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The Guachichil, Cuauchichil, or Quauhchichitl, are an
Indigenous people of Mexico Indigenous peoples of Mexico ( es, gente indígena de México, pueblos indígenas de México), Native Mexicans ( es, nativos mexicanos) or Mexican Native Americans ( es, pueblos originarios de México, lit=Original peoples of Mexico), are those ...
. Pre-contact, they occupied the most extensive territory of all the indigenous Chichimeca Nations tribes in
pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...
Central Mexico Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known a ...
. The Guachichiles roamed through a large region of
Zacatecas , image_map = Zacatecas in Mexico (location map scheme).svg , map_caption = State of Zacatecas within Mexico , coordinates = , coor_pinpoint = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type ...
; as well as portions of
San Luis Potosí San Luis Potosí (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of San Luis Potosí ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de San Luis Potosí), is one of the 32 states which compose the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and i ...
,
Guanajuato Guanajuato (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Guanajuato ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Guanajuato), is one of the 32 states that make up the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 46 municipalities and its capital city i ...
, and northeastern
Jalisco Jalisco (, , ; Nahuatl: Xalixco), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Jalisco ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Jalisco ; Nahuatl: Tlahtohcayotl Xalixco), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal En ...
; south to the northern corners of
Michoacán Michoacán, formally Michoacán de Ocampo (; Purépecha: ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Michoacán de Ocampo ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of ...
; and north to
Saltillo Saltillo () is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Mexico City, Monterrey, and Saltillo are all connected by a major railroad and highw ...
in
Coahuila Coahuila (), formally Coahuila de Zaragoza (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila de Zaragoza), is one of the 32 states of Mexico. Coahuila borders the Mexican states of Nu ...
. The Guachichil Nation continues to exist in the city of San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and is recognized by the city and state. They have tribal members in Mexico and the United States.


History

Considered both warlike and brave, the Guachichiles played a major role in provoking the other Chichimeca tribes to resist the Spanish settlement. The historian Philip Wayne Powell wrote: :::" ''Their strategic position in relation to Spanish mines and highways, made them especially effective in raiding and in escape from Spanish reprisal''." These warriors were known to fight fiercely even if mortally wounded and were a key component in the Spanish defeat during the
Chichimeca War The Chichimeca War (1550–90) was a military conflict between the Spanish Empire and the Chichimeca Confederation established in the territories today known as the Central Mexican Plateau, called by the Conquistadores La Gran Chichimeca. The ...
s. The children learned to use the bow at walking age and the hunters were such good shots that if they missed the eye and hit the eyebrow they would be extremely disappointed. The Chichimeca bow and arrow was expertly crafted allowing for penetration of Spanish armor. Two Spanish accounts of the Chichimeca's archery skill: "On one occasion I saw them throw an orange into the air, and they shot into it so many arrows that, having held it in the air for much time, it finally fell in minute pieces” (Powell 48). “One of don Alonso de Castilla’s soldiers had an arrow pass through the head of his horse, including a crownpiece of double buckskin and metal, and into his chest, so he fell with the horse dead on the ground ‘this was seen by many who are still living’ (Powell 48). The Chichimeca were nomadic making them very mobile and experts of the rough vegetation filled (mostly cactus) land in which they always looked for hiding spots. “His long use of the food native to the Gran Chichimeca gave him far greater mobility than the sedentary invader, who was tied to domesticated livestock, agriculture, and imported supplies. The nomad could and did cut off these supplies, destroy the livestock, and thus paralyze the economic and military vitality of the invaders; this was seldom possible in reverse” (Powell 44). They attacked in small groups ranging from five up to two-hundred braves. They highly valued animal furs and highly treasured European scalps. The most valued of those being red hair due to their cultural importance of the color red. The Chichimeca were easily willing to trade seized gold and silver for red haired women as noted by an extremely small percentage of the population in that territory today having brownish-reddish hair, more noticeably when mixed with whites of non-red haired origin. Red haired women and children were a large incentive used to obtain peace within the region. ;War Tactics The Guachichil would outsmart/deceive their adversaries instead of relying on brute force. “He sent spies into Spanish-Indian towns for appraisal of the enemy’s plans and strength; he developed a far-flung system of lookouts and scouts (atalays); and, in major attacks, settlements were softened by preliminary and apparently systematic killing and stealing of horses and other livestock, this being an attempt, sometimes successful, to change his intended victim from horseman to foot soldier” (Powell 46). When they attacked they used a very good tactic that terrified the animals and scared the Spanish. The Guachichil would disguise themselves as grotesque animals using animal heads and red paint then yelled like crazed beasts making the Spanish lose control of the livestock. The fifty mile (80-km) mountain range, from currently La Montesa to Milagros, Zacatecas, was known as "El Camino Del Infierno" or "The Path of Hell" by the Spanish. The caravans were required to pass through that fifty mile mountain range because a detour would be very lengthy. Within "The Path of Hell" the most ferocious attacks took place. Ancient Guachichil murals of the region paint the indigenous accounts of these events. The chieftain of the tribe was also the military leader. The Spaniards observed that they attacked in gangs of few members who differed from the other Chichimecas by painting their heads and hair red. They attacked their enemies warlike with obsidian swords, spears, darts, and arrows. They first selected the place of attack, preferably a desert but mountainous plain, a rock, a ravine, a swamp, or they simply waited until it was midnight. At midnight they would stealthily position themselves in the attack zone and suddenly let out loud and terrible howls and screams that perplexed their enemies at the same time that they began the attack by running directly towards the target, at the same time that they produced a shower of arrows. The political organization of the Guachichiles was very rudimentary when the Spanish arrived. It was patriarchal and consisted of the most powerful warrior who managed to overthrow the chief who ruled at that time would be the chief. If he failed to overthrow the chief, he separated from the tribe with some families and settled elsewhere. Although tribes could also unite and thus become more powerful through inter-tribal marriages. At the arrival of the Spanish there were hundreds of tribes throughout the territory, but four were the most powerful. ;Origin of name The Guachichiles were known to paint their bodies, hair, and faces in red dye. For this reason they were called "guachichile" by the
Mexica The Mexica (Nahuatl: , ;''Nahuatl Dictionary.'' (1990). Wired Humanities Project. University of Oregon. Retrieved August 29, 2012, frolink/ref> singular ) were a Nahuatl-speaking indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of ...
; from the nahuatl kua-itl (head) and chichil-tic (red), meaning "heads painted red". Colony and Conquest The region currently occupied by the city of San Luis Potosí was, until before the arrival of the Spaniards, a Guachichil-Chichimeca post. Since 1550, Guachichil,
Guamare The Guamare people were an indigenous people of Mexico, who were established mostly in Guanajuato and at the border of Jalisco. They were part of the Chichimecas, a group of a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture and called themselves Children of the Wi ...
s and other Chichimecas assaults began to be registered, so Viceroy Don Luis II de Velasco commissioned Herrera to punish the robbers. Thus began the bloodiest and most extensive of all Spanish companies in America. Pedro de Anda founded the Real del Cerro de San Pedro and Minas del Potosí on March 4, 1592. Given the lack of water in the place, it was necessary to locate a nearby territory that did have it to support human stay. The place was located east of the Anahuac table. In order for the Spanish to settle widely, the local Guachichiles and the Tlaxcalans were displaced. The hostility of the Tlaxcalans, backed by the Spanish, against the Guachichiles would not take long to manifest. The community of San Luis Potosí originated with the well-differentiated gathering of Guachichiles, Tlaxcaltecas, Tarascos,
Zacateco The Zacatecos (or Zacatecas) is the name of an indigenous group, one of the peoples called Chichimecas by the Aztecs. They lived in most of what is now the state of Zacatecas and the northeastern part of Durango. They have many direct descendan ...
s Chichimecas, Chichimecas-Pames de Santa María del Río, Otomí and Spaniards from Extremadura or of uncertain origin. Under the protection of mining wealth, the city of San Luis Potosí was born in November 1592 and its foundation occurred when the fierce Cuachichil Indian named Moquamalto surrendered to Fray Diego de la Magdalena, and Captain
Miguel Caldera Miguel Caldera (1548–1597) was an important figure in the colonization of Mexico's northern frontier immediately following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. Early life Caldera was the illegitimate son of a Castilian soldier named Pedro C ...
, in the place we now know as the square of the founders. Great people from many cities and royal mines came to the lure of gold, which gave rise to a unique culture and joined the presence of the Guachichiles, Spaniards, Otomi, Tarascos, Mulattoes, Blacks and Tlaxcalans, thus creating a unique miscegenation in Mexico. Tribes and Territories The Guachichiles occupied the entire Potosino Altiplano, part of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Zacatecas and Tamaulipas. This area extended from the south, along the Lerma or Grande river, in Michoacán and Guanajuato, to the Comanja mountain ranges and, on the border with the Rioverde area, the boundary rose to the north. Gonzalo de las Casas observed: "They occupy a lot of land and that is how the most people of all the Chichimecas are and who have done the most damage. There are many partialities and not all are well known." The Guachichiles were not a solid kingdom or political state in the 16th century, but rather a set of tribes and chiefdoms, the Spaniards observed three groups: those of Mazapil (where the Mazapiles predominated) to the north, in the mountains that border the town from Parras, from Las Salinas, to the center of San Luis Potosí and finally from Tunal Grande (where the Xales predominated), where the largest food supply place for the Guachichiles was located; These three groups were not political or cultural units, they were the inhabitants of the three geographical areas where the Guachichiles were centralized. Regardless of the three groups of guachichiles, there were a large number of tribal groups, many of them only mentioned once by the Spaniards: Bózalos or negritos, Macolias, Samúes, Maticoyas, Alaquines, Capiojes, Machipaniquanes, Leemagues, Mascorros, Caisanes, Coyotes, Guanchenis, Uaxabanes, Guenacapiles, Alpañales, Pisones, Cauicuiles, Alacazauis, Guazancores and los Chanales.


Language

The Guachichil language is now
extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
and very little is known about it. It may have been an
Uto-Aztecan language Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The ...
closely related to the
Huichol language The Huichol language ( hch, Wixárika) is an indigenous language of Mexico which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken by the ethnic group widely known as the Huichol (self-designation ''Wixaritari''), whose mountainous terri ...
. The Guachichil language is a poorly documented language known only for the structural and morphological information deducible from proper names and place names, this language was divided into 3 dialects or varieties, the Bozalo (or vocalo), the Negrito and another called simply Guachichil, and was closely related to the language of the erased tribes called Quinigua (Martínez, 2019), it has been classified without providing more details within the Uto-Aztec languages, others are inclined to relate it to the hypothetical Coahuiltecan family, which would include Guachichil, the quinigua, maratino, naolan, karankawa and coahuilteco, having an even more distant relationship with comecrudo and cotoname, based on the structure of proper names. Examples of Guachichile proper names are: Aiguaname, Analale, Apamatacaliname, Atapi, Ayoaname, Clonemua, Cuaguilo, Guamala, Juquianame, Malioname, Micolaqui, Mohelo, Nochicaguitaname, Omoahxi, Quiguama, Saitoa, Taesani, Tepuchi, etc. (Martínez, 2019). Examples of place names are: zapalinamé (a mountain range), guanamé (a hacienda), hipoa (a town), mapimí, matehuala (a city). They are characterized by frequently starting with the morpheme ma-, and ending with the form -amé, -qui, -ane, -lo, -na or -al, it contains a series of frequent diphthongs which are ai as in aiguaname, ua as in clonemua, au as in cuutaquelaux, in nauque or in quepinao, or as in omoahxi, or in saitoa. Several words can be related to languages such as quinigua, like the name xilaguani, it can be divided into xila "snake" and guani "like", interpreting "like a snake", guani "like", in turn it can be associated with the maratino "niwa / chigger" of equal meaning. The frequent ending -amé can be associated with the Coahuilteco "am é" used to create participles and adjectives, -le in comecrudo and -né in quinigua.


See also

* *
Gualiname Guachichil


References

Hernandez, Manuel G. “Cartas de Indias: Publicalas Por Primera Vez” Ministerio De Formento 1877. 326-340. Madrid. Print. Powell, Philip Wayne. “Soldiers, Indians & silver; the northward advance of New Spain, 1550-1600.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952. Print Santa Maria, Guillermo de. “Guerra de los Chichimecas : Mexico 1575 – Zirosto 1580” Paleography by Carrillo Cazares, Alberto. 2nd Ed. University of Guadalajara, Michoacan College, University of Norte, University Los Lagos, 220. San Luis College 2003. Print. {{DEFAULTSORT:Guachichil Indigenous peoples of Aridoamerica Indigenous peoples in Mexico Pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico History of Coahuila History of Guanajuato History of Jalisco History of Michoacán History of San Luis Potosí History of Zacatecas Extinct languages of North America Unclassified languages of North America