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Article Excerpt
Spanish occupation of the northwest territories, apart from the earliest abortive attempts in Baja California, began with an exploratory expedition by Francisco Ibarra, governor of the newly established (1562) administration of Nueva Vizcaya. The expedition failed in its goal of discovering new sources of mineral wealth, but did establish the Villa de San Felipe on the Sinaloa River. Almost thirty years later, the Jesuits, led by Frs. Gonzalo de Tapia and Martin Perez, were invited to undertake the missionization of the Indians of Sinaloa, beginning with the tribes on the Fuerte River, which had been subjugated by military conquest. Next to be converted were the peaceably disposed Mayos, located along the river that bears their name. Mission expansion northward was then thwarted by the hostile Yaquis, who thrice repelled Spanish forces and their Indian allies. However, the Yaquis sued for peace in 1610 and requested that missions be established among them, thus clearing the way for the Black Robes to reach them and other tribes. The Jesuit mission field expanded so rapidly that by 1620 a new ecclesiastical administrative district (rectirado) was formed. It separated the territories of the Mayo and Yaqui rivers from that located at San Felipe in Sinaloa. There followed two generations of peaceful relations between the Jesuits and the Cahita-speaking peoples, marred only by the epidemics that ravaged the tribes. By 1622, the Black Robes were reaching the Lower Pimas of the middle Yaqui River and extending their missions into the western slopes of the Sierra Madre. By 1627 they were converting the Opatas, of the middle Yaqui River, and the mountain-dwelling Jovas. Some Christianized Yaquis and Opatas aided the padres in further missionary expansion.
Spanish settlement of Sonora began officially in 1640 with the creation of the new province of Nueva Andalucia. Don Pedro de Perea, the presidial commander of the Villa de Sinaloa, was named alcalde mayor of the new administrative district, overseeing a few small ranching communities. Five Franciscan priests and colonists from New Mexico were recruited as settlers. The Franciscans stayed until 1650, when, after little to show for their efforts, they settled their jurisdictional quarrel with the Jesuits. A formal agreement established the mountains east of the Bavispe River as the dividing line between Jesuit territory on the west and Franciscan territory on the east. In 1653 the Jesuits began to establish their first permanent missions in the Sonora and Bavispe valleys.
Meanwhile, in the Jesuit territory to the west, the long era of peace began to unravel when mines discovered at Alamos, Sonora, in 1684 drew an influx of Spaniards. Further strikes to the north attracted additional prospectors and the riffraff that inevitably tagged along. The trouble began in 1730 as settlers encroached on Mayo territory. The newcomers, envious of the choice farm- and ranchlands developed by the Jesuits and Indians, complained to the governor. He allied himself with the settlers, fueling the hostilities between civil and religious authorities. The unrest played into the hands of Indian malcontents: Yaquis and Mayos revolted in 1740 and were joined by the Lower Pimas. The uprising was costly: an estimated 1,000 Spaniards and 5,000 Indians were killed and the country, with the exception of Alamos, deserted. The new governor, Agustin de Vildosola, finally put down the rebellion, and captives were sent to labor in the mines and haciendas.
Beginning in 1679, Jesuits turned their missionary efforts to the coastal Seris. However, the Seris, consisting of six major geographic groups speaking a language different from Pima or Opata and reliant upon a maritime subsistence economy, were not prime candidates for conversion. In 1748 less than one-third of them had accepted mission life. In spite of numerous expeditions sent against them, and against apostate Pimas who had fled to them, they remained a threat until 1769, when what cohesion they had among them began to fall apart.
After a seventy-five-year interval from their initial contact with the Lower Pimas, the Jesuit Fr. Eusebio Francisco Kino began work with the Upper Pimas in 1687. Like the Opatas, the Pimas (who spoke multiple dialects of a single language) were not an integrated tribe. Some, referred to as Pima and Sobaipuri, lived in riverine rancherias and practiced irrigation farming. Those later known as the Papago (now Tohono O'odham) inhabited a vast area lacking permanent streams. They farmed field villages during the monsoon season and stayed by foothill and mountain springs in the winter. A third group, nomads known as the Sand Papago, rived principally by hunting and gathering in the extremely arid western reaches of the Sonoran Desert. Political organization was minimal--at best a few small settlements banding together for warfare or religious celebrations. Fr. Kino labored as the sole missionary in the Pimeria Alta (land of the Upper Pimas) for the first five years, spending much of his time in exploratory trips, accompanied by Captain Mateo Manje or by Manje's uncle, General Domingo Jironza. Nevertheless, by the 1690s he had planted missions almost to the Arizona border. Cattle herds, fields, and orchards were flourishing at the missions of Dolores, Cocospera, San Ignacio, and Tubutama, and a new mission had been started at Caborca. Without warning, some of the northern Pimas revolted in 1695, incited by resentment of Opata overseers at Tubutama and the abuses of a lieutenant of the Presidio de Fronteras. Fr. Saeta, newly established at Caborca, was martyred. The charismatic Kino was able to arrange a meeting with peaceful headmen to convene the Pimas, including the rebellious faction. At the gathering, the rebel leaders were to be identified. As the first guilty man was pointed out, however, a hotheaded Spanish officer beheaded him with his sword, causing a stampede. Spanish soldiers and Seri allies opened fire, killing about fifty Pimas, including the headman who had arranged the meeting. This unintended tragedy set off a real war: some rebels destroyed Tubutama and Caborca, as well as the churches at San Ignacio and Imuris, before dissipating. Again, Fr. Kino had to set up a meeting of friendly headmen, who agreed to turn over the Tubutaman who had instigated the revolt.
In the early 1700s, Kino established additional missions in the Pima settlements at Bac, Tumacacori, and Guevavi. He made numerous exploratory trips to the west, mapping the Pimeria and the Papagueria. Following the Gila River to the Colorado, and down that river to its mouth, he "rediscovered" the fact that California was not an island and that it could be reached by land. Fr. Kino died in March 1711 at Magdalena, a visita of San Ignacio, where he had gone to dedicate a devotional chapel to his favorite saint, Francisco Xavier. (His body was buried there, where it can be seen under a dome in the plaza.) During his twenty-four years in the Pimeria Alta, there were never more than three or four missionaries to cover this large territory. Some did not stay for long, the exception being Kino's longtime friend Fr. Agustin Campos, who labored in the Pimeria Alta for more than thirty years. The shortage of ministers precluded further expansion.
A second major uprising of northern O'odham against Spanish overseers and Jesuit missionaries occurred in 1751. Fr. Tomas Tello at Caborca and Fr. Enrique Ruhen at Sonoyta, and at least one hundred Spaniards and friendly Indians were killed before the rebellion was quelled the following year. Even though most of the Piman people were eventually pacified, other ethnic groups were not. Seris and Apaches remained a serious threat. The Jesuit Fr. Juan Nentwig recorded the abandonment in 1764 of 118 mining sites and 126 estancias and ranches in northern Sonora alone.
By a 1767 order of King Carlos III of Spain, members of the Society of Jesus were expelled from all Spanish lands. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits, the missions were effectively abandoned for the better part of a year until Franciscans from the Apostolic College of Santa Cruz de...
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