Mayo (people)
The Mayo are an Native American people who live in southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa on the west coast of Mexico . They speak a dialect of the Cahita language that is part of the Uto-Atek language family .
The history of Mayo before the Spanish conquest is obscure. In the early 17th century they immediately allied themselves with the Spaniards against their northern neighbors, the Yaqui . However, constant Spanish pressure on their land drove Mayo to revolts in 1740 and in the following years until they were pacified by the Mexican central government in the 1880s.
The Mayo inhabit the fertile valleys irrigated by the Mayo and Fuerte rivers , which lie in the middle of a semi-desert-like area in which only thorny bushes and cacti thrive. The Mayo are sedentary farmers whose traditional cultivation of corn, beans and squash (pumpkin) has been partially exchanged for cotton, wheat and safflower (for oil). The Mayo combine Roman Catholicism with Indian religious practices. At the end of the 20th century, the people numbered around 80,000.
literature
- William C. Sturtevant (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians , Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest Vol. 9, 1979 ISBN 0-16004-577-0
- Alfonso Ortiz (Ed.): Southwest Vol. 10, 1983 ISBN 0-16004-579-7