Abstract
In this text, far from being complete, I attempt to provide a brief summary and subsequent analysis of selected accounts relating to the indigenous peoples of the Mexican Northwest, focusing primarily on the late pre-colonial and early colonial periods, bounded roughly by the second half of the 15th and early 17th centuries. I seek to construct a picture of the North Mexican Indian as we can read it from the earliest accounts, beginning with the Spanish conqueror Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, their later reconstruction by contemporary scholars, and from the reports of other expeditions to the present-day Mexican states of Sinaloa, Sonora, and especially Chihuahua, where in the 16th century and now the largest concentration of indigenous peoples, especially the Tarahumara, whose archaeology, history and anthropology I am most familiar with thanks to four research trips in 1992, 1996, 2001 and briefly in 2021.
I devote the largest part of the text to the "ethnographic" accounts of the first generation of missionaries of the Order of the Society of Jesus who, from 1572, when they arrived in the territory of the former Viceroyalty of New Spain (todayʼs Mexico), until 1767, when they had to leave all overseas missions under compulsion, contributed greatly not only to the evangelization of the indigenous population, but also to the understanding of many aspects of their lives. Although Franciscans, Dominicans or Augustinians had come before them, it was the Jesuits who had the greatest share in the evangelization of the Indian groups and in a certain transformation of colonial Mexican society.
At the end of the 16th century, Jesuit missionaries began to penetrate the remote missions in what is now northwestern Mexico, where they soon replaced the Franciscans and for almost two centuries worked with great effort to bring about religious and general cultural change among the Tepehuans, Tarahumara, Pima, Papago, Yaqui and many other now extinct ethnic groups (Acaxe, Xixime, Chínipa, Concho, etc.). In view of the scope of this text, I am focusing exclusively on the sessions of Jesuits who did not come from the Bohemian province of the order, since we have many valuable studies on their activities thanks to the great efforts of leading Bohemian and other Ibero-Americanists.
This paper attempts a certain reconstruction and analysis of how these pioneers of contact between the Spanish colonial administration and indigenous groups in the marginal areas of New Spain described members of these ethnic groups in their works, and how they created an image of them that was then adopted by all those who were not in direct contact with them. The Jesuit missionaries, despite their undeniable ability to adapt quickly to difficult natural conditions, to learn indigenous languages, and to observe keenly, often contributed to creating an image of the indigenous peoples that became deeply rooted in the minds of subsequent generations of mainstream Mexican society, but also, vicariously, to most contemporary visitors to northwestern Mexico, where they go to photograph the "primitive" Indians living under rock overhangs or to watch the superhuman feats of local runners in the plateaus and deep canyons of the hundred mile races.