evelyn Hu-DeHart “Yaqui Resistance to Mexican Expansion” in John E. Kicza (ed.), The Indian in Latin American History: Resistance, Resilience, and Acculturation, 1st ed., Jaguar Books on Latin America 1 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1993).

[85] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Development and Rural Rebellion, 76.

[86] Frank M. Hillary, “Cajeme and the Mexico of His Times,” The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer 1967), pp. 120-121.

[87] Jeffrey M. Schulze, Are We Not Foreigners Here? Indigenous Nationalism in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Chapell Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), pp. 2-4; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, pp. 160-161; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, p. 67.

[88] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Development and Rural Rebellion, p. 75.  

[89] The San Francisco Examiner, January 15, 1887, p. 2.

[90] The San Francisco Examiner, April 14, 1887, p. 4.

[91] San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1887, p. 9.

[92] Photograph by Fernando Llaguno, Commissioned by Ramon Corral. From: Hernández, Fortunato. Las Razas Indígenas de Sonora y La Guerra del Yaqui (Mexico City: Talleres de la Casa Editorial, 1902).

[93] St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 16, 1897, p. 9.

[94] The San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 25, 1900, p. 1.

[95] Quad City Times, Sept. 7, 1902, p. 2.

[96] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Development and Rural Rebellion, p. 81.

[97] Ibid.

[98] Ibid., pp. 80-81.

[99] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, Raza y Tierra: La Guerra de Castas y el Henequén (Centro de Estudios Históricos, Nueva Serie, 10) (México, El Colegio de México, 1970), pp. 183-188, 204.

[100] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Development and Rural Rebellion, p. 84.

[101] The removal of the Yaquis to Yucatan is discussed in Claudia B. Haake, The State, Removal and Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Mexico, 1620-2000 (New York: Taylor and Francis Group, 2007), pp. 139-156; Jeffrey M. Schulze, Are We Not Foreigners Here?, pp. 19-20.

[102] Ibid., p. 27; Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 158.

[103] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Development and Rural Rebellion, p. 83.

[104] Ibid.

[105] Ibid., pp. 87-88.

[106] Ibid., p. 88.

[107] The Boise Citizen, November 12, 1909, p. 1.

[108] John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Chicago, Illinois: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1910), p. 76.

[109] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Development and Rural Rebellion, p. 91.

[110] Francisco I. Madero, La Sucesión Presidencial en 1910. El Partido Nacional Democrático (San Pedro, Coahuila, 1908); Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 227.

[111] The Los Angeles Times, Sept. 5, 1911, p. 1.

[112] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 227.

[113] Claudia B. Haake, The State, Removal and Indigenous Peoples, p. 175.

[114] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 227.

[115] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, p. 227.

[116] Ricardo Flores Magón, “The Social Revolution in Sonora,” Regeneración (Feb. 21, 1914. Online: https://mgouldhawke.wordpress.com/2024/01/21/the-social-revolution-in-sonora-ricardo-flores-magon-1914/.

[117] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, pp. 158-159.

[118] Alexandra Sanchez, The Yaqui and Porfirio Díaz, pp. 3-4.

[119] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival, p. 176; George Pierre Castile, “Yaquis, Edward H. Spicer, and Federal Indian Policy: From Immigrants to Native Americans,” Journal of the Southwest, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), p. 387.

[120] Edward H. Spicer, The Yaquis, pp. 261-262.

[121] Ibid.

[122] Fort Worth Record-Telegram, Sept. 15, 1926, p. 8.

[123] Grand Rapids Press, April 1, 1927, p. 1.

[124] The Los Angeles Times, April 28, 1927, p. 1.

[125] Lawrence Journal-World, Sept. 30, 1927, p. 2.

[126] El Universal, September 28, 1927.

[127] Ibid., October 05, 1927

[128] Aimee Gabay, “Loss of Water Means Loss of Culture for Mexico’s Indigenous Yaqui,” Mongabay, 16 Jul 2024. Online: https://news.mongabay.com/2024/07/loss-of-water-means-loss-of-culture-for-mexicos-indigenous-yaqui/ [Accessed 12/20/2024].

[129]  Adrian A. Bantjes, As If Jesus Walked on Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora, and the Mexican Revolution (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998). p 37.

[130] Ibid., p. 125.

[131] Quoted in John J. Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute: The Expropriation of American-Owned Rural Land in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 131.

[132] Quoted in Edward H. Spicer, People of Pascua (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1988 (1st edition)), pp. 178, 182.

[133] Boletín Indigenista 3 (1943): 41–43; Dwyer, The Agrarian Dispute, p. 134.

[134] The News and Advance, Jul 19, 1936, p. 11.

[135] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners and Indians, pp. 2-3.

[136] Rochester Democrat and Cronicle, Oct. 30, 1937, p. 3; The Arizona Republic, Oct. 30, 1937, p. 13.

[137] Eric V. Meeks, “Navigating the Border: The Struggle for Indigenous Sovereignty in the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands,” The Journal of Arizona History, Vol. 61, No. 3/4, Exploring Arizona's Diverse Past (Autumn/Winter 2020), p. 645.

[138] Adrian A. Bantjes, As If Jesus Walked on Earth, pp. 145–46; John J. Dwyer, Agrarian Dispute, pp. 134–35.

[139] Arizona Daily Star, Feb. 20, 1938, p. 1.

[140] Eric V. Meeks, Navigating the Border, p. 657:

[141] Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Missionaries, Miners and Indians, pp. 2-3.

[142] Perlas del Mar de Cortez, “A Small Tribute to the Yaqui (Yoeme) Indian Nation” (Sep 29, 2018). Online: https://cortezpearl.mx/pages/a-small-tribute-to-the-yaqui-yoeme-indian-nation [Accessed 12/21/2024]

[143] Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020. Tabulados del Cuestionario Básico: Población de 3 Años y Más Que Habla Lengua Indígena por Entidad Federativa y Lengua Según Condición de Habla Española y Sexo (Catálogo INALI).

[144] Atlas de Los Pueblo Indígenas de México, “Sonora: Pueblos Inds Indígenas Con Mayor Presencia en La Entidad (2020). Online:  https://atlas.inpi.gob.mx/sonora-2/ [Accessed 12/19/2024].

[145] Sebastian Nordhoff, “Map of the Locations Where Yaqui Speakers Live” (October 2022). Online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Yaqui_population.svg [Accessed 12/28/2024].

[146] Atlas de Los Pueblo Indígenas de México, “Sinaloa: Pueblos Inds Indígenas Con Mayor Presencia en La Entidad (2020). Online:https://atlas.inpi.gob.mx/sinaloa-2/ [Accessed 12/19/2024].

[147] Benito L. Kelty, “Mexican President AMLO Issues Apology to Pascua Yaqui, Other Tribes for Historical Crimes,” TucsonSentinel.com (Oct 8, 2021). Online: https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/100821_yaqui_mexico_president/mexican-president-amlo-issues-apology-pascua-yaqui-other-tribes-historical-crimes/

[148] Ibid.

[149] The Arizona Republic, Oct. 12, 2022, p. A16.

[150] Ibid.

[151] Ibid.

[152] Aimee Gabay, op. cit. 

[153] “The Yaquis – Most Stubborn Fighters on Earth,” San Francisco Call, Vol. 105, No. 69, 7 February 1909. From the California Digital Newspaper Collection.Online: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19090207.2.199.8.6&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-------- [Accessed 12/22/2024].