Over the course of nearly 400 years, the Spanish and the Mexicans repeatedly launched military campaigns into Yaqui territory which resulted in several serious battles and massacres.

In 1684, the Spanish colonists in the present day Mexican state of Sonora discovered silver in the Rio Yaqui Valley.

Some minor conflicts from before dated back to 1533[1] but in 1740 the Yaqui united with the neighboring Mayo, Opata, and Pima tribes and successfully drove the colonists out by 1742.

After this defeat, Banderas negotiated a peace with Occidente, in which he was granted pardon, and recognized as a captain-general of the Yaqui, and was given a salary.

In 1832 Banderas renewed the war against the Mexican authorities, in cooperation with Dolores Gutiérrez, a chief of the Opata people.

The Yaqui under the leadership of Mateo Marquin, also known as Jose Maria Barquin, were among the chief allies of Gándara in his attempt to regain control of Sonora.

[9] In August 1860, bands of Yaqui and Mayo insurgents, some 1,000 or 1,200 strong, marched towards Guaymas, burning and leveling Mexican settlements as they advanced.

[14] In 1876 the Yaqui leader José Maria Leyba Peres, or Cajemé, established a small independent republic in Sonora.

El Añil was located near the village of Vícam, in the middle of a thick forest and on the left bank of the Yaqui river.

[15] Agustin Ortiz, whose brother Carlos was then the governor of Sonora, led an attack from Navojoa to Capetemaya in 1882, with the intention of capturing Cajemé.

General Carrillo, with 1,200 soldiers, initially attacked El Añil in a fierce battle to dislodge the indigenous Yaqui forces.

General Ángel Martínez brought up an additional 1,500 Mexican soldiers, and concentrated his forces to finish the campaign with a decisive blow.

Only a few Yaqui soldiers escaped by fleeing deep into the mountains, leaving 200 dead, and some 2,000 people, consisting primarily of the elderly, children, and the sick.

The bulk of the remaining Yaqui soldiers were now unable to make war directly on Mexican military forces, so hid in the mountains, while being persecuted and systematically decimated.

In February 1896 an event known as the Yaqui Uprising began after the Mexican revolutionary Lauro Aguirre drafted a plan to overthrow the government of Porfirio Díaz.

During the fight a group of American militia formed in the adjoining town of Nogales, Arizona and they assisted the Mexican defenders in repelling the rebels' attack.

Ultimately the Yaquis and the others were obliged to withdraw from the area, ending the uprising and leading to a United States Army operation to track the hostiles.

Two companies of the 24th Infantry Regiment were assigned to hunt the rebels who were being pursued by troops of the Mexican Army Colonel Emilio Kosterlitsky.

One event in which a young woman who had been hiding but was discovered, without a tear in her eyes, "approached the body of her loved one, knelt a moment, bowed slightly, and perhaps for a last time looked at the face of the beloved, and arose at once, quickly running like a gazelle toward the precipice, and without a moment's hesitation, plunged into the abyss.

"[25] It was at this point in time, in the late 1890s and early years of the 1900s, that a large number of Yaqui people began traveling north to settle in the United States around Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona, and into parts of Texas, including the El Paso area, as well as the Lubbock area, where a group of Yaqui refugees had settled years earlier.

Meanwhile, from 1904 to 1909, the Mexican governor of Sonora, Rafael Izábal, led "organized manhunts" in which about 8,000 to 15,000 Yaquis were taken prisoner and "virtually enslaved".

By 1916, Mexican generals, such as Álvaro Obregón, began establishing estates on Yaqui land during the revolution and this led to renewed hostilities between the natives and the military.

In January 1918, a small group of about thirty natives were intercepted by Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry, just across the international border, near Arivaca, Arizona.

On April 28, 1927, the Los Angeles Times[27] reported that Mexican Federal Troops had captured 415 Yaquis, including 26 men, 214 women, and 175 children.

[28] According to another report published on October 5, 1927, 12,000 "federales" were soon to present in the state of Sonora, equipped with 8mm machine guns, airplanes and poison gas.

[29] On October 2, 1927, the Los Angeles Times reported that General Francisco R. Manzo, Commander of the federal forces in Sonora, had informed President Calles that he expected the Yaqui chieftain, Luis Matius, would soon surrender after holding out in the Bacatete Mountains for more than a year.