Yaqui
The Yaqui, Hiaki, or Yoeme, are an Indigenous people of Mexico and Native American tribe, who speak the Yaqui language, an Uto-Aztecan language.
Their primary homelands are in Río Yaqui valley in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. Today, there are eight Yaqui Pueblos in Sonora.
Some Yaqui fled state violence to settle in Arizona. They formed the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, based in Tucson, Arizona, which is the only federally recognized Yaqui tribe in the United States.
Many Yaqui in Mexico live on reserved land in the state of Sonora. Others live in Sinaloa and other regions, forming neighborhoods in various cities. Individual Yaqui and people of Yaqui descent live elsewhere in Mexico and the United States.
Language
The Yaqui language, or Yoem Noki, belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. Yaqui speak a Cahitan language, a group of about 10 mutually intelligible languages formerly spoken in much of the states of Sonora and Sinaloa. Most of the Cahitan languages are extinct; only the Yaqui and Mayo still speak their language. About 16,000 people speak Yaqui, primarily in Sonora, Sinaloa, and Arizona. Approximately 15,000 Yaqui speakers live in Mexico and 1,000 in the US, mostly in Arizona.Yaqui is a tonal language, with a tonal accent on either the first or the second syllable of the word. The syllables that follow the tone are all high. This is known as a pitch-accent language.
Name
The Yaqui call themselves Hiaki or Yoeme, the Yaqui word for person. The Yaqui call their homeland Hiakim, from which some say the name "Yaqui" is derived.Spanish Jesuit missionary Andrés Pérez de Ribas first wrote Yaqui and Hiaqui, later spelled Hiaki. Another early 17th-century Jesuit first recorded the term Cahita, which refers to the Hiaki, Mayo, and Tehueco. Mid-19th-century Mexican scholars used Yaqui and Hiaqui interchangeably and broadened the term Cahita to refer to more regional peoples.
History
1530s–1820s: Conquistadors and missionaries
When the Spanish first came into contact with the Yaqui in 1533, the Yaqui occupied a territory along the lower course of the Yaqui River. They were estimated to number 30,000 people living in 80 villages in an area about 60 miles long and 15 miles wide. Some Yaqui lived near the mouth of the river and lived off of the resources of the sea. Most lived in agricultural communities, growing beans, maize, and squash on land inundated by the river every year. Others lived in the deserts and mountains and depended upon hunting and gathering.Captain Diego de Guzmán, leader of an expedition to explore lands north of the Spanish settlements, encountered the Yaqui in 1533. A large number of Yaqui warriors confronted the Spaniards on a level plain. Their leader, an old man, drew a line in the dirt and told the Spanish not to cross it. He denied the Spanish request for food. A battle ensued. The Spanish claimed victory, although they retreated. Thus began 40 years of struggle, often armed, by the Yaqui to protect their culture and lands.
In 1565, Francisco de Ibarra attempted, but failed, to establish a Spanish settlement in Yaqui territory. What probably saved the Yaqui from an early invasion by the Spaniards was the lack of silver and other precious metals in their territory. In 1608, the Yaqui and 2,000 Indigenous allies, mostly Mayo, were victorious over the Spanish in two battles. A peace agreement in 1610 brought gifts from the Spanish and, in 1617, an invitation by the Yaquis for the Jesuit missionaries to stay and teach them.
The Yaqui lived in a mutually advantageous relationship with the Jesuits for 120 years. Most of them converted to Christianity while retaining many traditional beliefs. The Jesuit rule over the Yaqui was stern but the Yaqui retained their land and their unity as a people. The Jesuits introduced the Yaqui to wheat, cattle, and horses.
The Yaqui prospered and the missionaries were allowed to extend their activities further north. The Jesuit success was facilitated by the fact that the nearest Spanish settlement was 100 miles away and the Yaqui were able to avoid interaction with Spanish settlers, soldiers and miners. Important, too, was that epidemics of European diseases that destroyed many Indigenous populations appear not to have seriously impacted the Yaqui. The reputation of the Yaqui as warriors, plus the protection afforded by the Jesuits, perhaps shielded the Yaqui from Spanish slavers. The Jesuits persuaded the Yaqui to settle into eight towns: Bácum, Benem, Cócorit,,, Rahum, Tórim, and Vícam.
However, by the 1730s, Spanish settlers and miners were encroaching on Yaqui land and the Spanish colonial government began to alter the arms-length relationship. This created unrest among the Yaqui and led to a brief but bloody Yaqui and Mayo revolt in 1740. One thousand Spanish and 5,000 Native Americans were killed and the animosity lingered. The missions declined and the prosperity of the earlier years was never regained. The Jesuits were expelled from Mexico in 1767 and the Franciscan priests who replaced them never gained the confidence of the Yaqui.
An uneasy peace between the Spaniards and the Yaqui endured for many years after the revolt, with the Yaqui maintaining their tight-knit organization and most of their independence from Spanish and, after 1821, Mexican rule.
1820s–1920s: Yaqui Wars and enslavement
During Mexico's struggle for independence from Spain in the early 19th century, the Yaqui showed that they still considered themselves independent and self-governing. After Mexico won its independence, the Yaqui refused to pay taxes to the new government. A Yaqui revolt in 1825 was led by Juan Banderas. Banderas wished to unite the Mayo, Opata, Pima, and Yaqui into a state that would be autonomous, or independent of Mexico. The combined Indigenous forces drove the Mexicans out of their territories, but Banderas was eventually defeated and executed in 1833. This led to a succession of revolts as the Yaqui resisted the Mexican government's attempts to gain control of the Yaqui and their lands.The Yaqui supported the French during the brief reign of Maximilian I of Mexico in the 1860s. Under the leadership of Jose Maria Leyva, known as Cajemé, the Yaqui continued the struggle to maintain their independence until 1887, when Cajeme was caught and executed. The war featured a succession of brutalities by the Mexican authorities, including a massacre in 1868, in which the Army burned 150 Yaqui to death inside a church.
The Yaqui were impoverished by a new series of wars as the Mexican government adopted a policy of confiscation and distribution of Yaqui lands. Some displaced Yaquis joined the ranks of warrior bands, who remained in the mountains carrying on a guerrilla campaign against the Mexican Army.
During the 34-year rule of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, the government repeatedly provoked the Yaqui remaining in Sonora to rebellion in order to seize their land for exploitation by investors for both mining and agricultural use. Many Yaqui were sold at 60 pesos a head to the owners of sugar cane plantations in Oaxaca and the tobacco planters of the Valle Nacional, while thousands more were sold to the henequen plantation owners of the Yucatán.
By 1908, at least 5,000 Yaqui had been sold into slavery. At Valle Nacional, the enslaved Yaquis were worked until they died. While there were occasional escapes, the escapees were far from home and, without support or assistance, most died of hunger while begging for food on the road out of the valley toward Córdoba.
At Guaymas, thousands more Yaquis were put on boats and shipped to San Blas, where they were forced to walk more than 200 miles to San Marcos and its train station. Many women and children could not withstand the three-week journey over the mountains, and their bodies were left by the side of the road. The Mexican government established large concentration camps at San Marcos, where the remaining Yaqui families were broken up and segregated. Individuals were then sold into slavery inside the station and packed into train cars which took them to Veracruz, where they were embarked yet again for the port town of Progreso in the Yucatán. There they were transported to their final destination, the nearby henequen plantations.
On the plantations, the Yaquis were forced to work in the tropical climate of the area from dawn to dusk. Yaqui women were allowed to marry only non-native Chinese workers. Given little food, the workers were beaten if they failed to cut and trim at least 2,000 henequen leaves per day, after which they were then locked up every night. Most of the Yaqui men, women, and children sent for slave labor on the plantations died there, with two-thirds of the arrivals dying within a year.
During this time, Yaqui resistance continued. By the early 1900s, after "extermination, military occupation, and colonization" had failed to halt Yaqui resistance to Mexican rule, many Yaquis assumed the identities of other Tribes and merged with the Mexican population of Sonora in cities and on haciendas. Others left Mexico for the United States, establishing enclaves in southern Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Many Yaqui living in southern Arizona regularly returned to Sonora after working and earning money in the U.S., often for the purpose of smuggling firearms and ammunition to those Yaqui still fighting the Mexican government. Skirmishes continued until 1927, when the last major battle between the Mexican Army and the Yaqui was fought at Cerro del Gallo Mountain. By employing heavy artillery, machine guns, and planes of the Mexican Air Force to shell, bomb, and strafe Yaqui villages, Mexican authorities eventually prevailed.
The objective of the Yaqui and their frequent allies, the Mayo people, remained the same during almost 400 years of interaction with the Jesuits and the Spanish and Mexican governments: independent local government and management of their own lands.