Jovas

The Jovas were an Opatan people living in rugged country in eastern Sonora and Chihuahua, with villages including Sahuaripa. They relied more on hunting and gathering than neighboring Opatan farmers.

In 1617 the Jesuit Andrés Pérez de Ribas met the Jova chief Sisibotari in the Sahuaripa valley. Some Jovas remained independent of Spanish rule in 1678; during the eighteenth century they intermarried with the Eudeve and merged with them.