Their culture was based on horticulture and the exploitation of wild animal and plant life.

[3] Before Spanish Colonization, the population of the Acaxee was roughly 20,000 organized into many smaller independent chiefdoms.

[4] Early accounts by Jesuit missionaries allege continual warfare and cannibalism among the Acaxee, Tepehuan, and Xixime who inhabited Nueva Vizcaya.

[4] In December 1601, the Acaxees, under the direction of an elder named Perico, began an uprising against Spanish rule.

[4] Ethnographer Ralph Beals reported in the early 1930s that the Acaxee played a ball game called "vatey [or] batey" on "a small plaza, very flat, with walls at the sides".