The Yoeme or Yaqui are a border Native American people who originally lived in the valley of the Río Yaqui in the northern Mexican state of Sonora and throughout the Sonoran Desert region into the southwestern U.S. state of Arizona. The Yaqui call themselves “Yoeme,” the Yaqui word for person (“yoemem” or “yo’emem” meaning “people”). The Yaqui call their homeland “Hiakim,” from which some say the name “Yaqui” is derived. Throughout their history, the Yaqui remained separate from the Aztec and Toltec empires. They were similarly never conquered by the Spanish, defeating successive expeditions of conquistadores in battle.
Yomumuli and the Little Surem People
The Ku Bird
The Wise Deer
Tasi’o Sewa
Yuku
When Badger Named the Sun
Mochomo
The Wax Monkey
The False Beggar
The Stick That Sang
The Two Bears
The Walking Stone
Sun and Moon
Five Friends of Takochai
The Man Who Became a Buzzard
The Snake People
Omteme
Juan Sin Miedo
The Boy Who Became a King
Kaiman
The Big Bird
The Wars Against the Mexicans
War Between the Yaquis and the Pimas
Peace at Pitahaya
Malinero’okai
The First Deer Hunter
The Death of Kutam Tawi
The Flood and the Prophets
San Pedro and Cristo
Jesucristo and San Pedro
Pedro de Ordimales
San Pedro and the Devil
Father Frog
Two Little Lambs
Maisoka and Hima’awikia
The Cricket and the Lion
Grasshopper and Cricket
Turtle and Coyote
Coyote and Rabbit
Heron and Fox
The Cat and the Monkey
In Rabbit’s House
Coyote and the Friendly Dogs
The Black Horse
Duck Hunter
Tesak Pascola’s Watermelons
The Calabazas Funeral
Suawaka
Topol the Clever
Why the Animals Remain Animals
Coyote Woman
The First Fiesta
Bobok
The Five Mended Brothers
The First Fire
The Spirit Fox
The Yaqui Doctor
The Twins
The Snake of the Hill of Nohme
Tukawiru
Cho’oko Baso
Hiaki (in Spanish, Yaqui) Easter celebration, which concludes on Easter morning with more dances, followed by a final procession. The Easter ceremonies of the Hiaki people of Arizona and northern Mexico represent a tradition that dates to the early 17th century. When the early Jesuit priests came into what is now Sonora, Mexico, they introduced Catholic ceremonies, which blended with Hiaki tradition. Flowers are very important in Hiaki culture. They represent beauty, but even more, in the desert, an abundance of flowers means that the right rains have come; the desert and the harvest will be fruitful and the people will prosper. Both in the ceremonies and the daily lives of the Hiaki people, flowers are used as powerful weapons against evil and are an important symbol, found in the elaborate floral designs on traditional Hiaki clothing. The Pahko’ola, or Pascola, dancer is the “Old Man of the Ceremony.” The term comes from the words pahko, which means ceremony or fiesta, and o’ola, which is an affectionate term for an old man. The Pascola dancer has many roles. First, he is the historian of the Hiaki people who keeps the history alive through legends, myths, sermons and jokes. He is the host of the ceremony and entertains the people with his jokes and antics. The Pascola dancer usually wears a mask, often representing a goat.
Yoeme (Yaqui) Deer Dance
For the Yoeme (Yaqui) people another animal, the deer, takes front and center at their Easter ceremonies. This dance is a great representation of syncretism; the merging of the Catholic faith and the figure of Jesus with older views regarding ritual sacrifice and hunting. The deer dance of the Yaqui and Mayo people of Sonora, Mexico, is said to be sacred and therefor rarely photographed. In Yaqui mythology, the deer represents good and the dancers tell the story of the deer, their little brother, and the flower world. In the flower world, all animals are our friends. It is believed that during a fiesta, the deer comes to the Yaqui people and they sacrifice him to the Gods, in return they perform a dance and a ritual in his honor and thank him for giving himself to their well being.
You can not go far into the Northern state of Mexico without encountering depictions of the deer dancer, it can be found on governmental buildings, as sculptures along the highway and even on prepackaged grocery items. For many Mexicans however, these images don’t do much more than remind them of their Aztec heritage and the indigenous people that once lived there. For the Yaqui of Mexico and Arizona, however, these images represent a history of cultural continuity, tribal sovereignty and ritual sacrifice. In all the deer songs and performances, the dancers establish a connection with what they call the sea ania, the flower world, and seyewailo is the convergence of time, place, direction and quality of being that is for the Yaquis the essence of sea ania.The sea ania is the embodiment of sacrifice. Every act of deer singing, ever since the first one was sung, describes the world of flowers and through the labour of singing and dancing the whole night, this world is temporarily re-created, contributing to the communities’ shared inheritance of these aboriginal states of being.
Five Enchanted Worlds of the Yaqui People
Many centuries ago the elders of the Yaqui tribe came across Talking Tree. Now this was no ordinary tree. He was very tall and without branches or leaves so he looked more like a modern telephone pole. Two young Yaqui twins understood what Talking Tree was saying — even though the wise men of the tribe could not. Talking Tree told the little girls about the coming of Christianity and many other things that have since come to pass. The Yaqui held a beautiful ceremonial deer dance, and miraculously, a real deer came. After the Talking Tree prophecy, some Yaqui chose to leave the earth and live in enchanted worlds under the mountains and in the oceans. These are the Surem. Other Yaqui stayed to live on the earth. The Yaqui connect to their five enchanted worlds and to the Surem.
Lutu Chuktiwa (Cutting the Cord) ceremony of the Yoeme (Yaqui) Indians
This ethnographic film portrays the Lutu Chuktiwa (Cutting the Cord) ceremony of the Yoeme (Yaqui) Indians. Filming in Potam Pueblo, one of the eight original pueblos of the Yoeme people in Sonora, Mexico. The Lutu Pahko (cord ceremony) is an all night ritual that takes place one year after someone’s death in order to release the family and community from mourning. Along with indigenous dancing and Catholic prayers, mourners have a cord tied around their neck in the first part of the evening; and these cords are then cut and burned in the early morning. Lutu Chuktiwa asks viewers to consider contemporary indigenous life ways, how to represent others, and how we maintain our culture between a past and a future.
INSIDE THE FLOWER WORLD OF THE YAQUI DEER DANCE. WHERE INDIGENOUS AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY GO HAND IN HAND
The deer dance of the Yaqui and Mayo people of Sonora, Mexico, is said to be sacred and therefor rarely photographed. In Yaqui mythology, the deer represents good and the dancers tell the story of the deer, their little brother, and the flower world. In the flower world, all animals are our friends. It is believed that during a fiesta, the deer comes to the Yaqui people and they sacrifice him to the Gods, in return they perform a dance and a ritual in his honor and thank him for giving himself to their well being.
The Yaqui and related Mayo people inhabit the desert in the Mexican state of Sonora and southern Arizona. Their religious beliefs are a syncretic version of traditional animist practices and Jesuitical Catholicism. The pasko’olas (in the Spanish, pascolas) were malignant spirits, or children of the Devil, whom God won in a game. For that reason, their masks frequently have crucifixes and they wear a belt with twelve bells, each representing an apostle. To symbolize their evil origins, the masks have ugly expressions and vermin such as lizards, snakes and scorpions painted on them. In addition, dancers wear cords and butterfly cocoons on their legs, representing snakes and their rattles. They also wear a flower on their head, to symbolize rebirth and spring. They frequently play the role of clowns, provoking laughter in the audience by mimicking animals, reversing gender roles, organizing mock hunts, and making jokes.
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Yaqui (Yoeme) Nation
Yaqui
Literature
The Yaqui conception of the world is considerably different from that of their Mexican and United States neighbors. For example, the world (in Yaqui, anía) is composed of four separate worlds: the animal world, the world of people, the world of flowers, and the world of death. Much Yaqui ritual is centered upon perfecting these worlds and eliminating the harm that has been done to them, especially by people. There is a belief current among many Yaquis that the existence of the world depends on the yearly performance of the Lenten and Easter rituals.
Legend of “El Mechudo” (“The Long Haired Yaqui”)
Probably, one of the most famous of Mexican pearl divers was a Yaqui know as “El Mechudo”, his real name now lost in time. He obtained his nickname thanks to a very long and thick matt of raven-black hair, which he tied up in a knot above his head, the rest of his hair falling down on him as if it was an umbrella. He was considered to be the best pearl diver of the time, thanks to his ability to obtain large and bountiful catches of giant Black-lipped oysters. On a certain occasion, at around the last few hours of a very bad day, “El Mechudo” came back from a dive and informed his “Jefe” (Boss) of a gigantic black-lipped that he had seen a glimpse of in really deep waters. The Boss urged him on to it -since that day’s catch had been so meager- with the expectation of finding a large black beauty within the oyster.
But bad weather had just moved in, “El Mechudo” refused to dive again. But the Boss went on, offering him an extra piece of dried meat for dinner, as an incentive. “El Mechudo” went once more into the salty embrace of those turquoise waters…never coming out again. But there was no time to find out what had happened to him…bad weather just made it impossible. The next morning the fishing armada made it to the same spot and the divers plunged into the waters. A certain diver screamed out “I found him! I found him!” and every single diver moved into that spot. What they saw was a spectral image: the lifeless body of “El Mechudo” still clutching the giant oyster that had caught his hand in self-defense… his long hair had come loose and flowed all around him. The place where this event happened is know, even to this day as “Punta El Mechudo” in Baja California Sur, near the city of La Paz. There are other versions of the story.
Indigenous Peoples Literature 