The 1751 Pima Uprising

And so we arrive to that fatidic year of 1751. During most of that year everything seemed to follow the natural rythm, in spite that during the first half of that year several rumors started to surface. Some Pimas from Caborca, passing through the Indian town of Tubac asked why was it that everybody was there:

"planting beans. It was a worthless work, because they knew that the world would end that same year"

A few days later, the Sonoita Pimas came to Guevavi and asked Garrucho if

"..it is true that the world would end that same year..."

The missionaries didn´t pay attention to those rumors, attibuting them to another superstition.

When Fall came, the preparations for the annual campaign against the Apaches also started. The General Captain of the Pimas, Luis Oacpicagigua, passed through Guevavi, coming from Saric under the command of some 400 Pima Indians. They were on their way to participate in the campaign, the same as the previous year they had done against the Seris.

Father Garrucho received them with the traditional pozole, and he offered his own rooms to Captain Luis. When they continued, he gave them 15 heads of cattle to eat along their way. The problem came a little further ahead. When they arrived at Suamca, Father Keller, on seeing Luis dressed and carrying a weapon the same as a Spanish Officer, mocked him, and called him a chichimec dog, whose proper dressing was a coyote skin and a loincloth. Angrily, Luis then abandoned the campaign and returned to Saric.

Some among the Missionaries didn´t like the recent ascent the Indian Captain enjoyed.

It seems that Luis of Saric had started his public life in Saric, his native town. He had been a good Alcalde, and later was promoted to Indian Governor of the place. In 1748 he would lend a hand in several campaigns against the Apaches which, it was said, he had paid from his own purse. But he wasn´t only loyal to the Spaniards. As a governor would say, he was also with the Indians:

"...so liberal that he fell in the excess of being prodigal and waster of his own welfare..."

In 1750, the Governor of Sonora and Sinaloa, Diego Ortiz de Parrilla, named him General Captain of Pimeria Alta, increasing further his power. However, at the same time the Missionary Juan Nentvig arrived at Saric, and started attacking the power of the Indian leader. When he saw the amount of land that he had, he told the Pimas that it was:

"...unjust that only one would have so much, and that for lack of lands so many others in the same town didn´t have where to plant..."

With these actions, the Missionaries, as Mirafuentes Galvan tells us:

"In the first place, they took away from him the resources on which he based his status, his prestige and his power. In second place, they frustrated his expectatives of continuing his social, political and economic ascent over the Pimas. In the third, they left him a very narrow margin to be able to reccuperate his power."

Besides this, the Pima Indians realized that it was themselves who supported the presence as well as Spanish domination in the border.

Governor Ortiz de Parrilla said once that the presidial soldiers were worthless, that only Luis and his Pima Indians were real soldiers, and Luis himself promoted this interpretation among the Indians. He was a good speaker and told them that:

"...he and his people were supporters of the priests, while they only hit them and didn´t attend to their needs..."

and he reminded them of the Tupo massacre as a proof of the bad intentions of the Spaniards.

Another of the antecedents of the rebellion happened in 1750, when the Pima were asked to help in a campaign against the Seris, and Luis and his Pima helped. They made a good campaign, although when they returned to Pimeria, it was heard them singing:

"...they already knew more than before the Spaniards asked for their help in the campaigns, and that they had accomplished the triumph of the Tiburon campaign..."

as well as that:

"...the Spaniard weapons were worthless without the help of the arc and arrow, and if the Spaniards couldn´t fight four Seris, much less would be able to fight the Pima Altos, who were much more..."

This way, little by little, subreptitiously without the Spaniards realizing it, Luis was preparing his rebellion.

On September 29, the yearly fiesta of Guevavi, honoring San Miguel, patron saint of the mission took place. There were dances, songs and, this year, as a symbol of the new prosperity of the Mission, there were even bull fights.

The building of the church, which we don´t know if had already been finished, perhaps was filled with the inhabitants that attended the celebrations. From the San Luis Valley the Romero came, under the command of Nicolas, the head of the family, who was "more than fifty years old."

Also, Don Gabriel Antonio de Vildosola came from his hacienda of Santa Barbara in the same valley, as well as Juan Manuel Ortiz from Agua Caliente, near the legendary Planchas de Plata, as well as many more people.

However, an incident darkened the celebrations. Pedro Chihuahua, who was the right hand man of Luis de Saric, also attended carrying his baton of Sargento Mayof of Pimeria Alta, a title he had just received from the Governor Ortiz de Parrilla without consulting the Missionaries. Then, Father Garrucho took the baton from him and expelled him from the festivities, warning him that if he was seen again in Guevavi, he would be whipped.

On November 20, 1751 the general uprising of Pimeria Alta started under the command of Luis de Saric, who since then changed his Christian name and called himself Bacquiopa, whose meaning is: The enemy of adobe houses. With the participation of the Indians from the Gila river, the Missionaries from Caborca and Sonoita were killed with the Spaniards and "gente de razon" who lived there. In Oquitoa, 20 more Spaniards were killed. In Saric the Spaniards living there were also killed, as well as destroyed all the settlements located between that mission and San Xavier del Bac. The town of Tubutama was also attacked.

With these news, the whole Spanish population of Pimeria escaped from terror, and the Missions were abandoned. Governor Ortiz Parrilla came, adopting a conciliatory attitude, and began negotiations with Luis to end the uprising. He called the Indian leader to a meeting on which, as Gregorio Romero would later say, the governor:

"...received him with the greatest ostentation and friendship, embracing him and sitting him at his side to have lunch, as well as dressing him in all luxuries..."

Luis asked for the removal of Father Keller from Suamca, as well as Sedelmayf from Tubutama and Garrucho from Guevavi, to which the Governor acceded (although Keller would return later to Suamca), while Luis was reinstated in his position of Governor of Saric and Captain General of Pimeria Alta, and so ended the rebellion.

As John Kessel says:

"Luis revolt, in which two Fathers and at least a hundred more people were killed... was a revolt against the whole Colonial system. .... The initial contact, accompanied with material improvements for the Indians, followed with Spaniard demands and controls gradually increasing, the violent native reaction, the Spanish revenge and finally the resentful acceptance of that domination; the cycles of Spanish conquest had gone through the familiar road in Pimeria, and the rebellion was part of it. When, after eight years and thousands of pages of testimonials, Queen Mother, Elizabeth Farnese, acting in the name of her son, Carlos III, decreed that the matter would be relegated to the "eternal silence," she was merely accepting this fact."

And among the political repercusions that the uprising had, there would be the establishment of the Presidios of Altar and Tubac.