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Cahita Indian Tribe History
Cahita. A group of tribes of the Piman family, consisting chiefly of the Yaqui
and the Mayo, dwelling in south west Sonora and north west Sinoloa, Mexico,
principally in the middle and lower portions of the valleys of the Rio Yaqui,
Rio Mayo, and Rio Fuerte, and extending from the Gulf of California to the
Sierra Madre.
Physically the men are usually large and well formed;
their complexion is of medium brown, and their features, though somewhat coarse,
are not unpleasant. The dress of both sexes is coarse and simple, of the men
consisting of a short cotton shirt, trousers, straw hat, and leather sandals,
the women wearing the typical cotton camisa and gown. The blanket and sash are
now rarely seen. The Yaqui formerly tattooed the seen. chin and arms. Owing to
the semitropical climate their typical dwellings were of canes and boughs,
covered with palm leaves, but these have been largely superseded by huts of
brush and adobe. Although belonging to the same division of the Piman stock and
showing no marked difference in culture, the Mayo and Yaqui , tribes have not
been friendly; indeed the former waged war against the Yaqui until they
themselves were finally conquered, when the Yaqui compelled them to pay
tribute and to furnish warriors to aid the Yaqui in their almost incessant
hostility first toward Spain, afterward against Mexico. They now hold aloof from
each other, and while the Yaqui are habitually on the warpath, the Mayo are
entirely pacific.
In the fertile valleys along the streams respectively
occupied by the tribes of this group, they engage in raising corn, cotton,
calabashes, beans, and tobacco, and also in cultivating the mezcal-producing
agave. They hunted in the neighboring Sierra Madre and fished in the streams
that supplied the water to irrigate their fields, as well as on the coast, where
the Yaqui still obtain salt for sale, principally in Guaymas. It has been said
that neither the Mayo nor the Yaqui had a tribal chief, each tribe being settled
in a number of autonomous villages which combined only in case of warfare, but
there appears to have been a village ruler or kind of cacique. In the first half
of the 17th century the Mayo and Yaqui together probably numbered between 50,000
and 60,000. There are now about 40,000, equally divided between the tribes, but
like most of the southern tribes of the Piman family, these have largely become
Hispnized, except in language. The Yaqui particularly are naturally industrious
and are employed as cattlemen, teamsters farmers, and sailors; they are also
good miners, are expert in pearl diving, and are employed for all manual labor
in preference to any others. They exhibit an unusual talent for music and adhere
more or less to the performance of their primitive dances (now somewhat varied
by civilization), engaged in principally on feast days, particularly during the
harvest festival of San Juan and at the celebration of the Passover. The chief
vices of the Yaqui, it is said, are an immoderate indulgence in intoxicants, and
stealing, gambling, is while conjugal fidelity scarcely known to them
There is some uncertainty in regard to the tribal
divisions of the Cahita group. Pimentel (Lenguas, I, 453)
and Buelna (Arte Lengua Cahita, x) divide it into three
dialects, the Yaqui, Mayo, and Tehueco, but the latter, in his Peregrinacion de
los Aztecan (21, 1892), mentions the Sinaloa, Tehueco, and
Zuaque as distinct groups. Orozco y Berra (Geog., 58)
gives Yaqui, Mayo, Tehueco, and Vacoregue. It appears that there was in fact a
Sinaloa tribe which later lost its identity through absorption by the Tehueco,
while the Zuaque were apparently identical with the latter. For the present
condition of the Yaqui and the Mayo see Hrdlicka in Am. Anthro., n. s., vi, 51,
1904.)
The books presented are for their
historical value only and are not the
opinions of the Webmasters of the site.
Handbook
of American Indians, 1906
Index of Tribes or Nations
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