The Mototícachi Massacre: Authorized Pimas and the Specter of the Insurrectionary Indian

Abstract

On July 29, 1688, the Pima rancheria of Mototicachi went up in flames. All of its residents—without regard to age or gender—were seized and shackled by a group of soldiers from the Sinaloa presidio. The prisoners were taken to the nearby rancheria of Bacoachi, where forty-two men were killed and the rest were transferred to Sinaloa as prisoners of war. The burning, the imprisonment, and the subsequent executions all were ordered by Nicolas de Higuera, a young corporal from the Sinaloa presidio charged with protecting the Teuricachi Valley against the invasions of the Janos, Jocomes, Sumas, and Apaches. Letters written in the days that followed illustrate Spanish fears that the fire at Mototicachi would cast its embers across the then-peaceful Pimeria Alta. The specter of the insurrectionary Indian hovered in Spanish imagination during the late seventeenth century, ever since the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In August of that year, the seemingly pacified and friendly Pueblo Indians had synchronized a rebellion that succeeded in expelling all Spaniards from Pueblo lands in northern New Mexico. The blood spilled during that unexpected episode fractured the certainties of Spanish officials and fed paranoid concerns across New Spain that any and all Indians could suddenly turn against the Spanish empire and its colonial settlers. Near the Pimeria Alta, anxieties were further fueled by the frequent theft of livestock and the sporadic killing of Spanish soldiers and vecinos. Although most of these assaults were attributed to enemy groups such as the Janos and Jocomes, on several occasions the Pimas were accused of being either accomplices or solely responsible for the attacks.1 The documentary record illustrates that Spanish authorities,