The Tepehuán were an agricultural people who lived primarily in the future Mexican state of Durango on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental.
Early Spanish explorers described them as numerous but, apparently, a series of epidemics of introduced European diseases reduced their numbers by more than 80 percent.
God would create storms at seas, sinking the Spanish ships and thus preventing additional Spaniards from reaching these lands.”[4] Quautlatas message was typical of millennial movements such as the Pueblo Revolt led by another messianic figure, Popé, in the same century, and much later events such as the Ghost Dance in the U.S. and the Boxer Rebellion in China.
Quautlatas promised divine intervention to return to an idealized past in which the plagues and suffering brought upon the Tepehuán by the Spanish would disappear.
It enraged their spirit to take up arms against the faith of Christ and all that was Christianity…..This was most clearly demonstrated by the diabolical shamans who had intimate dealings with the Devil and were the main force and instigators of the uprising.” Perez de Ribas compared Quautlatas with the antiChrist.
Six war leaders carried out a series of coordinated attacks that left hundreds of Spaniards, including ten priests, and their Indigenous (American Indian) allies and African slaves dead.