Chichimeca
Encyclopedia
Chichimeca was the name that the Nahua peoples of Mexico generically applied to a wide range of semi-nomad
ic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico
and southwestern United States
, and carried the same sense as the European term "barbarian
". The name was adopted with a pejorative tone by the Spaniards when referring especially to the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer
peoples of northern Mexico. In modern times only one ethnic group is customarily referred to as Chichimecs, namely the Chichimeca Jonaz
, although lately this usage is being changed for simply "Jonáz" or their own name for themselves "Úza".
over the Mexican indigenous peoples during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the "Chichimecan tribes" maintained a resistance. A number of ethnic groups of the region allied against the Spanish, and the following military colonization of northern Mexico has become known as the "Chichimeca War
s".
Many of the peoples called Chichimeca are virtually unknown today; few descriptions mention them and they seem to have been absorbed into mestizo
culture or into other indigenous ethnic groups. For example, virtually nothing is known about the peoples referred to as Guachichil
es, Caxcan
es, Zacateco
s, Tecuexe
s, or Guamare
s. Others like the Opata
or "Eudeve" are well described but extinct as a people.
Other "Chichimec" peoples maintain a separate identity into the present day, for example the Otomi
es, Chichimeca Jonaz
, Cora
s, Huicholes, Pame
s, Yaquis, Mayos
, O'odham
and the Tepehuánes
.
distinction in Nahuatl. The word could either have a negative "barbarous" sense, or a positive "noble savage
" sense.
The word "Chichimeca" was originally used by the Nahua to describe their own prehistory as a nomadic hunter-gatherer people and used in contrast to their later, more "civilized," urban lifestyle that they identified with the term Toltec
atl. In modern Mexico, the word "Chichimeca" can have pejorative connotations such as "primitive", "savage", "uneducated" and "native".
writes in one of his letters of the northern Chichimec tribes who were not as civilized as the Aztecs he had conquered, but commented that they might be enslaved and used to work in the mines.
This approach was followed by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán
whose attempts to enslave the indigenous populations of northern Mexico provoked the Mixtón Rebellion
where Chichimec tribes resisted the Spanish forces.
In the late sixteenth century, an account of the Chichimecs was written by Gonzalo de las Casas who had received an encomienda
near Durango and fought in the wars against the Chichimec peoples — the Pames, the Guachichiles, the Guamari and the Zacatecos who lived in the area which was called "La Gran Chichimeca
." Las Casas' account was called "Report of the Chichimeca and the justness of the war against them", and contained ethnographic information about the peoples called Chichimecs. He wrote that they did not use clothes (only to cover their genitalia), painted their bodies and ate only game, roots and berries. He mentions as further proof of their barbarity that Chichimec women having given birth continued travelling on the same day without stopping to recover. While las Casas recognized that the Chichimecan tribes spoke different languages he saw their culture as primarily uniform.
In 1590, the Franciscan priest Alonso Ponce commented that the Chichimeca had no religion because they did not even worship idols such as the other peoples – in his eyes another symptom of their barbarous nature. The only somewhat nuanced description of the Chichimeca is found in Bernardino de Sahagún
's Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España
in which some Chichimec people such as the Otomi
were described as knowing agriculture, living in settled communities, and having a religion devoted to the worship of the Moon.
The image of the Chichimecas as described by the early sources was typical of the era; the natives were "savages" - accomplished at war and hunting, but with no established society or morals, fighting even amongst themselves. This description became even more prevalent over the course of the Chichimec wars as justification for the war (the Chichimec area was not entirely under Spanish control until 1721).
The first description of a modern objective ethnography of the peoples inhabiting La Gran Chichimeca was done by Norwegian naturalist and explorer Carl Sofus Lumholtz
in 1890 when he traveled on muleback through northwestern Mexico, meeting the indigenous peoples on friendly terms. With his descriptions of the rich and different cultures of the various "uncivilized" tribes, the picture of the uniform Chichimec barbarians was changed – although in Mexican Spanish the word "Chichimeca" remains connected to an image of "savagery".
The historian Paul Kirchhoff, in his work "The Hunting-Gathering People of North Mexico," described the Chichimecas as sharing a hunter-gatherer
culture, based on the gathering of mesquite
, agave
, and tunas (the fruit of the nopal). While others also lived off of acorns, root
s and seeds
. In some areas, the Chichimecas cultivated maize
and calabash
. From the mesquite, the Chichamecs made white bread
and wine
. Many Chichimec tribes utilized the juice of the agave as a substitute for water when it was in short supply.
The Chichimecas were involved in the Mixton Rebellion
(1540–1541) and the Chichimeca War
(1550–1590). After a series of negotiations with the Spaniards, most of the Chichimecas were encouraged to take part in peaceful agricultural pursuits. Within decades, they were assimilated into the Spanish and Indian mestizo culture.
Nomad
Nomadic people , commonly known as itinerants in modern-day contexts, are communities of people who move from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. There are an estimated 30-40 million nomads in the world. Many cultures have traditionally been nomadic, but...
ic peoples who inhabited the north of modern-day Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and southwestern United States
Southwestern United States
The Southwestern United States is a region defined in different ways by different sources. Broad definitions include nearly a quarter of the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah...
, and carried the same sense as the European term "barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...
". The name was adopted with a pejorative tone by the Spaniards when referring especially to the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
peoples of northern Mexico. In modern times only one ethnic group is customarily referred to as Chichimecs, namely the Chichimeca Jonaz
Chichimeca Jonaz
The Chichimeca Jonaz are a group of indigenous people living in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí. In Guanajuato State the Chichimeca Jonaz people live in a community of San Luis de la Paz municipality. The settlement is 2,070 m above sea level...
, although lately this usage is being changed for simply "Jonáz" or their own name for themselves "Úza".
Overview and identity
The Chichimeca peoples were in fact many different groups with varying ethnic and linguistic affiliations. As the Spaniards worked towards consolidating the rule of New SpainNew Spain
New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
over the Mexican indigenous peoples during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the "Chichimecan tribes" maintained a resistance. A number of ethnic groups of the region allied against the Spanish, and the following military colonization of northern Mexico has become known as the "Chichimeca War
Chichimeca War
The Chichimeca War was a military conflict waged between Spanish colonizers and their Indian allies against a confederation of Chichimeca Indians. It was the longest and most expensive conflict between Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of New Spain in the history of the colony.The Chichimeca...
s".
Many of the peoples called Chichimeca are virtually unknown today; few descriptions mention them and they seem to have been absorbed into mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
culture or into other indigenous ethnic groups. For example, virtually nothing is known about the peoples referred to as Guachichil
Guachichil
Of all the Chichimeca natives, the Guachichiles occupied the most extensive territory, stretching north to Saltillo in Coahuila and to the northern corners of Michoacán in the south...
es, Caxcan
Caxcan
The Caxcan were a partly nomadic indigenous people of Mexico. Under their leader, Francisco Tenamaztle, the Caxcan were allied with the Zacatecos against the Spaniards during the Mixtón Rebellion. During the rebellion, they were described as "the heart and the center of the Indian Rebellion". They...
es, Zacateco
Zacateco
The Zacatecos were an indigenous people inhabiting part of northern Mexico, one of the peoples called Chichimecas by the Aztecs. They lived in most of what is now the state of Zacatecas and the northeastern part of Durango. They have many direct descendants, but most of their culture and...
s, Tecuexe
Tecuexe
The Tecuexe were an indigenous group found in the eastern part of present day Guadalajara, Mexico-History:It is believed that the Tecuexe derived from the dispersion of Zacateco groups from La Quemada. Like the Zacatecos, the Tecuexe were a tribe belonging to the generic "Chichimeca" peoples...
s, or Guamare
Guamare
The Guamares were an indigenous group that were concentrated in the region of the present state of Guanajuato. They were part of the Chichimecas.The Guamares were centered in the Guanajuato Sierras, but some bands ranged as far east as Querétaro...
s. Others like the Opata
Opata
Opata is the collective name for three indigenous peoples native to the northern Mexican border state of Sonora. The whole of Opata territory encompasses the northeasterly and central part of the state...
or "Eudeve" are well described but extinct as a people.
Other "Chichimec" peoples maintain a separate identity into the present day, for example the Otomi
Otomi people
The Otomi people . Smaller Otomi populations exist in the states of Puebla, Mexico, Tlaxcala, Michoacán and Guanajuato. The Otomi language belonging to the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-Manguean language family is spoken in many different varieties some of which are not mutually intelligible.One of...
es, Chichimeca Jonaz
Chichimeca Jonaz
The Chichimeca Jonaz are a group of indigenous people living in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí. In Guanajuato State the Chichimeca Jonaz people live in a community of San Luis de la Paz municipality. The settlement is 2,070 m above sea level...
, Cora
Cora people
The Cora are an indigenous ethnic group of Western Central Mexico that live in the Sierra de Nayarit and in La Mesa de Nayar in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Nayarit. They call themselves náayarite , whence the name of the present day Mexican state of Nayarit...
s, Huicholes, Pame
Pame
The Pame are an indigenous people of central Mexico living in the state of San Luis Potosí. They call themselves Xi'úi. They speak the Pame language, which belongs to the Oto-Pamean group of the Oto-Manguean language family....
s, Yaquis, Mayos
Mayo people
The Mayo are a Mexican indigenous people living in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa, originally living near the Mayo River in Sonora. In their own language they call themselves Yoreme....
, O'odham
O'odham
The O'odham peoples, including the Tohono O'odham or Papago, the Pima or Akimel O'odham, and the Hia C-ed O'odham, are an indigenous Uto-Aztecan peoples of the Sonoran desert in southern and central Arizona and northern Sonora, united by a common heritage language, the O'odham language...
and the Tepehuánes
Tepehuán
The Tepehuán are a Native American ethnic group in northwest Mexico, whose villages at the time of Spanish conquest spanned a large territory along the Sierra Madre Occidental from Chihuahua and Durango in the north to Jalisco in the south...
.
Word origin
The Nahuatl name Chīchīmēcah (plural, pronounced tʃiːtʃiːˈmeːkaʔ; singular Chīchīmēcatl) means "inhabitants of Chichiman"; the placename Chichiman itself means "Area of Milk". It is sometimes said to be related to chichi "dog", but the i's in chichi are short while those in Chīchīmēcah are long, a phonemicPhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
distinction in Nahuatl. The word could either have a negative "barbarous" sense, or a positive "noble savage
Noble savage
The term noble savage , expresses the concept an idealized indigene, outsider , and refers to the literary stock character of the same...
" sense.
The word "Chichimeca" was originally used by the Nahua to describe their own prehistory as a nomadic hunter-gatherer people and used in contrast to their later, more "civilized," urban lifestyle that they identified with the term Toltec
Toltec
The Toltec culture is an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology...
atl. In modern Mexico, the word "Chichimeca" can have pejorative connotations such as "primitive", "savage", "uneducated" and "native".
Ethnohistorical descriptions
The first descriptions of "Chichimecs" are from the early conquest period. In 1526, Hernán CortésHernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...
writes in one of his letters of the northern Chichimec tribes who were not as civilized as the Aztecs he had conquered, but commented that they might be enslaved and used to work in the mines.
This approach was followed by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán
Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán or sometimes Nuño de Guzmán was a Spanish conquistador and colonial administrator in New Spain. He was Governor of the province of Pánuco from 1525–1533, and of Nueva Galicia from 1529–1534, President of the first Audiencia from 1528-30. He founded several cities in...
whose attempts to enslave the indigenous populations of northern Mexico provoked the Mixtón Rebellion
Mixtón Rebellion
The Mixtón War was fought from 1540 until 1542 between Spanish invaders and their Aztec and Tlaxcalan allies against the Caxcanes and other semi-nomadic Indians of the area of north western Mexico...
where Chichimec tribes resisted the Spanish forces.
In the late sixteenth century, an account of the Chichimecs was written by Gonzalo de las Casas who had received an encomienda
Encomienda
The encomienda was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas to regulate Native American labor....
near Durango and fought in the wars against the Chichimec peoples — the Pames, the Guachichiles, the Guamari and the Zacatecos who lived in the area which was called "La Gran Chichimeca
La Gran Chichimeca
La Gran Chichimeca was a term used by the Spanish conquistadores of the 16th century to refer to an area of the northern central Mexican altiplano , a territory which today is encompassed by the modern Mexican states of Jalisco, Aguascalientes, Nayarit, Guanajuato and Zacatecas...
." Las Casas' account was called "Report of the Chichimeca and the justness of the war against them", and contained ethnographic information about the peoples called Chichimecs. He wrote that they did not use clothes (only to cover their genitalia), painted their bodies and ate only game, roots and berries. He mentions as further proof of their barbarity that Chichimec women having given birth continued travelling on the same day without stopping to recover. While las Casas recognized that the Chichimecan tribes spoke different languages he saw their culture as primarily uniform.
In 1590, the Franciscan priest Alonso Ponce commented that the Chichimeca had no religion because they did not even worship idols such as the other peoples – in his eyes another symptom of their barbarous nature. The only somewhat nuanced description of the Chichimeca is found in Bernardino de Sahagún
Bernardino de Sahagún
Bernardino de Sahagún was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain . Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he journeyed to New Spain in 1529, and spent more than 50 years conducting interviews regarding Aztec...
's Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España
Florentine Codex
The Florentine Codex is the common name given to a 16th century ethnographic research project in Mesoamerica by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Bernardino originally titled it: La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana...
in which some Chichimec people such as the Otomi
Otomi people
The Otomi people . Smaller Otomi populations exist in the states of Puebla, Mexico, Tlaxcala, Michoacán and Guanajuato. The Otomi language belonging to the Oto-Pamean branch of the Oto-Manguean language family is spoken in many different varieties some of which are not mutually intelligible.One of...
were described as knowing agriculture, living in settled communities, and having a religion devoted to the worship of the Moon.
The image of the Chichimecas as described by the early sources was typical of the era; the natives were "savages" - accomplished at war and hunting, but with no established society or morals, fighting even amongst themselves. This description became even more prevalent over the course of the Chichimec wars as justification for the war (the Chichimec area was not entirely under Spanish control until 1721).
The first description of a modern objective ethnography of the peoples inhabiting La Gran Chichimeca was done by Norwegian naturalist and explorer Carl Sofus Lumholtz
Carl Sofus Lumholtz
Carl Sofus Lumholtz was a Norwegian explorer and ethnographer, best known for his meticulous field research and ethnographic publications on indigenous cultures of Australia and Mesoamerican central Mexico.-Biography:...
in 1890 when he traveled on muleback through northwestern Mexico, meeting the indigenous peoples on friendly terms. With his descriptions of the rich and different cultures of the various "uncivilized" tribes, the picture of the uniform Chichimec barbarians was changed – although in Mexican Spanish the word "Chichimeca" remains connected to an image of "savagery".
The historian Paul Kirchhoff, in his work "The Hunting-Gathering People of North Mexico," described the Chichimecas as sharing a hunter-gatherer
Hunter-gatherer
A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...
culture, based on the gathering of mesquite
Mesquite
Mesquite is a leguminous plant of the Prosopis genus found in northern Mexico through the Sonoran Desert and Chihuahuan Deserts, and up into the Southwestern United States as far north as southern Kansas, west to the Colorado Desert in California,and east to the eastern fifth of Texas, where...
, agave
Agave
Agave is a genus of monocots. The plants are perennial, but each rosette flowers once and then dies ; they are commonly known as the century plant....
, and tunas (the fruit of the nopal). While others also lived off of acorns, root
Root
In vascular plants, the root is the organ of a plant that typically lies below the surface of the soil. This is not always the case, however, since a root can also be aerial or aerating . Furthermore, a stem normally occurring below ground is not exceptional either...
s and seeds
SEEDS
SEEDS is a voluntary organisation registered under the Societies Act of India....
. In some areas, the Chichimecas cultivated maize
Maize
Maize known in many English-speaking countries as corn or mielie/mealie, is a grain domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The leafy stalk produces ears which contain seeds called kernels. Though technically a grain, maize kernels are used in cooking as a vegetable...
and calabash
Calabash
Lagenaria siceraria , bottle gourd, opo squash or long melon is a vine grown for its fruit, which can either be harvested young and used as a vegetable, or harvested mature, dried, and used as a bottle, utensil, or pipe. For this reason, the calabash is widely known as the bottle gourd...
. From the mesquite, the Chichamecs made white bread
Bread
Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...
and wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
. Many Chichimec tribes utilized the juice of the agave as a substitute for water when it was in short supply.
The Chichimecas were involved in the Mixton Rebellion
Mixtón Rebellion
The Mixtón War was fought from 1540 until 1542 between Spanish invaders and their Aztec and Tlaxcalan allies against the Caxcanes and other semi-nomadic Indians of the area of north western Mexico...
(1540–1541) and the Chichimeca War
Chichimeca War
The Chichimeca War was a military conflict waged between Spanish colonizers and their Indian allies against a confederation of Chichimeca Indians. It was the longest and most expensive conflict between Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of New Spain in the history of the colony.The Chichimeca...
(1550–1590). After a series of negotiations with the Spaniards, most of the Chichimecas were encouraged to take part in peaceful agricultural pursuits. Within decades, they were assimilated into the Spanish and Indian mestizo culture.