Missionaries, Miners, and Indians
Spanish Contact with the Yaqui Nation of Northwestern New Spain, 1533–1820
Abstract
The Yaqui Indians managed to avoid assimilation during the Spanish colonization of Mexico. Even when mining interests sought to wrest Yaqui labor from the control of the Jesuits who had organized Indian society into an agricultural system, the Yaqui themselves sought primarily to ensure their continuing existence as a people. More than a tale of Yaqui Indian resistance, Missionaries, Miners, and Indians documents the history of the Jesuit missions during a period of encroaching secularization. The Yaqui rebellion of 1740, analyzed here in detail, enabled the Yaqui to work for the mines without repudiating the missions; however, the erosion of the mission system ultimately led to the Jesuits’ expulsion from New Spain in 1767, and through their own perseverance, the Yaqui were able to bring their culture intact into the nineteenth century.
Keywords
Yaqui indians; yaqui history; yaqui rebellion; Southwest history; colonial southwest; Jesuit missions; Spanish colonization; New SpainISBN
9780816537853, 9780816507405, 9780816507559, 9780816537853Publisher
University of Arizona PressPublisher website
https://uapress.arizona.edu/Publication date and place
1981Imprint
University of Arizona PressClassification
History
History of the Americas