Sinaloa

Sinaloa lies on the river of the same name, where the western slopes of the Sierra Madre descend toward the Gulf of California. Indigenous communities inhabited the river valleys before the arrival of Spanish settlers. The river provided a route through the coastal country toward the mountain interior. In the 1580s Spanish settlers established the villa of San Felipe y Santiago de Sinaloa on the river, making it a centre of the colonial province. Jesuit missions subsequently spread along the Sinaloa, Fuerte, Mayo and Yaqui rivers, bringing communities into a new system of mission settlements during the early seventeenth century.