Babonoyaba

Babonoyaba was a Concho settlement in the country east of the Tarahumara mountains. Spanish missionaries called it Santiago de Babonoyaba de los Conchos, preserving the local name alongside that of the saint. Franciscan work in the area was underway by the middle of the seventeenth century. The mission lay on a frontier where Concho and Tarahumara communities lived in proximity and where Spanish expansion brought recurring conflict.

In 1650 Concho and Toboso people rose in the Babonoyaba district. Over the following decades the population of the mission changed as Tarahumara families moved into the region. In 1700 its Indigenous governor was a Tarahumara named Nicolás, and by 1717 a Jesuit described the mission as principally Tarahumara. The history of Babonoyaba thus reflects both the persistence of the settlement and the changing communities who lived there.