Yaqui Indians

The Yaqui Indians: Four centuries of resistance
By John P. Schmal

Over the years, I have met many Americans who have proudly stated that they had a Yaqui grandmother or Yaqui great-grandfather or are in some way descended from the Yaqui Indians of Mexico's northwest coastal region. Many Mexican Americans have indigenous roots from various parts of Mexico, but the assimilation and mestizaje that took place in many northern and central states of Mexico has obscured any cultural or linguistic identity with specific tribes. However, the Yaqui Indians - and their cousins, the Mayo Indians - have held tightly to their ethnic and linguistic identity in a way that many other indigenous groups have not.

Although many cultural, spiritual and linguistic traits of Mexico's Amerindians have been preserved in the southern states. It is difficult to find indigenous tribes in northern Mexico who have continued to practice at least some of their ancient practices. The Tarahumara, Tepehuanes, Huicholes, Yaquis and Mayos stand in that rare breed of Native Americans that has held onto many aspects of their original culture. The story of the Yaquis and their resistance is a truly dynamic story that reminds that the spirit of a people cannot be conquered if a people truly believe in their unique destiny.

The story of the Yaquis and their Mayo cousins takes us to the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora. The State of Sinaloa, with a surface area of 58,487 square kilometers (22,582 square miles), is basically a narrow strip of land running along the Pacific Ocean. The state of Sonora, which lay north of Sinaloa, consists of 182,554 square kilometers (70,484 square miles) and has a common border with Arizona and New Mexico. The following paragraphs analyze the various confrontations and wars that the Yaquis and Mayos waged to protect their native lands and customs from imperialism.

First Contact: 1531.
In December 1529, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán left Mexico City with an expedition of 300 Spaniards and 10,000 Indian allies (Tlaxcalans, Aztecs and Tarascans). Guzmán, a lawyer by profession, had already gained a reputation as a ruthless and cruel administrator when he served as Governor of Panuco on the Gulf Coast. Traveling through Michoacán, Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Sinaloa, Guzmán left a trail of devastation and terror wherever he went.

In March 1531, Guzmán's army reached the site of present-day Culiacán (now in Sinaloa), where his force engaged an army of 30,000 warriors in a pitched battle. The indigenous forces were decisively defeated and, as Mr. Gerhard notes, the victors "proceeded to enslave as many people as they could catch."

However, before long, however, reports of Guzmán's brutal treatment of the Indians reached the authorities in Mexico City. In 1536, the Viceroy of Nueva España Antonio de Mendoza arrested Guzmán and imprisoned him. He was returned to Spain in chains where he was put on trial and died in obscurity and disgrace.

The indigenous people confronted by Guzmán in his 1531 battle belonged to the Cáhita language group, and were most likely the Yaqui Indians. Speaking eighteen closely related dialects, the Cáhita peoples of Sinaloa and Sonora numbered about 115,000 and were the most numerous of any single language group in northern Mexico. These Indians inhabited the coastal area of northwestern Mexico along the lower courses of the Sinaloa, Fuerte, Mayo, and Yaqui Rivers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cajeme and the Yaqui Rebellions During the Porfiriato (1876-1887).
During the reign of Porfirio Díaz, the ongoing struggle for autonomy and land rights dominated Yaqui-Mexican relations. An extraordinary leader named Cajeme now took center stage in the Yaquis' struggle for autonomy. Cajeme, whose name meant "He who does not drink," was born José María Leyva. He learned Spanish and served in the Mexican army. Although Cajeme's parents were Yaqui Indians, he had become very Mexicanized.

Cajeme's military service with the Mexican army was so exemplary that he was given the post of Alcalde Mayor of the Yaqui River area. Soon after receiving this promotion, however, Cajeme announced his intention to withdraw recognition of the Mexican Government if they did not grant the Yaquis self-government. Cajeme galvanized a new generation of Yaquis and Mayos and led his forces against selected towns in Yaqui Country.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deportation of Yaqui Indians (1902-1910).
After the turn of the century, the Mexican federal government decided on a course of action for clearing Yaquis out of the state of Sonora. Colonel Emilio Kosterlitzky was placed in charge of Federal Rural Police in the state with orders to round up all Yaquis and arrange to deport them southward. Between 1902 -1908, between eight and possibly as many as fifteen thousand of the estimated population of thirty thousand Yaquis were deported.

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

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

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

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

By 1910, the Yaquis had been almost entirely eliminated from their homeland. In the 1910 census, 5,175 persons classified as speakers of the Yaqui language five years of age and older lived within the Mexican Republic. However, by 1930, the Yaqui population had dropped to 2,134. It is very likely that many persons of Yaqui heritage may have denied that they spoke the language or belonged to the ethnic group.

The Yaquis fought their last major battle with Mexican forces in 1927. However, in 1939, Mexican President Cardenas granted the Yaqui tribe official recognition and title to roughly one-third of their traditional tribal lands.

Even today, the Yaquis have managed to maintain a form of autonomy within the Mexican nation. In the 2000 Mexican census, Sonora had a total of 55,694 persons who were classified as speakers of indigenous languages five years of age and over. This group represented only 2.85% of the entire population of Sonora. The population of persons speaking the Yaqui language, however, was only 12,467.

The Yaqui identity endures in the present day, but is in danger of extinction. "They are threatened continually by the expansion of the Mexican population, as landless Mexicans invade their territory or intermarry with Yaquis and start to take over some of the lands," said Joe Wilder, Director of the University of Arizona's Southwest Center. "The Yaquis are at once deeply admired by Sonorans and deeply despised," said Wilder, noting that the Yaqui deer dancer is the official state symbol.

To many Americans, the Yaqui Indians represent an enduring legacy of the pre-Hispanic era. Because the mestizaje and assimilation of many Mexican states was so complete and widespread, the Yaqui Indians are seen as a rare vestige of the old Mexico.

© 2008, John P. Schmal.

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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