Xixime

The Xixime were a people of the Sierra Madre Occidental, between Sinaloa and Durango, living in extended-family villages around stone cliff towns. They grew crops and traded with coastal peoples; Spanish scouts in Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán's 1530 expedition thought their stone settlements made them more civilized than their neighbors.

Colonial reports claim they ate captured enemies in rites meant to secure the maize harvest, though modern historians suspect such stories were exaggerated. Their feud with the Acaxee ran across the sixteenth century. When Jesuit missions pushed into the sierras the Xixime rose in 1610, calling churches temples of disease and attacking the Acaxee for refusing to join.

Francisco de Urdiñola marched in with Spanish soldiers and native allies and broke the revolt by October. The Xixime later backed the larger Tepehuán Revolt of 1616.