YAQUI

Yaqui: translation

Calling themselves Yoeme (“people”), the more widely known termYaquiderives from “Hiakim,” the Yaqui term for their land, encompassing the southern coastal Mexican region of Sonora and part of southern Arizona. Forming a remote northern outpost of prehistoricMesoamerica, the Yaqui’s ancestors remained independent of the Toltec and Aztec empires and fought successfully against the Spanish conquistadors untilChristianconversion conducted by Jesuits, when they settled in the eight towns of Pótam, Vícam, Tórim, Bácum, Cóorit, Huirivis, Belem, and Rahum.CarlosCastaneda’s “informant”Don Juanwas described by him as a Yaquisorcerer, but there is little correspondence between Castaneda’sentheogenicandNew Ageshamanism pitched at a Euro-American psychedelic audience, and the Yaqui religion, a creative fusion of Catholicism and indigenous practices. Amore useful insight into Yaqui religion can be gained from Larry Evers and Felipe Molina’sYaqui Deer Songs(1987).