Tepehuan people (Amerind tribe)
Nation | Active
1396 CE to 2057 CE
The Tepehuán, Tepeguán, O'dam, Audam, or Ódami Indians (Tepehuanes or Tepehuanos, from Nahuatl meaning “Mountain Dwellers” or "Mountain People", "tepe" coming from tepetl meaning "mountains" and "huan" coming from nemohuayan meaning "dwelling" or from macehualtin meaning "people", in Nahuatl Tepehuán is spelled Tēpēhuanih, Tepēhuāntin, Tepehuatecah, and/or Tepēhuahcān)(or as they refer to themselves as O'dam, Audam, and Ódami meaning "We The People" or "People of This Land" in their native languages Northern Tepehuan, Southeastern Tepehuan, Southwestern Tepehuan) are Indigenous Mexicans of Northwestern, Western, and some parts of North-Central Mexico whose villages at the time of Spanish conquest span a large territory along the Sierra Madre Occidental.
The heart of the Tepehuan Nation is in the Valley of Guadiana (Durango).
The Tepehuanes live in Ranchería in present-day Mexico.
The Tepehuan Indians have the largest territory in Aridoamerica.
They originate in the state of Durango, but their territory grows to south of Chihuahua, east of Sinaloa, and north of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Zacatecas.
Ódami (Northern Tepehuán), Audam (Southwestern Tepehuán), and O'dam (Southeastern Tepehuán), each with their own language, culture, and beliefs.
The southern Tepehuán community includes an isolated settlement (Azqueltán) in the middle of Huichol territory in the Bolaños River canyon, who were historically referred to as Tepecanos.
The Tepehuánes have divided into three Nations: Ódami (Northern Tepehuán) of Chihuahua.
Audam (Southwestern Tepehuán) of Durango, Nayarit, and Sinaloa.
O'dam (Southeastern Tepehuán) of Durango,Jalisco, Nayarit, and Zacatecas.
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Spanish exploration of the area of what is today western and northwestern Durango and southern Chihuahua, Mexico, had begun in 1531 with Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán's expedition.
He had named the main city founded in the area Villa de Guadalajara after his birthplace and called the area he conquered the sonorous la Conquista del Espíritu Santo de la Mayor España ("The Conquest of the Holy Spirit of Greater Spain").
The name did not stick, and instead another suggested by Queen Joanna, el Reino de Nueva Galicia ("The Kingdom of New Galicia"), did.
In the following decades, especially under the leadership of Francisco de Ibarra, settlements had moved north and into the interior of the continent, beyond the city of Zacatecas, when silver was discovered in the area.
Francisco de Ibarra, the first to colonize Durango, had named the new area Nueva Vizcaya, after his homeland in Spain, Biscay (the historic name of the Basque Country).
Nueva Vizcaya includes the modern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Durango, the eastern parts of Sinaloa, Sonora and the southwest of Coahuila.
The region had come under the judicial jurisdiction of the Real Audiencia of Guadalajara and the administration of its president.
The Tepehuan Indians, inhabiting a large territory along the Sierra Madre Occidental from Chihuahua and Durango in the north to Jalisco in the south, and previously known for their bellicosity, had been considered pacified by 1590, with many congregating in Jesuit missions.
The Tepehuans in 1615 and earlier had suffered an epidemic, and they fought to return to their traditional ways of life.
A wagon train traveling to Mexico City on November 16, 1616, is attacked by the Tepehuanes just outside Santa Catalina de los Tepehuanes, a small Jesuit village in the eastern foothills of the Western Sierra Madre.
Thus begins what Jesuit historian Andrés Pérez de Ribas will call "one of the greatest outbreaks of disorder, upheaval, and destruction that had been seen in New Spain...since the Conquest."
Before it is finished, over two hundred Spaniards, ten missionaries and four thousand Tepehuanes die with destruction to property valued at as much as a million pesos.
The Tepehuan, upon being defeated by the Spanish, go into hiding.
Tepehuan country is the site of profitable silver mines and Spanish commitment to the exploitation of these mines is a factor in the Jesuits' success in rebuilding the missions after the revolt.
The Spanish presence also contributes to the defeat of the Tepehuanes and the loss of much of their traditional culture.