Acaxee Rebellion

Acaxee

The Acaxee, speakers of a Uto-Aztecan language, inhabited the rugged Sierra Madre Occidental and canyons of what is now east-central Sinaloa and western Durango, east of modern Culiacán. Their territory stretched roughly 125 miles north-south and 50 miles east-west, an area Spaniards called Topia and Tepehuana. By the time Spaniards first contacted them in the late 1500s, the Acaxee lived in scattered villages, possibly the remains of a more complex society shattered by disease.

A major epidemic in 1576–1577 killed thousands, likely including many Acaxee, and further outbreaks hit in 1590 and 1596–1597. Consequently, by the 1601 rebellion, the Acaxee probably numbered only a few thousand. Their ability to resist the Spanish was further weakened by ongoing conflicts with the Xixime to the south and the Tepehuan to the east.

Spaniards

The Spanish discovered silver deposits in Acaxee territory in the 1580s and established several mining camps. Several hundred Spaniards, African and Indian slaves, and Indian laborers migrated into the Acaxee country. Through the encomienda system the Indians were forced to work in Spanish mines.

However, the dispersed nature of the Acaxee settlements was a hindrance to utilizing Indian labor. Jesuit missionaries assisted in concentrating the Acaxee in larger settlements, a Spanish policy called reductions, to Christianize, control, and exploit the labor of the Indians. In 1600, the missionary Hernando de Santarén toured the region with a local encomendero, Captain Diego de Avila.

Together they made the Acaxee accede to Spanish demands which included relocating to where the Spanish told them, building churches, cutting their long hair, wearing clothing, and destroying their religious images and idols. In return, the Spaniards promised to protect them from their enemies and provide tools, seeds, and schools for their communities. Indians who resisted the Spanish demands were beaten according to Deeds.

Rebellion

An Indian leader named Perico initiated the rebellion in late 1601. Using a mixture of Spanish and Indian religious practices, he promised his followers that the Spanish could be exterminated. The rebellion 'was characterized by messianic leadership and promises of millennial redemption during a period of violent disruption and catastrophic demographic decline due to disease.' The rebellion aimed 'to restore pre-Columbian social and religious elements that had been destroyed by the Spanish conquest.' Indian attacks over the first few weeks killed about 50 Spaniards.

The Acaxee burned Spanish mining camps and buildings, including 40 churches, and besieged 40 Spanish in a church at San Andres. The siege was raised when reinforcements arrived from Durango. The priest Santarén led a peace delegation but several members of his group were killed as were members of another delegation led by a bishop. The Acaxee took up strong positions in the mountains and shut down most silver mining and other economic activities in their homeland for nearly two years.

In 1603, the Spaniards gathered an army of encomenderos and Indian allies and suppressed the Acaxee, executing Perico and 48 of their leaders and selling others into slavery. In the aftermath of the war the Jesuits assumed even greater influence, consolidating the Acaxee into a few settlements, appointing their leaders, and attempting to educate Indian children and remove them from the influence of their parents, attempting to stamp out Acaxee culture. In 1607, a smallpox epidemic combined with the simultaneous appearance of Halley's Comet, a portent of disaster, seems to have erased most remaining traces of the Acaxee independence movement, although a few joined the Tepehuán Revolt in 1616.