Opata Kingdoms of the North

Lost to assimilation and European-introduced diseases, the Opata civilization flourished in the northern deserts of Mexico for centuries.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to Mexico Unexplained, where we will explore the magic,
the mysteries and the miracles of Mexico. This series presents
information based partly on theory and conjecture. The podcaster's purpose
is to suggest some possible explanation, but not necessarily the
only ones to the subjects we will examine. Here is
your host, Robert Viitto.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Welcome and movie bian Benitos to episode number one hundred
sixty five of Mexico Unexplained, where we examined the magic,
the mysteries and the miracles of Mexico. I'm your host,
Robert Pidow. The young king Sisi Botari knew he had
to face the inevitable one day, and as one of
the leaders of the Opata people, he wanted to be

(01:18):
the one to decide when to face the inevitable. The
year was sixteen nineteen and the place was northwestern Mexico,
in the modern day state of Sonora. Sisi Botari had
heard stories of the black robed, pale faced foreigners for
years from his father and grandfather. The king had even

(01:38):
seen a few of them from Afar on his travels
to neighboring lands. The presence of these foreigners had increased
over the years, and some of the tribes close to
the Opata, both friends and foes, had made deals with
these intruders and even let them establish themselves in their territories.
The day had come when the young Opata king wished

(02:02):
to meet with the foreigners face to face, to get
a sense of their intentions and to figure out a
way to peacefully coexist with them. The historic meeting happened
in Yaqui territory. At that time, most of the Yaquis
had already converted to Christianity and had accepted many of
the Spanish ways. King Sisibotari and his small entourage of

(02:25):
Opata village leaders met with the middle aged Spanish born
Jesuit Andres Perees de Rivas, and a Spanish military captain.
The meeting was friendly, and the Spanish and Opata discussed
many things. Later in his diaries, the Jesuit priest would
describe King Sisibotari. Father Pees de Rivas wrote, he was

(02:49):
handsome and still young. The king wore a long coat
attached at his shoulder like a cape, and his loins
were covered with a cloth, as was the cusin of
that nation. On the wrist of his left hand, which
holds the bow. When the hand pulls the cord to
send the arrow, he wore a very becoming marten skin.

(03:11):
At the end of the meeting, King Sisibotari invited the
Jesuits to come to his territory. Was the king partly
persuaded by the material enrichment of his neighbors by the Spanish?
Did he just want an alliance with a stronger power.
Did he see the eventual takeover of his lands and
wanted a peaceful coexistence from the start. History is unclear

(03:34):
as to the Opata king's motives. The priest and that
captain were not prepared for the invitation and did not
cross the eastern mountains to visit sisi Botari's kingdom at
that time. They instead returned to their mission in Sineloa.
King Sisibotari was not satisfied and felt like the Spanish

(03:55):
had left him hanging. In the following year, the king,
in a small group representing other Opatan kingdoms, made the
long journey to visit father andres at his mission in Sineloa.
The day Sisubotari arrived, a young priest serving at the
Siniloa mission described the Opatan ruler as quote handsome, knightly

(04:17):
in bearing and courtly in manner end quote. As a
gift for the Jesuit Superior, the king brought with him
a gigantic golden eagle used in hunting. As a further
gesture of peace and good faith, he also gave the
Jesuits eleven young men to instruct in the ways of
the Spanish and to convert to Christianity. The king wanted

(04:39):
to do what he could to hasten the Spanish alliance
with his people and to hurry along the inevitable at
his pace and hopefully under his terms. While in Siniloa,
the king earned the nickname Grand Sisubotari or the Great Sisubotari.
The Spanish promised to send missionaries, and the opatant delegation

(04:59):
returned nor to their homeland. When the Spanish still didn't
follow through on their promises, King sisu Botari returned to
the Siniloa mission the following year, sixteen twenty one. Perhaps
never before in the colonial history of Mexico had an
indigenous ruler so begged for Spanish involvement. A few months

(05:20):
after the second visit, in the fall of sixteen twenty one,
the Spanish finally sent a contingent to the town of Sawaripa,
the chief settlement among the seventy towns and villages in
Sisi Botari's kingdom. This was partly to fulfill the promise
to the Opata king and partly to ask for help.

(05:42):
The harvest throughout Sineloa was bad in sixteen twenty one,
and the Jesuit Padres felt the region was on the
verge of a famine. King Ssi Botari saw this as
an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Spanish. The Spanish
came with pack animals, so the king that his people
load up the animals with food, which was plentiful in

(06:04):
Sisubotari's realm. After the food arrived at the mission in Siniloa,
the Spanish sent more missionaries and other resources they promised.
Over the next five or six years, the majority of
the Great Sisu Botar's kingdom had converted to Christianity. The
king and the elites continued to enjoy high status and

(06:26):
a higher quality of life under Spanish rule, as well
as Spanish protection against their enemies. The Great King would
die some thirty years later during an epidemic that swept
across his realm. The word Opata has conflicting origins. Some
researchers believe that the word comes from an extinct Pima

(06:46):
dialect and means enemy. Others believe that the word comes
from an extinct dialect of the Opata people themselves and
means the iron people. At the time of Spanish contact,
the Opatai were mining iron ore and tipping their spears
with it, hence the possible name. Anthropologists and historians believed

(07:08):
that the Opata started settling the river valleys of the
deserts of modern day Sonora and parts of the modern
day states of Arizona and New Mexico around thirteen hundred eighty.
A complex civilization developed centered around irrigated agriculture. Communities of
Opata were organized into small kingdoms with hereditary rulers, which

(07:30):
some political scientists would call statelets, across a wide geographical area.
Political units usually centered around a main town or an
informal capital city, which served as the home of the
elites and as a center for trade. There were between
five and nine distinct Opata kingdoms, which lived in peace

(07:53):
with each other and sometimes would band together to fight
a common enemy, such as raiding bands of Apaches coming
at them from the northeast. The Opata had hot and
cold relations with the other indigenous groups surrounding them. Their
neighbors to the north were the Odham, often called the
Pima Alto by the Spanish. To the west of Opata

(08:16):
territory live the Serri, and the Yaqui or Yome, also
called the Pima Bajo by the Spanish. To the south
and southeast of the Opata kingdoms lived the Tarahumara. Each
small Opata kingdom had an elite class and a large
slave class. There was also a professional class of craftspeople

(08:37):
to produce finished goods for local consumption and trade. As
Opata culture emphasized farming, people grew corns, squash, beans, and cotton.
This was often supplemented with hunting and gathering. The Opata
spoke a Uto Aztecan language, divided into three dialects, the
Doema de Tewima and the j The Opata language group

(09:02):
is closely related to the language of the Odham of
Arizona and those of the Yaqui and Taraumaa peoples. The
Spanish first heard of the Opata through the Caveza Devaca
expedition that skirted their territory in the early fifteen thirties.
The first European contact with an Opatan village was in

(09:23):
fifteen thirty three by members of the Diego de Gusman expedition.
They called the small Opatan town on the fringes of
Yaqui Territory Pueblo de Corrasones, or an English town of hearts.
This was a reference to the public cooking of deer
hearts that the Spanish witnessed while there. In Spanish maps

(09:44):
of northwestern Mexico starting in the fifteen forties, the vast
blank territory inhabited by the Opatan kingdoms was generically called
Opateia or the land of the Opata. The next Spanish
incursion in to Opteria was in the early fifteen sixties,
when the Francisco Ibarre expedition came through the territory. The

(10:08):
Opata kings united their people against the Spanish and resisted
Ibarra and his men, eventually driving them away. The Spanish
had very little interest in Oparteria until the time of
the Great King Sisi Botari some sixty years later. Because
of contact with the Spanish in the early fifteen hundreds.

(10:29):
By the time of Sisi Botari's rule, the Opata population
across the various kingdoms had declined dramatically due to European
introduced diseases. So when they saw the handwriting on the wall,
Sisubotari and the other rulers of Opteria knew they could
not mount a resistance to the Spanish as their ancestors

(10:51):
had sixty years prior. The world was changing, and the
king and others just wanted a smooth and peaceful transition
in to whatever Spanish domination would bring them. What became
of the Opata people after King Sisubotari's invitation to the Spanish.
As previously mentioned, the Spanish started by sending missionaries. By

(11:15):
sixteen fifty, most of the Opata had converted to Christianity.
Between sixteen fifty and sixteen seventy five, the Jesuits dismantled
many of the Opatan towns and villages and created rancherias
within the mission system. By seventeen hundred, most people in
the former Opateria were speaking Spanish and had fully assimilated

(11:38):
into European colonial culture. It was during the seventeen hundreds
that many Opata people migrated out of their homeland, some
heading south to work in the mines, while some headed
north to what is now the American Southwest. In fact,
in sixteen ninety two, a group of Opata accompanied Padre
Chino to help found the mission of San Javier del Bac,

(12:02):
which still stands today about ten miles south of downtown
to San Arizona. In seventeen hundred, the total population of
Opata people was around twenty thousand, down from the hundreds
of thousands that lived in the Opata kingdoms before the
Spanish arrived. Throughout the seventeen hundreds, Spanish settlement increased in

(12:24):
Opata territory, and sometimes, although infrequently, the settlers clashed with
the natives. For the most part, though, the Opata people
assimilated well into Spanish colonial society and offered very little resistance.
Despite the appearance of contentment, perhaps there were some unseen

(12:44):
things brewing. An important piece of trivia pops up when
investigating the seemingly cooperative and peaceful people. In the year
eighteen twenty, just months before Spain granted Mexico its independence,
three hundred Opata war rose up and defeated a Spanish
force of one thousand soldiers destroying the mining town of Toniici.

(13:08):
This Opata uprising, a mere footnote to history, may be
the very last military defeat for the Spanish Empire's troops
in the New World by an indigenous group. The Spanish
went back to Opateria with two thousand troops and put
down the Opatan rebellion, executing many of the leaders in

(13:28):
exiling others. Weeks later, the troops evacuated Opata territory. When
Mexico gained its independence from Spain, the Opatan grievances that
built up throughout the seventeen hundreds and culminated in the
revolts of eighteen twenty did not end with the creation
of the new country of Mexico. The new powers in

(13:50):
Mexico City wanted greater central authority and treated the indigenous
people of Sonora miserably. By the eighteen sixties, when Lance
briefly occupied Mexico, the Opata people sided with the French.
In fact, an Opata refugio Tanori became a noted general

(14:10):
in the Mexican army under the rule of Emperor Maximilian
because of their support for the French. After the end
of Maximilian's rule, the Mexican Republican forces exacted revenge on
the Opata. What was left of their traditional lands was
taken away. The remaining Opata resistance to Mexican rule was

(14:31):
snuffed out and dealt with harshly. By nineteen hundred, there
were only five hundred or so full blood Opatas left.
Anthropologists visiting Sonora in the early twentieth century noted that
most people who were descended from the Opata were indistinguishable
from the larger Mexican Mestizo society. Very little of the

(14:53):
Opata culture and lifeways survived into the last century, although
some isolated words exis. This is to this day in
vocabularies in Sonora. The Opata language and its dialects have
been dead since about the nineteen forties. Various linguistic texts
exist from the early nineteen hundreds, when anthropologists and language

(15:15):
scholars desperately try to understand and document the dying Opata dialects.
These texts are now being used by people claiming Opata
descent in Sonora and California in an attempt to revive
the Opata language, but they are having very little success,
mainly due to a lack of interest and an absence

(15:36):
of any sort of intact tribal community. The DNA of
the Opata may live on, but their complex culture is
completely gone. Thank you once again for listening to another
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(15:59):
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until next time, Thank you and gracias.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Thank you for listening to another episode of Mexico Unexplained
with host Robert Bito. For show summary, relevant links, and commentary,
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