The Hiaqui wars and the peace of the Rio Hiaqui, as the Jesuit history of 1645 records them
The wars between the Hiaqui nation of the Sinaloa frontier and the captain Diego Martinez de Hurdaide, and the peace that ended them, told by the losing side's own printed history. It records a Spanish force of twenty-two soldiers surrounded by seven thousand fighters, a tactic devised to bring down armoured horses, women sent as envoys to negotiate, and a peace whose terms included missionaries requested by the Hiaqui and two of their own leaders handed over for execution.
Why this wins its question: English-language accounts of the Yaqui usually begin in the nineteenth century, with the wars against the Mexican republic and the deportations to Yucatan, and treat the seventeenth century as prehistory in a sentence. The earliest printed account of the seventeenth-century wars exists, it is by the side that lost the field, and it is almost never quoted. This object quotes it: the wars beginning not in a preaching but in a flight of Christian Indians who, in the author's own words, sought liberty of conscience and to live in their liberty and customs; twenty-two soldiers and one friendly Indian surrounded by seven thousand fighters, the captain with five arrow wounds; the order to fire the arquebuses by turns and to break the fallen arrows to exhaust the enemy's supply; the Hiaqui plan to go in under the horses with captured machetes and hamstring them, because a soldier on the ground was lost under the weight of his armour; women walking the roads to bring the terms and arriving in gueypiles and featherwork; and a peace in which the Hiaqui asked for the Padres themselves, offered to gather their rancherias into pueblos, sent their sons as hostages to the college school - and delivered two of their own leaders to a captain who put them to death. Both halves are on the record here because either half alone would be propaganda.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The history gives the wars a cause that is not religion but flight from a mission. Chapter II of Libro V is headed "Del origen, y causa de guerras muy reñidas, que los Españoles tuuieron con los Hiaquis", and it says the wars had their beginning in the flight and rising of the greater part of the already Christian pueblo of Ocoroni, which happened while the captain Diego Martinez de Hurdaide was in Mexico treating with the viceroy about matters touching the good of the province.
The author states the fugitives' own motive in their terms, which is the most valuable sentence in the chapter because it is written against his interest. The Ocoronis, he says, guided and captained by some gentiles and by other bad Christians, "pretendia libertad de conciencia", and took their route far inland in order to go in among gentiles and live in their liberty and customs. Elsewhere in the same volume he describes people fleeing to the hills in the same terms.
The leader of the flight is named and placed. The principal author and captain of the retreat of the Ocoronis to the Hiaqui nation was an Indian of the nation properly called Cinaloa, who feigned to be a Christian without being one and called himself Iuan Lautaro; having left the province he went to the Real de Minas de San Andres, spent some time among Christians and returned to his land of Cinaloa. He gathered forty families of the Ocoronis and entered with them into the river of Hiaqui, spreading talk against the captain, the soldiers and the other Christians, and teaching the Hiaquis how they should behave when the captain reached their lands.
The book records a defeat, and the numbers are its own. In the entrada it narrates, the friendly Indians broke and fled under such fury of arrows that the Spaniards followed them, abandoning their captain, who was left with twenty-two soldiers and a single friendly Indian, most of them wounded, the captain with five arrow wounds in face and hands; they gathered in a place half a league from the river, with the horses already exhausted and the summer sun high, surrounded by seven thousand Indians of war. The figure of seven thousand is the Spanish side's estimate of an enemy force and is reported here as such.
The same page preserves two pieces of tactical detail. The captain ordered that the arquebuses not all be fired together but in the order he gave, because the enemy had taken the baggage and the powder and only what the men carried on them was left; and he ordered the one remaining friendly Indian to gather up and break the arrows falling near the camp, so as to spend the enemy's munition and leave them unable to use it again - an extreme means, the author calls it, of weakening their force.
The Hiaquis are credited, by their enemy, with devising a counter to armoured cavalry. Some of the boldest of them, the book says, planned a new manner of fighting: to throw themselves with machetes they had taken from the Spaniards under the arms of the horses to hamstring them, since in that lies the whole force of the war, because a soldier fallen to the ground was lost under the weight of his arms. It also records that they celebrated their triumphs with the greatest spoils they had seen in their lives - saddles, bridles, stirrups and clothing - that they wished to dance with the Spaniards' heads and above all with the captain's, and that they repeatedly called him by the name of hechizero, a title feared and famous among them.
The limits on the Spanish side are printed too. The captain could not attempt a new entrada nor arm a new force without licence from the viceroy and help with the costs, because the first ones he had made at his own expense and had been left much spent by them; he had been advised that the governor of Vizcaya would not supply what he asked; and the intelligence he had of the Hiaqui came through friendly Indians he had won who went into Hiaqui. Against that he worked by threats and by talk with Indians of neighbouring peoples, telling them he was preparing a punishment never seen, with three captains and their squadrons entering the river from three sides at once - a plan the author himself calls possible as the captain represented it, although he could not carry it out.
The peace was negotiated, and women carried it. The book says God moved Indian women to walk so many roads to obtain these terms, and describes them arriving dressed in the manner of the Mexican women, with gueypiles and naguas of showy colours and featherwork, a thing so new and never seen among them; two caciques went as ambassadors and asked for a term of twenty-six days to bring back their nation's final answer, and the captain gave them ten more. The ambassadors reported how well they had been received, and the Hiaquis saw the caciques who had gone to see him return with horses and other gifts.
The effect on other nations is recorded as the reason the peace mattered beyond the river. Seeing that a nation so celebrated and valiant as the Hiaqui had come in and was asking for peace, other nations also came to treat of the same with the captain, to congratulate him on having come out alive with his soldiers, and to ask for his friendship, for doctrine and for Padres to teach it to them; for this, troops of Indians with their caciques came out from eight, ten and twelve days' journey inland, among them the Nures and the Nebomes.
The terms are set out, and they are two-sided. A party of a hundred and fifty persons came to the villa under the captain's safe-conduct; they gave back the silver and the rest of the spoil, adorned with some of the featherwork they use, and excused themselves for not bringing the horses that had survived, because these were so fat on the pasture of the river that they had not been able to catch them, promising to hand them over once they had ropes to tie them. The captain distributed to the principal caciques who were authors of the peace some colts, which are much esteemed among these people, and some clothing. An authentic testimony was taken to send to the viceroy asking that Padres be given to teach and baptise the nation. The Hiaquis for their part offered to reduce their rancherias into large pueblos where churches could be built for the Padres when they came, and took with them a good number of their own sons to serve as hostages of the peace and to remain with the Padres in the seminary and school for boys of various nations at the Jesuit college.
One condition of the peace was an execution, and the book states it plainly. They put into execution one of the conditions asked of them and promised by them: they seized the Indians who had been heads and authors of the past disturbances, in particular the leaders and fugitives Lautaro and Babilonio, and brought them in safe custody and handed them to the captain, "el qual mando hazer justicia dellos"; the author adds that God gave them light to know their crimes and to ask at the hour of their death for pardon and baptism. The other Christian fugitives were pardoned and returned to their pueblos.
What this object rests on and what it does not. It rests on six pages of the 1645 first edition read as page images - the opening of Libro V chapter II, the battle, the celebration of the Hiaqui victory, and the embassy and terms of the peace - and on nothing else; no modern history of the Yaqui and no archival document was consulted. No year appears on any page read here, so this object does not date the campaign, and the standard chronology found in secondary literature is deliberately not asserted. Every number and every motive attributed to the Hiaqui in it comes from the Jesuit provincial of the province that fought them, which is why the enemy strength sits at 0.75 and the readings of intention at or below 0.85.