Skip to main content
NATIVE BUT FOREIGN
Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands by Brenden W. Rensink, Texas A&M Press, 2018

Chapter 3, Note 82 (pages 67 and 237)

Working against them, however, were the never-ending warfare and threats to Americans’ economic interests in Sonora. (p. 67)

…for sample reports of Yaqui-Mexico warfare that circulated throughout the United States and Arizona. (p. 237)

This looming chaos – regular publicizing of never-ending warfare, intermittent declarations of peace quickly broken by resumed fighting and other such reports – worried Arizonans and other Americans with economic interests in Sonora. Various American businesses petitioned U.S. officials about the loss of capital and property due to the fighting in Sonora. At one point, concerned companies even solicited for ex American soldiers to work as private security forces in Sonora.

Consider:

  • “The Yaqui War,” Graham Guardian, January 19, 1900, 4.
  • “Gen. Torres Killed,” Saint Paul Globe, February 4, 1900, 8.
  • “Trapping Yaquis,” Graham Guardian, March 30, 1900.
  • “News from the Expedition,” Graham Guardian, August 3, 1900, 1.
  • Jose de Olivares, “Gen. Luis E. Torres and the Yaqui War,” San Francisco Call, May 5, 1901, 5.
  • “Through the Hostile Yaqui Country,” Jose de Olivares, “Through the Hostile Yaqui Country,” San Francisco Call, August 18, 1901, 3.
  • “Yaquis Raiding About Guaymas,” San Francisco Call, October 2, 1901, 13.
  • “Yaquis Die in Battles with Troops,” San Francisco Call, June 2, 1902, 3.
  • “Indians Ambush Troops,” San Francisco Call, June 4, 1902, 1.
  • “Vicious Yaquis Destroy Lives,” San Francisco Call, November 7, 1902, 3.
  • “Story of Yaqui Ambush Told by Miller,” Los Angeles Examiner, January 25, 1905.
  • Colfax Gazette (Washington), February 3, 1905, 1.
  • “Outlaws Stiles in China,” Graham Guardian, March 3, 1905, 1.
  • “Punishing Yaquis,” Graham Guardian, March 3, 1905, 3.
  • “Yaqui Indians Are Not as Bad as Painted,” Saint Paul Globe, April 2, 1905, 7.
  • “Dishonest Teamsters Executed,” Graham Guardian, September 15, 1905, 1.
  • Allen Kelly, “Sonora in Terror of Red Rovers,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1906.
  • “Mexico Will Use Indians to Fight Indians,” New York Times, June 24, 1906, SM3.
  • “Yaqui Indians on the Warpath,” Graham Guardian, February 14, 1908, 2.
  • “Yaquis and Mexicans,” Palestine Daily Herald (Texas), December 30, 1908, 6.
  • “Yaquis Agree to End Fight,” Los Angeles Herald, December 30,l 1908, 1.
  • “Persecuted Yaquis Are Finally Granted Peace,” San Francisco Call, January 3, 1909, 27.
  • “Something About ‘Barbarous Mexico’,” San Francisco Call, September 25, 1909, 10.
  • “Kosterlitzky is With Ruruales at Douglas,” Bisbee Daily Review, October 23, 1909, 2.

For a sample of U.S. diplomatic correspondence dealing with these concerns see:

  • US Department of State, Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, with the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 5, 1905 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), 639-648.

For a lengthy contemporary account of Sonoran issues see:

  • Dean Harris, By Path and Trail (Chicago: Chicago Newspaper Union, 1908), 7-55.