Yaqui River - Human History

Human History

As early as 552 AD, native inhabitants known as the Yoem Vatwe or Yaqui were living in family groups along the Rio Yaqui. The Yaqui used simple irrigation techniques to cultivate corn, beans, and squash while also hunting local game and gathering wild foods from the area. Yaquis traded native foods, furs, shells, salt, and other goods with many indigenous groups of central North America. The Yaquis lived more or less independently until the late 1800s, when many of them were driven from their lands surrounding the Rio Yaqui by the Mexican Army and forced to flee to more remote areas. Many Yaquis left the Rio Yaqui area to fight in the Vakatetteve Mountains, while others relocated to Yaqui communities in Arizona. By the late 1880s, smallpox disease had killed off many members of the Yaqui tribe so that only 4,000 Yaquis remained in the Rio Yaqui area.

In the early 1900s, after a series of conflicts with the Mexican Army, most of the remaining Yaqui were arrested and dispersed to plantations in the Yucatán Peninsula. The survivors continued resisting until the late 1920s, when Mexican authorities overcame resistance by employing heavy artillery and aircraft to bomb and shell Yaqui villages.