Guaycura people

The Guaycura (Waicura, Waikuri, Guaycuri) were a native people of Baja California Sur, Mexico, occupying an area extending south from near Loreto to Todos Santos.

Linguists and archaeologists speculate that the Guaycura and the Pericú occupying the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula may have been the descendants of very early Native American migrants to the Americas.

Known band names of probable Guaycura speakers living near the Bay of La Paz are Cubí (or Cora), Huchiti (or Uchiti), Aripe, Callejué,[5] and Cantile.

[2][7] The indigenous peoples of the 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) long peninsula of Baja California were similar in that all were hunter-gatherers with a limited and portable toolkit for survival.

Bands united infrequently and most of the year the Guaycura foraged in family groups or lived in temporary settlements, called rancherias by the Spanish, of 50 to 200 people.

The Guaycura hunted mule deer, bighorn sheep and smaller game, harvested shellfish and turtles on the shorelines, and gathered a variety of plant foods.

[8] Year-round the most important food for the Guaycura was probably the basal rosettes of several species of agave which they roasted in a pit with heated rocks.

Baegert took a decidedly sour view of his charges, at one point characterizing them as "stupid, awkward, rude, unclean, insolent, ungrateful, mendacious, thievish, abominably lazy, great talkers to their end, and naïve and childish.

"[10] His views as to the extreme simplicity of Guaycura social organization and belief systems have often been accepted as factual, but they may owe something to the missionary's own acerbic personality.

Over the following century and a half, they had sporadic encounters with maritime expeditions and failed attempts by the Spanish to establish a colony and a Christian mission in Baja California.

The first Jesuit mission among the Guaycura was at La Paz and it was intended to serve not only as a missionary center, but as a rest and resupply stop for the Manila galleons returning from the Philippines.

The new Spanish administration and newly arrived Franciscan missionaries forced the 746 survivors of the northern bands of the Guaycura to move south to Todos Santos.

Baja California by this time was being settled by Spanish and mestizo immigrants and the remaining Guaycura were being absorbed into the general population and had lost the remnants of their culture.