Guamar

The Guamar were the Chichimeca people of the Guanajuato sierras and the eastern Bajío, with bands reaching into Aguascalientes and the Jalisco border. Hunter-gatherers who called themselves Children of the Wind, they cremated their dead and scattered the ashes to the wind, painted their bodies and long hair, and lived in mobile rancherías rather than towns.

Their mountain confederation united several tribes, and the seventeenth-century writer Gonzalo de las Casas judged them the bravest and most warlike of the Chichimecas. When mines and cattle ranches invaded the Bajío, they became one of the mainstays of the Chichimeca Confederation in the Chichimeca War of 1550 to 1590.

Spanish arms never broke them; peace came instead through the crown's policy of offering goods, land and mission settlements, under which Guamar bands were gradually congregated and converted during the seventeenth century.