Sahuaripa

Sahuaripa lies in a river valley of eastern Sonora, between the dry lowlands and the western Sierra Madre. The valley was an important centre of the Tehuima, an Ópata people, whose communities lived in the surrounding mountain and river country.

Jesuit missionaries visited Sahuaripa in the early seventeenth century and established a mission there in 1627. Their arrival brought the valley into a network of missions that later extended through the Sonora River valley and the eastern mountains. The missionaries encountered established Indigenous leadership, including the Tehuima leader Sisibutari. The mission sought to change religious and social life, while Spanish settlement and mining expanded across the region. Sahuaripa remained a centre of the eastern valleys through the colonial period. The neighbouring valleys likewise became part of this network of missions.