Ódami

The Tepehuán are mountain people of the Sierra Madre Occidental whose northern branch, the Ódami, live in southern Chihuahua. Their belief was a polytheism: gods were thought to dwell in idols and fetishes, and to come from underground, the source of all life, so the people owed them sustenance.

Jesuits described a principal idol, Ubumarai, a human head on a stone pillar. Shamans cured the sick and led the fasting, prayer and all-night dances called mitotes, held for rain and crops.

Jesuit missions began among the Tepehuán in 1596. In 1616 Quautlatas, a baptized messianic leader who bore a broken cross, preached that the angry gods would bless the land once the Spaniards were killed. His rising began the Tepehuán Revolt, put down by 1620.